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I've found most people who hate the idea of unions have never had any exposure to them. I've actually never been in a formal union but have used "collective bar

I've found most people who hate the idea of unions have never had any exposure to them. I've actually never been in a formal union but have used "collective bargaining" and even did union organizing and helped a couple of labor negotiation disputes because the unions benefit me as a non member. I think it's hilarious when people's only exposure to unions is textbooks or being put in charge of managing union employees and they scream bloody murder. Unions are fantastic and being eroded solely through lobbying efforts of billionaire Koch suckers.

hpcjoe 8y ago
My union stories. TL;DR definitely not fantastic. Quite the opposite. In grad school, early 90s, we were getting this brand new ethernet installed. Originally they were going to run thin-net, and decided instead to run UTP to the offices. As one of the major users of modems to dial into the university ISP, in order to run our code on supers, I was quite eager to get my connection. They prepped the wiring, and then scheduled us for a month or two out. The reason for this was that they needed one specific union person to cut the hole in the wall for this, and they were busy. Ok, this is just silly. So I asked, "hey, can I help out here? I know how to do this, and can do it in my advisors and my office." We were told that if I did a) they would charge us $3k USD (quite a lot to a poor grad student) PER HOLE, to fill it in. b) they would then charge us another $3k USD to cut a new hole. Because, union. I've got other stories when I was at SGI, and we were setting up systems at Ford ... we couldn't simply carry our computers ourselves ... oh no ... that was verboten. We would get written up, and disallowed back on campus. No, unions are not fantastic. They mostly evolve from being useful constructs to being rent seeking monopolies on labor, opposed to any measure that reduces their ability to seek/collect rent. In grade school, we had a teachers strike[1]. I remember being on a bus, being attacked. By teachers. Who yelled and screamed at us. They threw rocks at the windows. Cracked a few. Police were called, but none of them suffered consequences for their actions. Even though quite a number of us saw them do this, while the only crime we had committed were being small kids on a school bus. My experiences are not aberrations ... I've heard quite similar stories from many others, be they schools, or where ever they've encountered unions. I do have to point out that you are tipping your political beliefs with your last sentence. I've experienced first hand, the violence, and rent seeking behavior of these groups. The lakeland strike was written up in a book a few years ago. Longest and meanest strike in the country by teachers. It made for a fairly shitty 6th and beginning 7th grade for me. It is certainly your right to believe whatever you wish. Me, and many others, whom have suffered from the downsides to unions ... their rent seeking, their monopolization drive on labor ... are opposed in principle, without any goading on behalf of Koch or others. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/07/archives/430-teachers-strike-lakeland-schools-opening-due-today.html https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/07/archives/430-teachers-str...
- Frondo 8y ago
  it's a little difficult to extrapolate a broad picture of union benefits or costs from these anecdotes, just because one of them is, well, a kid's story from a lifetime ago...

hpcjoe 8y ago

My union stories. TL;DR definitely not fantastic. Quite the opposite. In grad school, early 90s, we were getting this brand new ethernet installed. Originally they were going to run thin-net, and decided instead to run UTP to the offices. As one of the major users of modems to dial into the university ISP, in order to run our code on supers, I was quite eager to get my connection. They prepped the wiring, and then scheduled us for a month or two out. The reason for this was that they needed one specific union person to cut the hole in the wall for this, and they were busy. Ok, this is just silly. So I asked, "hey, can I help out here? I know how to do this, and can do it in my advisors and my office." We were told that if I did a) they would charge us $3k USD (quite a lot to a poor grad student) PER HOLE, to fill it in. b) they would then charge us another $3k USD to cut a new hole. Because, union. I've got other stories when I was at SGI, and we were setting up systems at Ford ... we couldn't simply carry our computers ourselves ... oh no ... that was verboten. We would get written up, and disallowed back on campus. No, unions are not fantastic. They mostly evolve from being useful constructs to being rent seeking monopolies on labor, opposed to any measure that reduces their ability to seek/collect rent. In grade school, we had a teachers strike[1]. I remember being on a bus, being attacked. By teachers. Who yelled and screamed at us. They threw rocks at the windows. Cracked a few. Police were called, but none of them suffered consequences for their actions. Even though quite a number of us saw them do this, while the only crime we had committed were being small kids on a school bus. My experiences are not aberrations ... I've heard quite similar stories from many others, be they schools, or where ever they've encountered unions. I do have to point out that you are tipping your political beliefs with your last sentence. I've experienced first hand, the violence, and rent seeking behavior of these groups. The lakeland strike was written up in a book a few years ago. Longest and meanest strike in the country by teachers. It made for a fairly shitty 6th and beginning 7th grade for me. It is certainly your right to believe whatever you wish. Me, and many others, whom have suffered from the downsides to unions ... their rent seeking, their monopolization drive on labor ... are opposed in principle, without any goading on behalf of Koch or others. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/07/archives/430-teachers-strike-lakeland-schools-opening-due-today.html https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/07/archives/430-teachers-str...

Frondo 8y ago
it's a little difficult to extrapolate a broad picture of union benefits or costs from these anecdotes, just because one of them is, well, a kid's story from a lifetime ago...