6 ms·

Can you elaborate? Because for me, working in scandinavia, unions looked quite useful and reasonable.

aborsy 6y ago
I had this naive image in mind that unions are labor activists mobilizing against exploitative corporate practices. What I witnessed opened my eyes to the realities on ground, that seemed like almost opposite. As usual, life is more complicated! * The objective of trade unions is not to protect workers and improve their conditions (at least directly). It’s to protect themselves. * In every organization, there exists people with diverse attributes: capabilities, attitudes towards work/life, etc. There are always people who don’t want to or can’t work; and guess what they do? They join unions to protect themselves. Over time union center became international house of suckers and weirdos, each worse than the other. * In an effort to protect themselves, unions politicized the work environment. They put themselves everywhere in key committees, including a union committee having last word on hirings and firings. That made them unfirable. They exploited the coronavirus situation, to blame employers and opponents. A scientific project can become a playground for union politics. I believe in climate change, but not in politicizing it. They seize every opportunity to attack employers and those not aligned with them. The goal is to use any chance to perpetuate an image that they protect people. * Union will plot against any excellence in organization. To minimize contrast, they work hard to fail good people and projects around, or portray them as worker-abusers (ie, the reason that they succeed is because they abuse people). * Unions will fiercely defend status quo and do not allow any constructive reform. The area of specialty that they advertised for themselves was an ancient technology from 1980s (and even that they wouldn’t do it). Every time people suggested to reform the department activities, they refused the proposals. You may not believe it, but department told them, OK, you can keep doing your own activities, we don’t reform them, but other people can start projects in orthogonal directions not related to yours. They still refused (they didn’t want competition) and basically forced everyone to work on their ancient advertised area of activity. * Union engaged in all sorts of abusive practices. It was disgusting to see a lot of them rarely showed up at work (which was strange considering that they put themselves in various committees). I asked a department manager (“responsable”) how come this or that guy shows up at work only few times a year. He said, if you are a known member of union you can do that, and this is an issue in France. They yell, and bully people, create a toxic environment for others, repel and fire those not blending in etc, * Union members felt very entitled and justified their actions by making themselves believe a skewed view of the world. They felt that they are entitled to a life even with ZERO work, and world owes to them. * Unions will be perpetually on strike. What makes you think they will be happy with a laid back 9-5 job with decent pay and great benefits? Even with no work, they still go on strikes. They take tax money from society with little contribution, and make your commute and life periodically miserable. * Unions are especially problematic in public sector, where incentives are aligned with cronyism not meritocracy. A lot of people are hired who lack abilities to perform the work in question. They form large powerful unions. Don’t get me wrong. There might be a place for “traditional” textbook unions. But I don’t know if it ever works in practice. My experience was negative and counterintuitive.
- JBSmoove 6y ago
  Germany's workforce in automotive and many other industries is HIGHLY unionized. I've never heard of these people being lazy, not wanting to work etc. In fact German engineering is the envy of the world! VW, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche all German engineered and manufactured by heavily unionized workforces! Sounds like your anecdotal bad experience with unions is not representative of reality. And FWIW I can list you just as many terrible anecdotes about how awful business managers are...
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    >VW, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche all German engineered and manufactured by heavily unionized workforces! Sure, but for each of those there are 10-100 other smaller companies in automotive or other industries that don't have unions, and some German companies have stirred up quite a few scandals of not following the employment laws or abusing their workforce, which coincidentally was mostly immigrants. Cherry picking the big, wealthy car brands to represent the manufacturing industry is like cherry picking FAANG for representing the software dev industry.
    - jbroson 6y ago
      SO OP gets to claim based on his anecdotal experience that unions are awful and full of lazy people. But pointing out there are wildly successful unions filled with hardworking people is "cherry picking"?
      - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
        I didn't say unions are not successful, I said that workplaces like VW or Porsche are not the norm in Germany. They're like Germany's FAANG; very successful, but not the norm for every industry employee there since they don't all enjoy such good conditions.
        the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
        I have yet to hear people in Europe being upset that they are unionized.

I had this naive image in mind that unions are labor activists mobilizing against exploitative corporate practices. What I witnessed opened my eyes to the realities on ground, that seemed like almost opposite. As usual, life is more complicated! * The objective of trade unions is not to protect workers and improve their conditions (at least directly). It’s to protect themselves. * In every organization, there exists people with diverse attributes: capabilities, attitudes towards work/life, etc. There are always people who don’t want to or can’t work; and guess what they do? They join unions to protect themselves. Over time union center became international house of suckers and weirdos, each worse than the other. * In an effort to protect themselves, unions politicized the work environment. They put themselves everywhere in key committees, including a union committee having last word on hirings and firings. That made them unfirable. They exploited the coronavirus situation, to blame employers and opponents. A scientific project can become a playground for union politics. I believe in climate change, but not in politicizing it. They seize every opportunity to attack employers and those not aligned with them. The goal is to use any chance to perpetuate an image that they protect people. * Union will plot against any excellence in organization. To minimize contrast, they work hard to fail good people and projects around, or portray them as worker-abusers (ie, the reason that they succeed is because they abuse people). * Unions will fiercely defend status quo and do not allow any constructive reform. The area of specialty that they advertised for themselves was an ancient technology from 1980s (and even that they wouldn’t do it). Every time people suggested to reform the department activities, they refused the proposals. You may not believe it, but department told them, OK, you can keep doing your own activities, we don’t reform them, but other people can start projects in orthogonal directions not related to yours. They still refused (they didn’t want competition) and basically forced everyone to work on their ancient advertised area of activity. * Union engaged in all sorts of abusive practices. It was disgusting to see a lot of them rarely showed up at work (which was strange considering that they put themselves in various committees). I asked a department manager (“responsable”) how come this or that guy shows up at work only few times a year. He said, if you are a known member of union you can do that, and this is an issue in France. They yell, and bully people, create a toxic environment for others, repel and fire those not blending in etc, * Union members felt very entitled and justified their actions by making themselves believe a skewed view of the world. They felt that they are entitled to a life even with ZERO work, and world owes to them. * Unions will be perpetually on strike. What makes you think they will be happy with a laid back 9-5 job with decent pay and great benefits? Even with no work, they still go on strikes. They take tax money from society with little contribution, and make your commute and life periodically miserable. * Unions are especially problematic in public sector, where incentives are aligned with cronyism not meritocracy. A lot of people are hired who lack abilities to perform the work in question. They form large powerful unions. Don’t get me wrong. There might be a place for “traditional” textbook unions. But I don’t know if it ever works in practice. My experience was negative and counterintuitive.

JBSmoove 6y ago
Germany's workforce in automotive and many other industries is HIGHLY unionized. I've never heard of these people being lazy, not wanting to work etc. In fact German engineering is the envy of the world! VW, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche all German engineered and manufactured by heavily unionized workforces! Sounds like your anecdotal bad experience with unions is not representative of reality. And FWIW I can list you just as many terrible anecdotes about how awful business managers are...
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  >VW, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche all German engineered and manufactured by heavily unionized workforces! Sure, but for each of those there are 10-100 other smaller companies in automotive or other industries that don't have unions, and some German companies have stirred up quite a few scandals of not following the employment laws or abusing their workforce, which coincidentally was mostly immigrants. Cherry picking the big, wealthy car brands to represent the manufacturing industry is like cherry picking FAANG for representing the software dev industry.
  - jbroson 6y ago
    SO OP gets to claim based on his anecdotal experience that unions are awful and full of lazy people. But pointing out there are wildly successful unions filled with hardworking people is "cherry picking"?
    - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
      I didn't say unions are not successful, I said that workplaces like VW or Porsche are not the norm in Germany. They're like Germany's FAANG; very successful, but not the norm for every industry employee there since they don't all enjoy such good conditions.
      - the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
        I have yet to hear people in Europe being upset that they are unionized.