4 ms·

You do best when your colleagues do the best, for sure. Do you think the union is going to help or hurt when you have underperforming or disruptive colleagues?

munk-a 8y ago
I think these two questions can be separated Regarding disruptive employees: Why would a union restrict a company's ability to fire disruptive employees? (excepting the corrupted union that has irrational favorites) Regarding under-performing employees: Are you talking about the person who is just a bit slower than others or the person who's lack of aptitude causes other employees to lose unreasonable amounts of time to assisting that employee? I'd count the second type in the same class as being disruptive. Also, at your current workplace is everyone equal in terms salary when when normalized by performance? Is it a problem if you're a bit more efficient than a co-worker and earning the same salary as them?
pavlov 8y ago
Will the union help or hurt when you have colleagues being treated unfairly by management?
iscrewyou 8y ago
Union will help. Unions usually have probationary times before they start representing a new employee. For a year of probationary time, it's plenty to know if the employee is a good fit. If not, the employee can be let go and doesn't get the help of the union. And union is by the employees, for the employees. If the person is truly disruptive and slipped through the 1 year mark, unions don't just back you up regardless.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  In my second hand experience (friends and family, IBEW and automotive workers) this is not at all the case. Admittedly, second hand information and only two locals, but the amount of incompetence and ineptitude that they tell me about is astounding.
  - iscrewyou 8y ago
    I think the problem gets out of hand when the represented employees become too large. If you have a nationalized union for many types of professions all under one umbrella, I can see your issue. There are those cases today as we speak. But if you have a focused union for a specific profession in a specific region, it can be easily managed and be a representative. For example, a national union of software engineers would not be a great idea. (Even with local branches) Too many factors to consider to come to agreement. I guess a lot more sacrifice on the employees part nationally when mou negotiations are happening. But if you have a California union for software engineers who are in a media industry, you have really focused the goals to a set of people. They can negotiate by looking at a union formed by google employees. Same thing with google. Vice versa, Just a union for google employees. They negotiate on their own or look at the benefits of a union provided by, say, Facebook.
AimForTheBushes 8y ago
From my anecdotal experience working 2 months in construction one summer.. there is nothing you or management can do about a toxic coworker.
geofft 8y ago
There's a wide spectrum in "a union" just like in "management". I've had good management and bad management. There are good unions and bad unions. So, a priori, I don't have an expectation of whether "the union" - some arbitrarily picked union - will definitely help or hurt, any more than I have an expectation that arbitrary "management" will definitely help or hurt. But there are a few things: - Just like I evaluate management when finding a new job (in my most recent job hunt I quite explicitly asked my interviewers what they thought about their management and how they thought it differed from other places they've worked, and hearing poor answers from one famous company was a reason I turned them down), I can evaluate the union when finding a new job. If I don't think the union will force management to deal with brilliant assholes, or properly equip people for success who have aptitude but the wrong background, or acknowledge that poor management is the reason certain of my colleagues are underperforming, I won't join the company. - I have much more of a democratic voice in my union's priorities than my management's priorities. - Management often prioritizes their own needs as individual employees, and is willing to overlook failures or mistakes if it's in the interest of their own career paths. It's hard to crack down on people failing up into management if you yourself are a manager because you failed up.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  > I have much more of a democratic voice in my union's priorities than my management's priorities. In my experience, the best ideas compete easily to change management priorities. I prefer that system over a straight democracy for changing management priorities.
  - geofft 8y ago
    "The best ideas" is a pretty unclear phrase. The ideas that make the individual lives of managers the best will win. That's usually strongly correlated with profit for the company (on purpose, using mechanisms like stock grants). Depending on how things are structured, it may or may not be correlated with long-term profit for the company. And it's very likely to be poorly correlated with long-term happiness of workers. As a worker, an idea that increases my long-term happiness is "better" than one that increases the company's profitability. But that same idea is unlikely to appear "best" from management's point of view. You can quantify the cost to the company (and thus to the personal payout of management) from giving all workers a raise of X% or an office with a door instead instead of an open-plan desk or increased PTO or whatever, and it's harder to quantify the benefit to profitability. But in the end, the "best" ideas in the sense of the most profitable ones will still win, because companies with truly bad ideas from populism (e.g., "empty the company's cash reserves into end-of-year bonuses") will just not survive. Unions don't change the fact that companies themselves participate in a market. And if you prefer that system, you and others who agree with you can absolutely participate in the market too and compete as part of your own business. You can choose not to join unionized companies. But I don't prefer that system. That's all.

munk-a 8y ago

I think these two questions can be separated Regarding disruptive employees: Why would a union restrict a company's ability to fire disruptive employees? (excepting the corrupted union that has irrational favorites) Regarding under-performing employees: Are you talking about the person who is just a bit slower than others or the person who's lack of aptitude causes other employees to lose unreasonable amounts of time to assisting that employee? I'd count the second type in the same class as being disruptive. Also, at your current workplace is everyone equal in terms salary when when normalized by performance? Is it a problem if you're a bit more efficient than a co-worker and earning the same salary as them?

pavlov 8y ago

Will the union help or hurt when you have colleagues being treated unfairly by management?

iscrewyou 8y ago

Union will help. Unions usually have probationary times before they start representing a new employee. For a year of probationary time, it's plenty to know if the employee is a good fit. If not, the employee can be let go and doesn't get the help of the union. And union is by the employees, for the employees. If the person is truly disruptive and slipped through the 1 year mark, unions don't just back you up regardless.

EpicEng 8y ago
In my second hand experience (friends and family, IBEW and automotive workers) this is not at all the case. Admittedly, second hand information and only two locals, but the amount of incompetence and ineptitude that they tell me about is astounding.
- iscrewyou 8y ago
  I think the problem gets out of hand when the represented employees become too large. If you have a nationalized union for many types of professions all under one umbrella, I can see your issue. There are those cases today as we speak. But if you have a focused union for a specific profession in a specific region, it can be easily managed and be a representative. For example, a national union of software engineers would not be a great idea. (Even with local branches) Too many factors to consider to come to agreement. I guess a lot more sacrifice on the employees part nationally when mou negotiations are happening. But if you have a California union for software engineers who are in a media industry, you have really focused the goals to a set of people. They can negotiate by looking at a union formed by google employees. Same thing with google. Vice versa, Just a union for google employees. They negotiate on their own or look at the benefits of a union provided by, say, Facebook.

AimForTheBushes 8y ago

From my anecdotal experience working 2 months in construction one summer.. there is nothing you or management can do about a toxic coworker.

geofft 8y ago

There's a wide spectrum in "a union" just like in "management". I've had good management and bad management. There are good unions and bad unions. So, a priori, I don't have an expectation of whether "the union" - some arbitrarily picked union - will definitely help or hurt, any more than I have an expectation that arbitrary "management" will definitely help or hurt. But there are a few things: - Just like I evaluate management when finding a new job (in my most recent job hunt I quite explicitly asked my interviewers what they thought about their management and how they thought it differed from other places they've worked, and hearing poor answers from one famous company was a reason I turned them down), I can evaluate the union when finding a new job. If I don't think the union will force management to deal with brilliant assholes, or properly equip people for success who have aptitude but the wrong background, or acknowledge that poor management is the reason certain of my colleagues are underperforming, I won't join the company. - I have much more of a democratic voice in my union's priorities than my management's priorities. - Management often prioritizes their own needs as individual employees, and is willing to overlook failures or mistakes if it's in the interest of their own career paths. It's hard to crack down on people failing up into management if you yourself are a manager because you failed up.

sokoloff 8y ago
> I have much more of a democratic voice in my union's priorities than my management's priorities. In my experience, the best ideas compete easily to change management priorities. I prefer that system over a straight democracy for changing management priorities.
- geofft 8y ago
  "The best ideas" is a pretty unclear phrase. The ideas that make the individual lives of managers the best will win. That's usually strongly correlated with profit for the company (on purpose, using mechanisms like stock grants). Depending on how things are structured, it may or may not be correlated with long-term profit for the company. And it's very likely to be poorly correlated with long-term happiness of workers. As a worker, an idea that increases my long-term happiness is "better" than one that increases the company's profitability. But that same idea is unlikely to appear "best" from management's point of view. You can quantify the cost to the company (and thus to the personal payout of management) from giving all workers a raise of X% or an office with a door instead instead of an open-plan desk or increased PTO or whatever, and it's harder to quantify the benefit to profitability. But in the end, the "best" ideas in the sense of the most profitable ones will still win, because companies with truly bad ideas from populism (e.g., "empty the company's cash reserves into end-of-year bonuses") will just not survive. Unions don't change the fact that companies themselves participate in a market. And if you prefer that system, you and others who agree with you can absolutely participate in the market too and compete as part of your own business. You can choose not to join unionized companies. But I don't prefer that system. That's all.