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I've been in a union before. The work ethic wasn't good. They had seminars on how to work less and push back against complaints. They directed the members to
by edoo 8y ago
I've been in a union before. The work ethic wasn't good. They had seminars on how to work less and push back against complaints. They directed the members to engage in behavior that was best for the union while bad for the workers and the company. The union itself is a big business, what would they think of unionizing the union? Unions allow substandard work for equal pay. That tends to hold back the major opportunities for individual success.
- circa 8y agoThis has been my experience too. I think they were good a long time ago when jobs needed to be created but there is not much use for them now.
- 49531 8y ago> what would they think of unionizing the union Unions in the US are democratic institutions, so if there is a problem with your union you can change things.
- rexpop 8y agoTo be fair, some are more democratic than others. However, because the private firm is not legally, or practically democratic at all, it makes sense for those who love democracy (and themselves) to unionize, yes.
- jiveturkey 8y agolol. i guess you've never actually been in a union.
- 49531 8y agoI've been in, am currently in, and have been involved in unionizing workplaces. Companies are extremely motivated to undermine unions. Unions tend to get stale as they age and lose their militancy. That's why wildcat action is so common. It sucks but even a workplace with a stale union is better off than one without collective bargaining. The hardest part of organizing, like so many things, is going from 0 to 1. Once you've got a union you have a lot more power. Thinking you don't is what the company wants you to think.
- danShumway 8y agoThere are multiple democratic institutions I belong to where I don't generally feel like I have the power to change things. Democracy is great, don't get me wrong. But it doesn't magically mean that representation for your specific subgroup will exist. If you're part of a demographic with 10-15% representation in your union, is it really a crazy idea that your demographic might want to pool its votes together to ensure that you have more collective influence in a process that might otherwise ignore you? Collective, coordinated negotiation being more effective than individual negotiation is the entire point of unions. It's just not clear to me why those principles would stop applying within a union itself.
- 49531 8y agoTo be honest those principles shouldn't stop within the union. But that is really the challenge for every movement with similar goals. The maoist idea of "continuous revolution" tries to address this problem.
- bargl 8y agoI think this means we need to re-think how unions work. It should be used to create fair workplaces. My concern with the anti-union rhetoric in the USA is that we then turn to the government to protect workers. I think it's a lot better to have a union vs government as long as that union isn't protected from competition like they are today. If we can introduce competition into unions then they might better serve the workers and the company.
- edoo 8y agoHaving competing unions is an interesting concept. It may be a hard sell because technically the primary legal ability of a union is prevent competition among the workers. If you are a rock star you can't get hired at a greater wage. If you are a nepotism cling on you can't get fired or demoted.
- jononor 8y agoIn Norway, each employee freely chooses their union. It is common in some industries that people belong to several different unions, and that some are not part of union. And usually they are based on particular profession, like engineering or economics. Unions then have more a passive role, offering services like free legal representation, better insurance deals, and training. Only some areas like teachers seem to have near-homogeneous membership and unions taking an active role. And this seems mostly to be because 90% have the same employeer - the state (public education). Because of standardized working terms (incl salary), they have to be negotiated centrally.
- criddell 8y agoWhy does there have to be standard working terms? In the US professional baseball, hockey, and football have player unions and things like salary are negotiated per person.
- SimonPStevens 8y agoThey aren't standard working terms because of the unions. They are standard working terms because all teachers (who work in state schools at least) are employed by the local education authorities, who in turn set their working terms and salaries based on the government's department for education. So for teachers there is no individual salary negotiation, it's all decided centrally by the government and you either take it, or move to the private schools of which there are a lot less. (This is UK for me, but based on what op said, I think it's similar)
- itstriz 8y ago> what would they think of unionizing the union? I've worked for several unions and, at least in my experience, most union staff actually are unionized.
- fastball 8y agoThe issue is that the priorities of the unionized union staff are not aligned with the priorities of the unionized workers.
- eigenvalue 8y agoSpeaking of unionizing the union, see this recent piece in the WSJ about that-- turns out, they don't seem to like their own employees organizing either! https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-unions-exploiting-their-employees-11552951206?shareToken=ste639b70a26a44ec7964c9cb4865e9b7e https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-unions-exploiting-their-emp...
- erobbins 8y agoSo? Companies have seminars for upper management on how to squeeze workers harder and try to retaliate against complainers. Seems fair to do the opposite.
- Trufa 8y agoTwo wrongs don't make fair.
- pessimizer 8y agoIf you think that trying to make more money for less work, or to get more service for less cost, is wrong, then you think capitalism is wrong.
- leereeves 8y agoThat's fine, but doing so while forbidding hiring anyone to replace you is wrong. The whole point of unions is to obtain and abuse a monopoly on the supply of labor. That's obviously bad for employers, but it's also bad for other employees who aren't in the union, and for anyone who wants success to be based on talent and hard work instead of politics.
- megy 8y ago> They had seminars on how to work less and push back against complaints. Work less? Or work 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week? There are plenty of examples out there of people who think that is the bare minimum. > They directed the members to engage in behavior that was best for the union while bad for the workers and the company. Of course, that is what a strike is, but a necessary evil.
- crumpets 8y ago>Work less? Or work 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week? There are plenty of examples out there of people who think that is the bare minimum. Work less. There is no point in trying to put out anymore output than the bare minimum required if that's both the agreement between the union and the employee (promotions based on tenure) and between the union and the company (agreements on what minimum deliverables employees will deliver). >Of course, that is what a strike is, but a necessary evil. It's more than a strike. Continuing what I wrote above, unions will introduce obvious inefficiencies in order to support red tape processes rather than focusing on what the company is trying to accomplish. (e.g. no code can be committed without a review by two other clocked in union members while being backed by a ticket groomed by a clocked in agilist and released by two clocked-in SRE folks).
- Aeolun 8y agoAt this point the union becomes useless, since any competent developer won’t be part of it.
- moocowtruck 8y agoI work in an org with a developer union; I can tell you I was asked to join a few times and every time said no.. it is sooooo incredibly bad i just cant imagine how a union would be good for IT. I have so much to say but don't know where to begin or how to even write it all..
- rbg246 8y agoI think it's one of the big myths of working in a private company that somehow it's super-efficient, that there are major opportunities for success by default. I've worked at plenty of companies which had huge inefficiencies (meetings 6hrs a day, forty approvals to get anything done etc etc), which held back individual success and were generally not meritocracies. I think you find that all organisations with many humans involved all have inefficiencies but the media seems to love painting unions as the inefficient ones. I'm a member of union (Australia) as a web developer, it doesn't interfere with my day to day working, negotiations or my work ethic but it's like having a backup lawyer in case there are problems with the workplace and I need some advice.
- mnm1 8y agoYou think the work ethic is different elsewhere when employers treat their employees like shit in 99% of companies? There might not be seminars, but each worker figures out how to put in the minimum amount of effort on their own while looking like they are working hard. Why would they do anything else when most companies do not offer raises, promotions, merit-based bonuses, career advancement, decent vacation, or anything at all to incentivize their employees to perform at anything but the most minimal level? Employees who work harder are fools and idiots who burn themselves out for a company that doesn't give a fuck about them and will happily replace them like any machine part when they're too sick to work anymore. Appearances can be deceiving. Out of over a dozen companies I've worked for, I've never once seen anything different. This is what US employers incentivize and that is what they get, to the detriment of everyone.
- toomanybeersies 8y agoThe way I see it, companies and unions work in a sort of adversarial relationship that should in theory work in the favour of the employee. Of course, like any kind of organisation, whether it's a company, a business, a charity, a religion, or a political party, people will attempt to score themselves the best position and also improve the position of the organisation. This isn't a unique problem with unions, but with any kind of organisation, it's all money and power at the end of the day.
- michaelmrose 8y agoIt seems like you are presenting the flaws of a union as the flaws of all unions. Why should we take this as the general case instead of merely an anecdote.
- pmoriarty 8y ago"They had seminars on how to work less and push back against complaints." The US has such a workaholic culture, with lack of sleep and lack of life outside of work being endemic. Less work is a good thing!
- drb91 8y agoTo be fair, working less is exactly in the interest of the employee. It's much better than the scenario of "40 hours a week on paper but in reality it's whatever the employer needs" that is prevalent in the US.