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one of those times, you wish every working man knew what efforts are made into bursting unions. And then reflect internally, are unions bad for a company to put

• lnanek2 6y ago
  > once unions disappeared in america, the working man lost wages I've worked the same role in union shops and non-union before. Non-union paid more and had less deadbeat co-workers to navigate around. Depends on your profession and skills, honestly. Probably a benefit for amazon pick and drop workers. Really sucks at mixed union and non-union tech companies, though. At my current company programmers aren't even allowed to move our own computer between desks because only union people are allowed to do that, and getting the union people to do it will take over a week and be done at an inconvenient time interrupting work.
  • babelfish 6y ago
    At non-union shops it's not like you can move your desk wherever you want either, most offices without hot desks have a floor plan and an office manager who all seating changes go through. Don't blame the union for that.
    • bendbro 6y ago
      And this office is not an office with hot desks, and not every office even wants hot desks. The behavior of unions monopolizing a job type in a company is absolutely to blame.
    • BitwiseFool 6y ago
      I'm pretty sure the OP is talking about how the Union requires that the equipment transfer is only done by a union employee. And, you'd get fined if you did it yourself. I don't think they're talking about the process being complicated, but rather that the union forcefully inserts itself into the process.
      • asdff 6y ago
        I don't see that as an issue, I see that as a feature. What good is the union if a company can just remove union workers from the process in the name of "efficiency" or whatever metric increases profit at the expense of the employees? The other commenter complained it took a week to get a new desk. To me that's another great thing. That means the staff doing this sort of thing aren't over worked and have some agency to dictate their workload, and me as a worker would respect that system since I too benefit from this ability to collectively negotiate the terms of my job. Personally, I don't care if my company is running the most efficient operation, because usually that means overworking and underpaying your staff to do so.
        • 1123581321 6y ago
          The culture these policies create isn’t proactive and healthy. It’s hard to explain if you haven’t experienced it. It’s dismaying and demoralizing to see someone deliberately punt on their job for hours or days without trying to hide it, just because they can. It makes you want to work somewhere else before you turn into them.
          • asdff 6y ago
            I've seen that behavior all the time in my work experience and I've never been in a union job. There are shitty, frusterating, lazy workers in every job at every level, from entry level to the C level, and plenty of them find a way to not get fired and keep skirting by. I don't think saying workers can be lazy in a union is a very compelling argument, especially considering the collective negotiating ability the union gives you that will just be gone if everyone was left to negotiate with management themselves. I've set to see an argument against a union that couldn't simply be pointed to a non union workplace just as well.
            • 1123581321 6y ago
              Yes, I don’t think there is any argument you cannot simply assert against to the negative or nullify with the same argument against other kinds of organizations on the Internet.
  • cblackthornekc 6y ago
    > At my current company programmers aren't even allowed to move our own computer between desks because only union people are allowed to do that This is also likely an insurance limitation as well. Where I work most employees are insured for basic injuries on site. Only those required to move equipment have the add on that they might move equipment weighing 50 lbs or more. So if I move a desk that weighs 51 pounds and throw out my back, getting work to pay for it might be difficult because I should have gotten facilities to do it as they have the heavy weight add on.
    • bluGill 6y ago
      The network cable I want to plug into a open jack doesn't weight 50lbs though. I've worked in places where I need a union electrician to do that task though. Fortunately the union was cool in that location and just ignored my crawling under my desk, I'm told in other offices they were a lot more strict.
      • cblackthornekc 6y ago
        I work in a secure facility, when not WFH due to the pandemic. Each jack is numbered, and my computer is tied to that number. If I plug into another jack, I won't connect. I have to get IT to move it for me because it requires them to make some changes to switches. We're not union, but have the same rules. It feels like you're trying to blame the union for pretty standard practices at established companies.
        • labawi 6y ago
          Does an electrician configure switches at your facility? I think this was a case where no reconfiguration was involved.
    • lukewrites 6y ago
      I work in a non-union office and we also have the same policy. I don’t think this reflects it all upon unions.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• jstanley 6y ago
  > are unions bad for a company to put in such an effort to keep their works unorganized. It's completely plausible that unions are bad for both employers and employees.
  • simion314 6y ago
    Only a good union example will invalidate your argument, maybe check history and find such a good example then attempt to reformulate some valid hypothesis or try something not that easy to disprove. While you try to find some bad example of unions and show us how they ruined some companies consider that I will respond with similar examples where the CEO and the board did even worse stuff - so maybe we skip the examples comments and we can conclude that there can be bad unions and bad CEOs (or board/whatever), the main difference is that one group controls a lot of money and can create a lot of PR to present the other group as evil.
    • laurent92 6y ago
      > check history Classic. But historically, advances in wages and advantages tightly follow the economic curve: Employers increase wages when skills and economic development gets better. Not correlated with unionization, even when the union is here when the paper is signed and brandish it as a success (looking at you, Congé Payés in France in 1936, many companies were already doing it when the union gathered with the bosses to say “We do it”).
      • simion314 6y ago
        I think you were manipulated with some examples, so let me know such example that you are thinking of, also try to fit your view with my examples: "miners union demand pay on time and safer conditions", "actors union demand safety", "teacher union demands a raise equal with inflation" . Your view is that this groups should wait until the free market will solve their issue? Many people here are comparing their programming job with someone that works an unskilled low paying job, this people can't individually demand things like "hey, put it in my contract that you will allow me 2 minutes toilet breaks, not 1 like the others, I am a 10X worker see my CV on GitHub"