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This is also my experience dealing with unions. Management is legally required to make concessions during collective bargaining, so anything that can be consid

• Retric 4y ago
  That sounds like a win for the union and it’s members. Union members would presumably much rather pocket the money than have it go to standing desks. Sacrificing stuff they don’t want in a negotiation is negotiation 101.
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• saiya-jin 4y ago
  About the same reasons I never joined ones, when I had the option (which lets be honest in IT is not that often). Great ideas on paper, properly poor execution that ends up in entrenched folks, power games and politics
  • lovich 4y ago
    As opposed to the entrenched folks, power games, and politics that exist currently? Those don’t appear because a union is formed, you just have less of a say at the bargaining table without one Edit:removed an extra “don’t”
    • klondike_klive 4y ago
      Forgive me, I'm struggling to parse that triple negative! Can I flip that to be "you have more of a say with one"? Or am I getting it wrong?
      • lovich 4y ago
        Fault was mine, had an extra “don’t” that made it a triple, rather than the intended double, negative. Your interpretation of that last sentence was correct
  • cma 4y ago
    The ownership side is in a union whether employees are or not, with their own dollar-weighted democracy, legalized collusion between owners (say two restaraunts agree with each other to lower wages, that's illegal; say they both merge and become shareholders: a coordinated wage decrease across both restaraunts with the same two owners involved is now considered done by one entity).
    • djbebs 4y ago
      There is nothing wrong with collusion, whether its from employees, or employers. The state should stay out of it, and the laws forcing negotiations, or giving either the company or the employees protections should not exist. If employees want to get together in a union and negotiate collectively, that's their right and they should not be legally barred from doing so. If companies want to fire the employees who do so, and not deal with a union in any way, that too is their right and they should not be legally barred from doing so. The primary purpose of labor laws should be to establish the expectations in the absence of an article in the contract establishing those expectations (ie: if the contract doesn't mention which safety procedures are to be followed in the steel foundry, the thing that's in the law prevails. If the contract outlines other procedures, then the contract prevails). A secondary purpose of the labor law is to enforce the contract. (Ie: if an employee doesn't get paid for hours worked, the courts should be therefore to enforce the payment) Anything else the state should stay out of.
      • lovich 4y ago
        That sounds like a quick path to having people sell them into slavery the first time the economy goes south and people get desperate
        • redeeman 4y ago
          why is it only people that get desperate? why doesnt the companies, in these scenarios? why do we always assume its the "slave-minded plebs" that blinks first? if companies really are so greedy, surely they could see the benefit in paying more than they would prefer(which would naturally always be 0), and get to earn decent, rather than employees saying "too bad, wont work" and they get to earn nothing? this kind of thing strikes me as very elitist, how can someone listening to the argument interpret it as anything other than "those regular working joes are so stupid they will just offer themselves up as slaves the second a company talks sternly or the price of food increases!!!!" ? is it really that much to expect, that people individually take some responsibility, say no to conditions that are, by THEIR judgement, poor, and save up a decent enough buffer that they wont have to say "well it was a good run, im a slave now" the instant a company might not immediately cave to a demand or meet at a reasonable spot?
  • thesuitonym 4y ago
    The moral of the story here is that HR tried to withold something they were already planning on doing to avoid paying employees more, and you think the answer is to just accept whatever management wants?
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• butterNaN 4y ago
  So the HR would rather impose authority than make workers' lives easier?
  • collegeburner 4y ago
    no, the point is maybe the union wants a 9% raise. if you put new desks in you now pay a 9% raise and new desks. if you keep it for bargaining then maybe you pay an 8% raise and include some other benefits like new desks.
    • sitkack 4y ago
      Why should employees pay for desks? Sounds like a strategy to make the work environment suck so that people are willing to spend their own money on work supplies, traditional corporate welfare. Which reminds me, all those jobs I brought my own monitors … I should have just resigned.
      • datavirtue 4y ago
        This is all easily answered and resolved by paying equity. Then we can dispense with this silly back-and-forth. Right now it's like a toddler trying to get other toddlers to work for them while they try to grub all the profit. Make the profit spread over all stakeholders...no more arguments and we can all continue on, making money.
        • buck4roo 4y ago
          Close. It's not about pay equity, it's about a small minority (employers/directors/shareholders) currently deciding what happens with the profits made from the labor of all the WORKERS. (And about that same small minority also deciding whether to burden society with a newly unemployed person by firing any worker.) Those decisions should instead be made by the workers, democratically, in the same manner we pretend to glorify for civil society's governance: one person one vote. This is how worker-owned co-op's operate.
• bwestergard 4y ago
  "This is also my experience dealing with unions." I'm sorry this happened to you. But this sounds like your experience dealing with a low-road employer, not with "unions". If you don't mind me asking, which union were you and your coworkers affiliated with? "In one case, management wanted to purchase sit/stand workstations for employees, but HR pointed out that this was a change to working conditions and should be included in the collective bargaining negotiation. However management had already started taking measurements for the tables, so the union knew what management was intending. During the negotiations, the union decided to try and call HR's bluff and refused to ask for the workstations as a concession. So in the end, the whole plan was scrapped so that HR would have concessions available for future negotiations." You experienced two standard union busting techniques favored by management-side labor lawyers. First, try to divide the workers to weaken their bargaining power, with the ultimate goal of portraying the workers active in the union as an unrepresentative minority. Then, blame "the union" or "labor law" (i.e. your coworkers who are active) for negative changes that are entirely their doing. "Management is legally required to make concessions during collective bargaining" If this is the United States we're talking about, you were misinformed. Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), management has a duty to bargain over certain issues with unionized workers, but there is no obligation to make "concessions" (i.e. changes the workers find favorable).
  • GartzenDeHaes 4y ago
    I was an executive level manager at the time. My understanding is that employers are required to "bargain in good faith" and the easiest way to demonstrate good faith is by making concessions.
    • bwestergard 4y ago
      This is a common misunderstanding. For example, an employer can propose a wage cut (obviously not a concession) as part of good faith bargaining. To your point, making concessions will often prevent any worker (or the union as a body) from filing an Unfair Labor Practice charge. But employers with good counsel seldom worry about such charges, because the penalties are so weak.
    • 4y ago
• pastor_bob 4y ago
  >Management is legally required to make concession This is false. The NLRB explicitly says so: > It is an unfair labor practice for either party to refuse to bargain collectively with the other, but parties are not compelled to reach agreement or make concessions.[0] They are only required to bargain 'in good faith.' Withholding benefits they would normally give is an intimidation tactic and an attempt to maintain leverage. [0]https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/employer-union-rights-and-obligations https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-right...
  • gojomo 4y ago
    That the benefits are new, and specific to the workplaces without the extra overhead/limits of a unionized workforce, suggest that weren't "normally given".
  • collegeburner 4y ago
    no, apple is currently conducting negotiations with the unionized store and there is no contract so presumably they are working on getting that into the contract as part of the bargaining process. which is literally the way unions are set up to work. messing with existing benefits could be construed as an intimidation tactic but delaying new ones due to going through the union workers just voted in is not, since the union has already been elected this isn't interfering with a vote or sm.
• justizin 4y ago
  if the belief is that employees using sit/stand workstations will improve productivity and output, it's a business' own choice not to do so for employees who have collective bargaining. there is also a cost associated with maintaining different workspaces and equipment for employees of different status, and it's a company's choice to take that on. typically when discussing working conditions, you're talking about minimum standards. it's not very smart to refuse to improve working conditions across the board. you said in a reply further down that you were an executive level manager, you should have told HR to shove it because your individual performance would be impacted by the collective output of your employees, and the costs of improving working conditions would be returned in several multiples, some of which you might receive as a bonus. it was, however, your choice and right not to do this. :)
  • maerF0x0 4y ago
    > you said in a reply further down that you were an executive level manager, you should have told HR to shove it because your individual performance would be impacted by the collective output of your employees, and the costs of improving working conditions would be returned in several multiples, some of which you might receive as a bonus. This assumes the EMgr is compensated/recognized more on performance of collective output than on politics and relationships. I dont know specifically about Apple, but plenty of orgs are imperfect enough that relationships are actually more highly rewarded/recognized than optimal collective outcomes (which are disparate and difficult to take credit for.) This is part of the reason why "glue" workers[1] are usually overlooked and kept back. They neither please anyone, nor have a specific item to take credit for, usually simply boosting the outcomes of others who take all the credit for their work, plus some for that of the glue worker. [1]: (ones which keep a team functioning well, but do nothing particularly stunning of their own)
    • Consultant32452 4y ago
      I highly recommend the "glue" worker path. The catch phrase I use is "a rising tide raises all ships." When I was a young buck I took the "shooting star" path where I'd knock out user stories at 10x or more compared to the team average. Basically everyone hated me. Then I chose the "rising tide" path and most people loved me. All of my greatest $ opportunities came from people I raised up. Even little behaviors like instead of speaking up in meetings I DM people to offer suggestions/corrections to things they've said in meetings. And then they can seamlessly take credit for my ideas by incorporating them as they continue to talk. If you care about promotions, it's important to also do this for leadership. If you measure my work by lines of code or user stories completed, etc. I will come up short for sure. But teams love having me around and I never lack for opportunity.
• datavirtue 4y ago
  Sounds like they are acting in bad faith.
• Spooky23 4y ago
  I’ve worked in several union shops. You can as an employer easily choose to address these via a side letter or other mechanism. One place i am familiar with this handled COVID remote work with that type of mechanism. They setup a pilot program for the duration of the pandemic that included language to not undermine future negotiations.