6 ms·

so unionize Easier said than done. Most people don't realize they are getting screwed out of their wages. They just think they need to work harder/smarter to g

by vijayr 11y ago

so unionize Easier said than done. Most people don't realize they are getting screwed out of their wages. They just think they need to work harder/smarter to get ahead. They also think unions are socialist/communist etc. Then there are corporations who will do anything in their power to stop people from unionizing.

aianus 11y ago
I would rather make less money than have part of my paycheck forcibly removed and given to politician-types so they can defend other losers' jobs against competition because they have 'seniority'.
- BrainInAJar 11y ago
  so you'd rather fuck yourself out of spite?
  - aianus 11y ago
    Absolutely. It's all relative anyways; doing better in absolute terms is less important than doing better relative to parasitic morons like those protected and enriched by unions.
    - x5n1 11y ago
      my unions prof said he wanted the right to fire one moron per year and that would be enough to solve this problem. because usually there is only one or two problem employees.
      - mc32 11y ago
        I don't think that would fix it. If he doesn't fire anyone, it's not effective, and once he does the quota is filled and the rest are free to dilly dally the rest of the year.
        tormeh 11y ago
        Most people don't work that way. There are many places where firing people is near impossible, but 99% still do a solid job.
        x5n1 11y ago
        People work because they want their lives to mean something. Usually if you put people in a group with an objective regardless of a reward they will try to achieve the objective.
        aianus 11y ago
        If you hold entry salaries and promotion opportunities down with unions you dissuade more qualified people from considering your career entirely. Why become a high school CS teacher making half as much as the less-skilled older teachers around you when you can go into non-union industry and make triple? My high school CS teacher was a history major who didn't know anything about CS and barely stayed a couple lessons ahead of us in the textbook. It's not that he was lazy or didn't take his job seriously; he was the only person willing to do it at all! Which is a direct consequence of teachers unions.
        tormeh 11y ago
        What, you think a high school would pay the same that private industry would?
        aianus 11y ago
        It doesn't have to pay as much as private industry, but the more it pays, the more likely some idealistic student is to consider teaching as a profession. At the very least they could hit the $75k happiness threshold.
        eru 11y ago
        Why? Who says you can't be fired next year for dilly-dally-ing this year?
    - RobertoG 11y ago
      I can't tell if you are being sarcastic.
      - aianus 11y ago
        I make multiple times more money than I can spend; I don't care about real wages or if fat cat capitalists happen to be grabbing a larger share of the pie. I care that I can look around and feel like my earnings and chances of being laid off are consummate with my productivity and skill relative to those around me and not my age (whether it's true or not -- perception is what's important). Without that work is just a pointless grind of showing up on time to collect a paycheck. If that's what your job is already, fine, but that's not what I studied CS for.
        BrainInAJar 11y ago
        so you're saying you studied CS so that you can be better than people, not because it's a good & stimulating career. Remind me never to hire you.
        aianus 11y ago
        > so you're saying you studied CS so that you can be better than people That's pretty much why anyone does anything, don't be fooled into thinking otherwise. It's in our DNA.
        BrainInAJar 11y ago
        I'm sad for your view of the world.
- lumberjack 11y ago
  FYI, seniority isn't some form of union corruption or malice. It's a fundamental strategy employed to reduce workplace competition which is what gives unions the leverage they need against the employer. Without seniority, you get three problems: 1. The employer can again directly influence employee decisions by promoting those that side with them instead of with the union. So then in case of a strike, he'd say beforehand that he'll only consider a promotion for those who don't participate in the strike. 2. Junior union members do not really have a guarantee that it is worth the effort to join the union if they might end up still in entry level positions after X years. Seniority will affect them negatively in the first few years but then they will be guaranteed the same promotions. 3. Senior members would probably cause lots of issues within the union if they didn't get promoted before the young guys even if it was fair to promote the more skillful young. After all they participated in the union for longer at a significant cost and it's only due to their participation that the skillful young enjoy the workplace benefits they have. This might tear apart the union. Now if you look at this through the "I'm better than anyone else around me" sort of tinted glasses you'll never really get any of this and it's probably not for you. Unions are for people who want to minimize employment risk because they have lots of responsibilities and cannot afford to be highly motivated corporate career climbers.
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    This is a good overview of why these methods are used. Unfortunately, a lot of people in engineering fields seem to assume that these particular tactics are the only way a union can be run. Usually, the reaction to the idea that engineers should really unionise is causes an immediately hostile reaction. A union is what you (the members) want it to be, and a union that only addressed certain topics[1] would probably stop some problems from happening at all. There's no reason to authorize a union to interfere with the more mundane problems unless you want those feature and design the union to have those powers. The key thing to remember - which the usual knee-jerk anti-union rhetoric ignores - is that problems start to grow when too much power accumulates in any one place. Neither labor or capital can be allowed to grow to powerful, as it is the conflict between them that keeps each side restrained. A few decades ago we saw the problems of labor getting too powerful, and before that the problems of capital (business owners) having too much power was obvious. Like any control system, you have to design feedback[2] into the control mechanisms. [1] Issues involving collusion like the recent wage-fixing agreement between Apple/Google/Intel/{...} or the "working recent grads to death" (13 hours/day, 7 days/week) that EA used to require. [2] If only we had a sociological version of a PID controller.
- bildung 11y ago
  > I would rather make less money than have part of my paycheck forcibly removed and given to politician-types so they can defend other losers' jobs against competition because they have 'seniority'. That argument is the reason why real wages in the US haven't grown in the last 40 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_wage#/media/File:US_Real_Wages_1964-2004.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_wage#/media/File:US_Real_...
- bsder 11y ago
  'seniority' is also there so that the company can't just fire you when you start getting expensive. I always love these discussions about "merit" when we have already seen that even tech companies don't give one iota of damn about labor anything beyond "cheap". See: H1-B visa.
  - aianus 11y ago
    How do you accidentally 'start getting expensive'? Why are they giving you raises in the first place if they don't think you're worth the money? Edit: furthermore, why shouldn't you be fired if you're not performing to the level they expect at the price they're paying for you?

by vijayr 11y ago

aianus 11y ago

I would rather make less money than have part of my paycheck forcibly removed and given to politician-types so they can defend other losers' jobs against competition because they have 'seniority'.

BrainInAJar 11y ago
so you'd rather fuck yourself out of spite?
- aianus 11y ago
  Absolutely. It's all relative anyways; doing better in absolute terms is less important than doing better relative to parasitic morons like those protected and enriched by unions.
  - x5n1 11y ago
    my unions prof said he wanted the right to fire one moron per year and that would be enough to solve this problem. because usually there is only one or two problem employees.
    - mc32 11y ago
      I don't think that would fix it. If he doesn't fire anyone, it's not effective, and once he does the quota is filled and the rest are free to dilly dally the rest of the year.
      - tormeh 11y ago
        Most people don't work that way. There are many places where firing people is near impossible, but 99% still do a solid job.
        x5n1 11y ago
        People work because they want their lives to mean something. Usually if you put people in a group with an objective regardless of a reward they will try to achieve the objective.
        aianus 11y ago
        If you hold entry salaries and promotion opportunities down with unions you dissuade more qualified people from considering your career entirely. Why become a high school CS teacher making half as much as the less-skilled older teachers around you when you can go into non-union industry and make triple? My high school CS teacher was a history major who didn't know anything about CS and barely stayed a couple lessons ahead of us in the textbook. It's not that he was lazy or didn't take his job seriously; he was the only person willing to do it at all! Which is a direct consequence of teachers unions.
        tormeh 11y ago
        What, you think a high school would pay the same that private industry would?
        aianus 11y ago
        It doesn't have to pay as much as private industry, but the more it pays, the more likely some idealistic student is to consider teaching as a profession. At the very least they could hit the $75k happiness threshold.
      - eru 11y ago
        Why? Who says you can't be fired next year for dilly-dally-ing this year?
  - RobertoG 11y ago
    I can't tell if you are being sarcastic.
    - aianus 11y ago
      I make multiple times more money than I can spend; I don't care about real wages or if fat cat capitalists happen to be grabbing a larger share of the pie. I care that I can look around and feel like my earnings and chances of being laid off are consummate with my productivity and skill relative to those around me and not my age (whether it's true or not -- perception is what's important). Without that work is just a pointless grind of showing up on time to collect a paycheck. If that's what your job is already, fine, but that's not what I studied CS for.
      - BrainInAJar 11y ago
        so you're saying you studied CS so that you can be better than people, not because it's a good & stimulating career. Remind me never to hire you.
        aianus 11y ago
        > so you're saying you studied CS so that you can be better than people That's pretty much why anyone does anything, don't be fooled into thinking otherwise. It's in our DNA.
        BrainInAJar 11y ago
        I'm sad for your view of the world.
lumberjack 11y ago
FYI, seniority isn't some form of union corruption or malice. It's a fundamental strategy employed to reduce workplace competition which is what gives unions the leverage they need against the employer. Without seniority, you get three problems: 1. The employer can again directly influence employee decisions by promoting those that side with them instead of with the union. So then in case of a strike, he'd say beforehand that he'll only consider a promotion for those who don't participate in the strike. 2. Junior union members do not really have a guarantee that it is worth the effort to join the union if they might end up still in entry level positions after X years. Seniority will affect them negatively in the first few years but then they will be guaranteed the same promotions. 3. Senior members would probably cause lots of issues within the union if they didn't get promoted before the young guys even if it was fair to promote the more skillful young. After all they participated in the union for longer at a significant cost and it's only due to their participation that the skillful young enjoy the workplace benefits they have. This might tear apart the union. Now if you look at this through the "I'm better than anyone else around me" sort of tinted glasses you'll never really get any of this and it's probably not for you. Unions are for people who want to minimize employment risk because they have lots of responsibilities and cannot afford to be highly motivated corporate career climbers.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  This is a good overview of why these methods are used. Unfortunately, a lot of people in engineering fields seem to assume that these particular tactics are the only way a union can be run. Usually, the reaction to the idea that engineers should really unionise is causes an immediately hostile reaction. A union is what you (the members) want it to be, and a union that only addressed certain topics[1] would probably stop some problems from happening at all. There's no reason to authorize a union to interfere with the more mundane problems unless you want those feature and design the union to have those powers. The key thing to remember - which the usual knee-jerk anti-union rhetoric ignores - is that problems start to grow when too much power accumulates in any one place. Neither labor or capital can be allowed to grow to powerful, as it is the conflict between them that keeps each side restrained. A few decades ago we saw the problems of labor getting too powerful, and before that the problems of capital (business owners) having too much power was obvious. Like any control system, you have to design feedback[2] into the control mechanisms. [1] Issues involving collusion like the recent wage-fixing agreement between Apple/Google/Intel/{...} or the "working recent grads to death" (13 hours/day, 7 days/week) that EA used to require. [2] If only we had a sociological version of a PID controller.
bildung 11y ago
> I would rather make less money than have part of my paycheck forcibly removed and given to politician-types so they can defend other losers' jobs against competition because they have 'seniority'. That argument is the reason why real wages in the US haven't grown in the last 40 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_wage#/media/File:US_Real_Wages_1964-2004.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_wage#/media/File:US_Real_...
bsder 11y ago
'seniority' is also there so that the company can't just fire you when you start getting expensive. I always love these discussions about "merit" when we have already seen that even tech companies don't give one iota of damn about labor anything beyond "cheap". See: H1-B visa.
- aianus 11y ago
  How do you accidentally 'start getting expensive'? Why are they giving you raises in the first place if they don't think you're worth the money? Edit: furthermore, why shouldn't you be fired if you're not performing to the level they expect at the price they're paying for you?