4 ms·

Wow, only 40% of union members say their union membership is “very important”? A case of theoretical versus reality?

by refurb 4y ago

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Having spoken to people in a union, enjoying union benefits, but also thinking they’d still have them without their union, this is not a surprising statistic. I have also spoken to people not in a union, who didn’t want a union, who were shocked to find out their bonus was (no joke) Applebees gift cards and who indicated they should be compensated more for their hard labor. If only there was a way. Humans are tricky.
- sheepscreek 4y ago
  > I have also spoken to people not in a union, who didn’t want a union, who were shocked to find out their bonus was Applebees gift cards and who indicated they should be compensated more for their hard labor. > Humans are tricky. This made me chuckle! Reminds me of the frog in boiling water adage: If you put a frog in cold water and gradually raise the temperature, it will be imperceptible to the frog. They’d gladly boil to death. However, if you turn up the heat quickly - they’ll jump out. A long winded way of saying - with time, we become comfortable in the status quo and expect things to stay a certain way. Any gradual shift is imperceptible to us, until many changes accumulate and reach a tipping point. And that is when we become disillusioned.
  - cogman10 4y ago
    There's been a steady anti-union drum beat both from corporate media and the work place. Unions are almost always portrayed as expensive, worthless, and corrupt. Yet our current labor rights are almost entirely from unions setting strong standards and employers/politicians falling in line. Propaganda works, if it didn't, Walmart and amazon wouldn't be spending so much money on anti-union propaganda. Nothing terrifies them more than the thought of multiple stores, warehouses, or development centers unionizing.
    - dehrmann 4y ago
      > Yet our current labor rights are almost entirely from unions setting strong standards and employers/politicians falling in line. But the big wins were almost a century ago.
      - runarberg 4y ago
        This may be true in the USA where union membership is in an all time low, however in the rest of the world unions are still landing deals which guarantees more labor rights, this includes longer parental leaves, more sick time, longer vacations, more benefits for part time workers, more enforcement against violations, more education and guarantees for at-risk groups (such as foreign workers), equal pay certificates, 36 hour work weeks, 32 hour work weeks, anti-harassment guarantees, etc. etc.
        lostcolony 4y ago
        It also misses (well, leaves out; not sure the intent of the comment) the fact that unions have been gutted heavily in the US compared to where they were a century ago. When the US was an industrial, workers were treated poorly, unions began to form, fought for worker protections. As the US has transitioned into a knowledge/service economy, creating industries that didn't historically have unions, and industrials have been on the decline, unions have also declined. And where the US was once at the forefront of worker protections, we are sadly more like a third world country than a first world at this point.
        dehrmann 4y ago
        > unions have been gutted heavily in the US compared to where they were a century ago. The red line isn't normalized by workforce size, but it suggests the big gains (five-day work week, 8-hour workday) were before unions really became powerful. Unionization was only a 15-year trend, then it stalled-out. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/United_States_union_membership_and_inequality%2C_top_1%25_income_share%2C_1910_to_2010.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/United_S...
  - jessetemp 4y ago
    Not disagreeing with the general complacency of humans, but the frog thing is a myth. They only stay in the water if you remove their brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
    - inkywatcher 4y ago
      Ah, so the American worker analogy remains accurate.
    - akiselev 4y ago
      > In 1869, while doing experiments searching for the location of the soul, German physiologist Friedrich Goltz demonstrated that a frog that has had its brain removed will remain in slowly heated water, but an intact frog attempted to escape the water when it reached 25 °C. Now we need a religious version of the "In Mice" meme [1] that just ends "IN FROGS." John 3:6: That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit... IN FROGS. [1] https://twitter.com/justsaysinmice https://twitter.com/justsaysinmice
- dylan604 4y ago
  >who indicated they should be compensated more for their hard labor. If only there was a way. I feel like there's a missing /s there. If only we did have a way of compensating someone for their labor. Maybe we could call it a salary? If you're counting on a bonus to compensate for a lack in salary, then you should be having your union do its job and negotiate higher base salary. There's a reason a bonus is not called salary. FYI, this is in no way a show a support for unionizing on my behalf. Just pointing out the fallacy of the argument as presented
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jesterman 4y ago
    I believe the section of the comment you are referencing was on people who weren't in a union. So they can't have a union do it's job and negotiate a higher base salary because they aren't in a union.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - Xelynega 4y ago
    It doesn't matter if it's a bonus or salary, the point was that unions help people get better total compensation.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      That's not a guarantee. There are times when part of the negotiations to get a larger number of employees to a higher salary, other employees might have to take a cut. That's why it's a negotiation and not a strong arming of the employer. When a union is first voted in to a shop, that negotiation for the first ever contracts could go any where.
      - danaris 4y ago
georgeoliver 4y ago
Not really. 70% of members basically say their membership is "important" (5 or 4 on a 1-5 scale).
cogitoergofutuo 4y ago
Only 10% of union members say “not important at all”? A case of reality?
- Freedom2 4y ago
  [dead]
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
This is a case of "lie with statistics". Any pollster will tell you that when you give a 1-5 scale as that question was asked, you're guaranteed to get a fairly broad distribution. A total of 85% of members voted 3-5, which is a huge number.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  Reminds me of this classic: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ahgjEjJkZks https://youtube.com/watch?v=ahgjEjJkZks
giantg2 4y ago
Honestly sounds high to me. It's hard to get a "very important" rating on anything at work.
vosper 4y ago
"very important" isn't a label in the results table. Here's the results, for the lazy. It uses a scale from 1-5 where (1) is labelled "Not important at all" and (5) is labelled "Extremely important". > Importance of Union Membership Among Members > How important is union membership to you? (5) Extremely important: 40% (4) 28% (3) 17% (2) 5% (1) Not important at all

Wow, only 40% of union members say their union membership is “very important”? A case of theoretical versus reality?

by refurb 4y ago

Wow, only 40% of union members say their union membership is “very important”? A case of theoretical versus reality?

Having spoken to people in a union, enjoying union benefits, but also thinking they’d still have them without their union, this is not a surprising statistic. I have also spoken to people not in a union, who didn’t want a union, who were shocked to find out their bonus was (no joke) Applebees gift cards and who indicated they should be compensated more for their hard labor. If only there was a way. Humans are tricky.

sheepscreek 4y ago
> I have also spoken to people not in a union, who didn’t want a union, who were shocked to find out their bonus was Applebees gift cards and who indicated they should be compensated more for their hard labor. > Humans are tricky. This made me chuckle! Reminds me of the frog in boiling water adage: If you put a frog in cold water and gradually raise the temperature, it will be imperceptible to the frog. They’d gladly boil to death. However, if you turn up the heat quickly - they’ll jump out. A long winded way of saying - with time, we become comfortable in the status quo and expect things to stay a certain way. Any gradual shift is imperceptible to us, until many changes accumulate and reach a tipping point. And that is when we become disillusioned.
- cogman10 4y ago
  There's been a steady anti-union drum beat both from corporate media and the work place. Unions are almost always portrayed as expensive, worthless, and corrupt. Yet our current labor rights are almost entirely from unions setting strong standards and employers/politicians falling in line. Propaganda works, if it didn't, Walmart and amazon wouldn't be spending so much money on anti-union propaganda. Nothing terrifies them more than the thought of multiple stores, warehouses, or development centers unionizing.
  - dehrmann 4y ago
    > Yet our current labor rights are almost entirely from unions setting strong standards and employers/politicians falling in line. But the big wins were almost a century ago.
    - runarberg 4y ago
      This may be true in the USA where union membership is in an all time low, however in the rest of the world unions are still landing deals which guarantees more labor rights, this includes longer parental leaves, more sick time, longer vacations, more benefits for part time workers, more enforcement against violations, more education and guarantees for at-risk groups (such as foreign workers), equal pay certificates, 36 hour work weeks, 32 hour work weeks, anti-harassment guarantees, etc. etc.
      - lostcolony 4y ago
        It also misses (well, leaves out; not sure the intent of the comment) the fact that unions have been gutted heavily in the US compared to where they were a century ago. When the US was an industrial, workers were treated poorly, unions began to form, fought for worker protections. As the US has transitioned into a knowledge/service economy, creating industries that didn't historically have unions, and industrials have been on the decline, unions have also declined. And where the US was once at the forefront of worker protections, we are sadly more like a third world country than a first world at this point.
        dehrmann 4y ago
        > unions have been gutted heavily in the US compared to where they were a century ago. The red line isn't normalized by workforce size, but it suggests the big gains (five-day work week, 8-hour workday) were before unions really became powerful. Unionization was only a 15-year trend, then it stalled-out. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/United_States_union_membership_and_inequality%2C_top_1%25_income_share%2C_1910_to_2010.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/United_S...
- jessetemp 4y ago
  Not disagreeing with the general complacency of humans, but the frog thing is a myth. They only stay in the water if you remove their brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
  - inkywatcher 4y ago
    Ah, so the American worker analogy remains accurate.
  - akiselev 4y ago
    > In 1869, while doing experiments searching for the location of the soul, German physiologist Friedrich Goltz demonstrated that a frog that has had its brain removed will remain in slowly heated water, but an intact frog attempted to escape the water when it reached 25 °C. Now we need a religious version of the "In Mice" meme [1] that just ends "IN FROGS." John 3:6: That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit... IN FROGS. [1] https://twitter.com/justsaysinmice https://twitter.com/justsaysinmice
dylan604 4y ago
>who indicated they should be compensated more for their hard labor. If only there was a way. I feel like there's a missing /s there. If only we did have a way of compensating someone for their labor. Maybe we could call it a salary? If you're counting on a bonus to compensate for a lack in salary, then you should be having your union do its job and negotiate higher base salary. There's a reason a bonus is not called salary. FYI, this is in no way a show a support for unionizing on my behalf. Just pointing out the fallacy of the argument as presented
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jesterman 4y ago
  I believe the section of the comment you are referencing was on people who weren't in a union. So they can't have a union do it's job and negotiate a higher base salary because they aren't in a union.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- Xelynega 4y ago
  It doesn't matter if it's a bonus or salary, the point was that unions help people get better total compensation.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    That's not a guarantee. There are times when part of the negotiations to get a larger number of employees to a higher salary, other employees might have to take a cut. That's why it's a negotiation and not a strong arming of the employer. When a union is first voted in to a shop, that negotiation for the first ever contracts could go any where.
    - danaris 4y ago

georgeoliver 4y ago

Not really. 70% of members basically say their membership is "important" (5 or 4 on a 1-5 scale).

cogitoergofutuo 4y ago

Only 10% of union members say “not important at all”? A case of reality?

Freedom2 4y ago
[dead]

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

This is a case of "lie with statistics". Any pollster will tell you that when you give a 1-5 scale as that question was asked, you're guaranteed to get a fairly broad distribution. A total of 85% of members voted 3-5, which is a huge number.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
Reminds me of this classic: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ahgjEjJkZks https://youtube.com/watch?v=ahgjEjJkZks

giantg2 4y ago

Honestly sounds high to me. It's hard to get a "very important" rating on anything at work.

vosper 4y ago

"very important" isn't a label in the results table. Here's the results, for the lazy. It uses a scale from 1-5 where (1) is labelled "Not important at all" and (5) is labelled "Extremely important". > Importance of Union Membership Among Members > How important is union membership to you? (5) Extremely important: 40% (4) 28% (3) 17% (2) 5% (1) Not important at all