4 ms·

When I was in a unionized position, it was frustrating because I couldn't choose to not join (technically I guess I could, but the union and the employer had al

When I was in a unionized position, it was frustrating because I couldn't choose to not join (technically I guess I could, but the union and the employer had already agreed that non-union employees still paid 90+% of union dues to the union. why this is legal I have no idea). Anyway, the union (which I became part of because, hey, 10% difference) really didn't help me. They were an entity with lots of institutional power, but they all had their own agenda. It's not like they really had my best interests at heart. It just became one more level of power to answer to. It was really frustrating, and I was happy when I was able to leave.

INTPenis 11y ago
That is terrible to hear because I am very pro-unions. I'm not sure I understand everything you said but I assume you're trying to say that employees who are not even members pay dues to the union from their salary. I don't understand this at all and this is not how we operate in sweden. So that's one major issue with policy in your country. I don't understand what you mean by 10% difference. The union does have a lot of power but in my experience most of it is used to negotiate salary raises every year and to advise members who need help with negotiating or general queries. So I've never felt that the union is another power I have to answer to in any way. The only way I can imagine them giving the impression of being "in the way" would be that the reason salary raises are delayed most years are due to the union negotiations. That hardly matters though as everyone still gets their salary raise retroactively, regardless of when the negotiations end. With most companies being connected to some sort of collective bargaining deal here, there's really not much reason to join a union. I am a member partly due to ideological reasons and partly due to the fact that managers still fear the unions here and I think that's how it should be. Without tuting my own horn, I've been a model employee for my It-career so far so I haven't had any need for the union. But should I ever lose my job, or need to enter into any difficult negotiating with my manager, I know they will help me. Because they've helped co-workers and other people around the country in good ways before.
- knodi123 11y ago
  > I don't understand what you mean by 10% difference. He's saying that there are union dues that union members pay, and NON-union employees still pay union dues, but 10% less.
  - appleflaxen 11y ago
    It was a long time ago, so I don't remember perfectly, but yes - this was the situation.
rrss1122 11y ago
Unions typically protect the employees that have been there the longest. The newest employees are always the most vulnerable, union or not. If you had worked there long enough, eventually they would have had your best interests at heart.
kalkin 11y ago
> why this is legal I have no idea It's legal, and in fact normal, under the US labor law regime, because because the union is legally obligated to represent all employees equally, members and non-members, in both collective bargaining and individual grievances. Without something like this the temptation to free-ride those benefits would be pretty enormous.
- kalkin 11y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I'm sympathetic to your frustration. A lot of U.S. unions are pretty undemocratic and mediocre. It's not unrelated to their weakness.
- bradleyjg 11y ago
  They aren't obligated to represent all employees equally in collective bargaining. It'd be impossible for them to do so, because there are intra-employee conflicts of interest. Rather than being a fiduciary institution, at least when it comes to negotiation, it's a democratic one that only needs to represent the interests of 50% + 1 members of the union. Often this manifests in trading off the interests of newer members in order to secure benefits for senior members -- sometimes even going so far as to bargain on behalf of retirees who aren't even members. But other configurations of favored and non-favored groups exist (another fairly common one is part time or seasonal employees paying dues but not being effectively representated during contract negotiations). Grievance representation is a different matter, there the union is much closer to the fiduciary ideal.
  - kalkin 11y ago
    Sure, it's not equality in all respects, but they aren't allowed to discriminate purely on the basis of union membership. If they negotiate a pay level for a job classification, that's for everyone. You don't join a union workplace and then negotiate your salary separately while everyone else is on a scale.
crdoconnor 11y ago
>When I was in a unionized position, it was frustrating because I couldn't choose to not join Sure you could. Join a company which wasn't a union shop. Or did you like this particular one because of the salary and benefits negotiated by the, uh, union?
- johnward 11y ago
  This is what people don't understand. Even competing non-union wages go up when the union negotiates better pay (or benefits) for their members.
  - cheald 11y ago
    Could you link me to studies that show this effect? What economic reason would there be for this? It makes no sense to me that union creating more expensive labor would increase the costs of non-union labor, except insofar as they reduce the size of the non-union labor pool.
    - johnward 11y ago
      "It makes no sense to me that union creating more expensive labor would increase the costs of non-union labor, except insofar as they reduce the size of the non-union labor pool." I don't have a link. This is all anecdotal. I could be completely wrong but I don't think I'm far off. Lowering the pool of non-union workers is one thing, but also competing to keep those workers from joining a union. Companies generally don't want to be unionized. Not only do they need to compete to keep the worker from leaving but they also need to pay enough to keep the workers happy enough to not unionize their shop. I'm from WV which is basically owned by the coal mines. Each time one of those non-union mines go to vote if they will go union the miners I know tell me the company starts giving out bonuses and things like Harleys to sway them to vote non-union. Even so things that were created or backed by unions have now become laws and directly benefit non-union workers. Like the 40 hour work week. The end of child labor. Employer health benefits. FMLA.
      - 11y ago
fredophile 11y ago
This is more common than you to think. Making everyone pay union dues is intended to avoid free rider problems. When things work like they're supposed to all employees in unionized positions benefit from the union so it makes sense for all of them to pay dues. There may be plenty of reasons for this to not work in practice but that's the logic behind it.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
omouse 11y ago
>When I was in a unionized position, it was frustrating because I couldn't choose to not join (technically I guess I could, but the union and the employer had already agreed that non-union employees still paid 90+% of union dues to the union. why this is legal I have no idea). Then that's not a real union. A real union also has competition; if the conditions are great at an employer the union will slowly lose members. If the union acts badly, the employees will just create a new union. But if there's only one union and it's cozy with the employer then you have a "company union" which will not always work on the benefits for the employees. You see this with teachers unions that hardly protect the teachers (salary/wage freezes and shrinking of benefits have been happening for years now). >They were an entity with lots of institutional power, but they all had their own agenda. It's not like they really had my best interests at heart. It just became one more level of power to answer to. It was really frustrating, and I was happy when I was able to leave. Yep and that's precisely the goal of a "company union". They want to make it so that the word "union" is a curse word. Even unions need competition.

INTPenis 11y ago

That is terrible to hear because I am very pro-unions. I'm not sure I understand everything you said but I assume you're trying to say that employees who are not even members pay dues to the union from their salary. I don't understand this at all and this is not how we operate in sweden. So that's one major issue with policy in your country. I don't understand what you mean by 10% difference. The union does have a lot of power but in my experience most of it is used to negotiate salary raises every year and to advise members who need help with negotiating or general queries. So I've never felt that the union is another power I have to answer to in any way. The only way I can imagine them giving the impression of being "in the way" would be that the reason salary raises are delayed most years are due to the union negotiations. That hardly matters though as everyone still gets their salary raise retroactively, regardless of when the negotiations end. With most companies being connected to some sort of collective bargaining deal here, there's really not much reason to join a union. I am a member partly due to ideological reasons and partly due to the fact that managers still fear the unions here and I think that's how it should be. Without tuting my own horn, I've been a model employee for my It-career so far so I haven't had any need for the union. But should I ever lose my job, or need to enter into any difficult negotiating with my manager, I know they will help me. Because they've helped co-workers and other people around the country in good ways before.

knodi123 11y ago
> I don't understand what you mean by 10% difference. He's saying that there are union dues that union members pay, and NON-union employees still pay union dues, but 10% less.
- appleflaxen 11y ago
  It was a long time ago, so I don't remember perfectly, but yes - this was the situation.

rrss1122 11y ago

Unions typically protect the employees that have been there the longest. The newest employees are always the most vulnerable, union or not. If you had worked there long enough, eventually they would have had your best interests at heart.

kalkin 11y ago

> why this is legal I have no idea It's legal, and in fact normal, under the US labor law regime, because because the union is legally obligated to represent all employees equally, members and non-members, in both collective bargaining and individual grievances. Without something like this the temptation to free-ride those benefits would be pretty enormous.

kalkin 11y ago
Don't get me wrong, I'm sympathetic to your frustration. A lot of U.S. unions are pretty undemocratic and mediocre. It's not unrelated to their weakness.
bradleyjg 11y ago
They aren't obligated to represent all employees equally in collective bargaining. It'd be impossible for them to do so, because there are intra-employee conflicts of interest. Rather than being a fiduciary institution, at least when it comes to negotiation, it's a democratic one that only needs to represent the interests of 50% + 1 members of the union. Often this manifests in trading off the interests of newer members in order to secure benefits for senior members -- sometimes even going so far as to bargain on behalf of retirees who aren't even members. But other configurations of favored and non-favored groups exist (another fairly common one is part time or seasonal employees paying dues but not being effectively representated during contract negotiations). Grievance representation is a different matter, there the union is much closer to the fiduciary ideal.
- kalkin 11y ago
  Sure, it's not equality in all respects, but they aren't allowed to discriminate purely on the basis of union membership. If they negotiate a pay level for a job classification, that's for everyone. You don't join a union workplace and then negotiate your salary separately while everyone else is on a scale.

crdoconnor 11y ago

>When I was in a unionized position, it was frustrating because I couldn't choose to not join Sure you could. Join a company which wasn't a union shop. Or did you like this particular one because of the salary and benefits negotiated by the, uh, union?

johnward 11y ago
This is what people don't understand. Even competing non-union wages go up when the union negotiates better pay (or benefits) for their members.
- cheald 11y ago
  Could you link me to studies that show this effect? What economic reason would there be for this? It makes no sense to me that union creating more expensive labor would increase the costs of non-union labor, except insofar as they reduce the size of the non-union labor pool.
  - johnward 11y ago
    "It makes no sense to me that union creating more expensive labor would increase the costs of non-union labor, except insofar as they reduce the size of the non-union labor pool." I don't have a link. This is all anecdotal. I could be completely wrong but I don't think I'm far off. Lowering the pool of non-union workers is one thing, but also competing to keep those workers from joining a union. Companies generally don't want to be unionized. Not only do they need to compete to keep the worker from leaving but they also need to pay enough to keep the workers happy enough to not unionize their shop. I'm from WV which is basically owned by the coal mines. Each time one of those non-union mines go to vote if they will go union the miners I know tell me the company starts giving out bonuses and things like Harleys to sway them to vote non-union. Even so things that were created or backed by unions have now become laws and directly benefit non-union workers. Like the 40 hour work week. The end of child labor. Employer health benefits. FMLA.
    - 11y ago

fredophile 11y ago

This is more common than you to think. Making everyone pay union dues is intended to avoid free rider problems. When things work like they're supposed to all employees in unionized positions benefit from the union so it makes sense for all of them to pay dues. There may be plenty of reasons for this to not work in practice but that's the logic behind it.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

omouse 11y ago

>When I was in a unionized position, it was frustrating because I couldn't choose to not join (technically I guess I could, but the union and the employer had already agreed that non-union employees still paid 90+% of union dues to the union. why this is legal I have no idea). Then that's not a real union. A real union also has competition; if the conditions are great at an employer the union will slowly lose members. If the union acts badly, the employees will just create a new union. But if there's only one union and it's cozy with the employer then you have a "company union" which will not always work on the benefits for the employees. You see this with teachers unions that hardly protect the teachers (salary/wage freezes and shrinking of benefits have been happening for years now). >They were an entity with lots of institutional power, but they all had their own agenda. It's not like they really had my best interests at heart. It just became one more level of power to answer to. It was really frustrating, and I was happy when I was able to leave. Yep and that's precisely the goal of a "company union". They want to make it so that the word "union" is a curse word. Even unions need competition.