7 ms·

This reminds me of an article about unions in hollywood i read sometime ago. It wwnt somewhere along the lines of a guy talking to an actor on a set, and he bru

This reminds me of an article about unions in hollywood i read sometime ago. It wwnt somewhere along the lines of a guy talking to an actor on a set, and he brushes some dirt off the actor's shoulder. Later, he is approached by a women who asks him never to do that again because it was her union approved job to brush the casts clothing. union driven bureaucracy is known to have extreme consequences in the name of job security

jfoutz 10y ago
Movies are different. That could be a continuity problem. Actors are clean or dirty for a reason. 24, for example put a lot of effort into costume continuity. Shot over months, 10 copies of the same clothes, looking slightly worse as the day wears on.
intrasight 10y ago
For every anecdote one unearths about bad union work rules, I'm sure that you can find a hundred about a union successfully looking out for the interest of a member. Is best not to be distracted by anecdotes.
- Johnny555 10y ago
  Speaking of anecdotes, my best union anecdote was when I was working at a construction company as a seasonal general laborer. One day my job was to clean out some office trailers out in the back lot so they could haul them to a new site in a few days. To do this I needed a vacuum cleaner (which they had) and a generator to run it (which they also had). No problem, I said. Until I found out that the generator was so low on oil that it wouldn't start due to the low oil cutoff switch. The oil was black and needed to be changed. No problem again, I knew where the oil was, and I knew how to change it so I started to do just that. Until a union mechanic yelled at me and asked me what the H I was doing and that only a mechanic could do that job. I said "Ok, I'll just top it off so I can start it" ,and he said "Nope, you can't do that". I thought he was joking and kind of laughed until he called my boss over to explain it to me. The mechanics, of course, were busy, so wouldn't get a chance to change my oil until next week, so I told my boss that I wouldn't be able to do my job. He said he'd take care of it. And take care of it he did -- he said to go to the trailers and wait, and sure enough, a union driver showed up with a tractor trailer towed generator -- it must have been a 500KW generator, maybe larger. The union generator operator showed up soon after and started it up for me, and said he'd be back at quitting time to shut it down. So all day long a 500KW generator sucked down 10 (?) gallons of fuel per hour (not to mention the wear and tear on that huge generator and the cost of the driver and generator operator)... just so I could run a shop-vac. All because I wasn't allowed to put a few dollars of oil into a 5kw generator due to union rules. That is when I lost all respect for unions.
  - edejong 10y ago
    So, because of one incident you lost all respect for all union activities? That's like losing respect for all Chinese because one wasn't acting rationally.
    - pricechild 10y ago
      There are a dozen examples of similar incidents in this thread alone. I've not witnessed such an incident first hand, but as soon as I do I'll likely think "wow, they weren't kidding" and lose all respect for union activities from one incident.
      - bigtimeidiot 10y ago
        >There are a dozen examples of similar incidents in this thread alone By anonymous posters, most likely who have never actually worked a union job and are just repeating something they've read in threads like these. Yes, unions have dumb rules. Do you think those rules were developed before or after corporations dictated onerous policy? So who are the good guys?
    - Johnny555 10y ago
      That's not the only incident of inane situations due to blind adherence to union rules that I saw, just the most egregious. Even among union workers the rules were sometimes unpalatable like the strict seniority rules that make it impossible to hire the best person for the job since the most senior person gets his/her pick of new jobs -- they supported the rules only because they knew that one day they would be the senior one. I don't think "losing respect for all Chinese because one wasn't acting rationally" is a fair analogy, more like "losing respect for all Chinese because they not only follow arbitrary and counter-productive rules, but they actively support them and will fight to keep them"
- mseebach 10y ago
  So we should just accept a verifiable stupid state of affairs because there's probably a good thing on the flip side? Never mind that part of looking out for someone's interests could well be expected to include coming up with a way of doing so that doesn't require your members to behave in a verifiably stupid way? We usually call that "ideological blinkers".
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

jfoutz 10y ago

Movies are different. That could be a continuity problem. Actors are clean or dirty for a reason. 24, for example put a lot of effort into costume continuity. Shot over months, 10 copies of the same clothes, looking slightly worse as the day wears on.

intrasight 10y ago

For every anecdote one unearths about bad union work rules, I'm sure that you can find a hundred about a union successfully looking out for the interest of a member. Is best not to be distracted by anecdotes.

Johnny555 10y ago
Speaking of anecdotes, my best union anecdote was when I was working at a construction company as a seasonal general laborer. One day my job was to clean out some office trailers out in the back lot so they could haul them to a new site in a few days. To do this I needed a vacuum cleaner (which they had) and a generator to run it (which they also had). No problem, I said. Until I found out that the generator was so low on oil that it wouldn't start due to the low oil cutoff switch. The oil was black and needed to be changed. No problem again, I knew where the oil was, and I knew how to change it so I started to do just that. Until a union mechanic yelled at me and asked me what the H I was doing and that only a mechanic could do that job. I said "Ok, I'll just top it off so I can start it" ,and he said "Nope, you can't do that". I thought he was joking and kind of laughed until he called my boss over to explain it to me. The mechanics, of course, were busy, so wouldn't get a chance to change my oil until next week, so I told my boss that I wouldn't be able to do my job. He said he'd take care of it. And take care of it he did -- he said to go to the trailers and wait, and sure enough, a union driver showed up with a tractor trailer towed generator -- it must have been a 500KW generator, maybe larger. The union generator operator showed up soon after and started it up for me, and said he'd be back at quitting time to shut it down. So all day long a 500KW generator sucked down 10 (?) gallons of fuel per hour (not to mention the wear and tear on that huge generator and the cost of the driver and generator operator)... just so I could run a shop-vac. All because I wasn't allowed to put a few dollars of oil into a 5kw generator due to union rules. That is when I lost all respect for unions.
- edejong 10y ago
  So, because of one incident you lost all respect for all union activities? That's like losing respect for all Chinese because one wasn't acting rationally.
  - pricechild 10y ago
    There are a dozen examples of similar incidents in this thread alone. I've not witnessed such an incident first hand, but as soon as I do I'll likely think "wow, they weren't kidding" and lose all respect for union activities from one incident.
    - bigtimeidiot 10y ago
      >There are a dozen examples of similar incidents in this thread alone By anonymous posters, most likely who have never actually worked a union job and are just repeating something they've read in threads like these. Yes, unions have dumb rules. Do you think those rules were developed before or after corporations dictated onerous policy? So who are the good guys?
  - Johnny555 10y ago
    That's not the only incident of inane situations due to blind adherence to union rules that I saw, just the most egregious. Even among union workers the rules were sometimes unpalatable like the strict seniority rules that make it impossible to hire the best person for the job since the most senior person gets his/her pick of new jobs -- they supported the rules only because they knew that one day they would be the senior one. I don't think "losing respect for all Chinese because one wasn't acting rationally" is a fair analogy, more like "losing respect for all Chinese because they not only follow arbitrary and counter-productive rules, but they actively support them and will fight to keep them"
mseebach 10y ago
So we should just accept a verifiable stupid state of affairs because there's probably a good thing on the flip side? Never mind that part of looking out for someone's interests could well be expected to include coming up with a way of doing so that doesn't require your members to behave in a verifiably stupid way? We usually call that "ideological blinkers".

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]