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Seems like unions benefit just the insiders and seniors. One reason why I am skeptical when people say unions built the middle class. Employer competition proba

Seems like unions benefit just the insiders and seniors. One reason why I am skeptical when people say unions built the middle class. Employer competition probably does more for that than unions.

Spooky23 10y ago
Only when the management's time horizon is short. It probably would have been prudent to do a long term ROI on those layoffs. Slashing the executive bonus pool may have reduced those layoffs significantly and saved the company far more down the line.
bsder 10y ago
If a company has a bimodal age distribution, the question to be asking is "Why didn't they think about hiring someone occasionally over the last 15-20 years?" Of course, the answer is that no corporate manager wanted to miss his number by hiring another person. So, the managers kicked the problem down the road and hoped that someone else would take the hit. > Seems like unions benefit just the insiders and seniors. Everybody gets old, you know. Unions implemented this policy because companies were wiping out older workers because they were more expensive in terms of wage and healthcare. > Employer competition probably does more for that than unions. Agreed. But the same anti-union people are also against anti-monopoly regulations.
- Godel_unicode 10y ago
  > Unions implemented this policy because companies were wiping out older workers because they were more expensive in terms of wage and healthcare. This is essentially what GP is saying. Unions kept the expensive older worker at the expense of firing the younger workers. If the workers they keep are more expensive, then they have to fire proportionally more younger workers to make it up.
Terr_ 10y ago
Well, suppose for a moment the position or job really was "dying", though. (Which is hard to predict accurately, but everybody gets pessimistic in times of huge layoffs.) Arguably the older workers are the more-vulnerable section, since they have fewer opportunities (and lifetime) to re-train.

Seems like unions benefit just the insiders and seniors. One reason why I am skeptical when people say unions built the middle class. Employer competition probably does more for that than unions.

Spooky23 10y ago

Only when the management's time horizon is short. It probably would have been prudent to do a long term ROI on those layoffs. Slashing the executive bonus pool may have reduced those layoffs significantly and saved the company far more down the line.

bsder 10y ago

If a company has a bimodal age distribution, the question to be asking is "Why didn't they think about hiring someone occasionally over the last 15-20 years?" Of course, the answer is that no corporate manager wanted to miss his number by hiring another person. So, the managers kicked the problem down the road and hoped that someone else would take the hit. > Seems like unions benefit just the insiders and seniors. Everybody gets old, you know. Unions implemented this policy because companies were wiping out older workers because they were more expensive in terms of wage and healthcare. > Employer competition probably does more for that than unions. Agreed. But the same anti-union people are also against anti-monopoly regulations.

Godel_unicode 10y ago
> Unions implemented this policy because companies were wiping out older workers because they were more expensive in terms of wage and healthcare. This is essentially what GP is saying. Unions kept the expensive older worker at the expense of firing the younger workers. If the workers they keep are more expensive, then they have to fire proportionally more younger workers to make it up.

Terr_ 10y ago

Well, suppose for a moment the position or job really was "dying", though. (Which is hard to predict accurately, but everybody gets pessimistic in times of huge layoffs.) Arguably the older workers are the more-vulnerable section, since they have fewer opportunities (and lifetime) to re-train.