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If you are living in a small mining town where everyone else works for the one and only company, then an union makes sense, because it gives everyone a leverage
by abcd_f 12y ago
If you are living in a small mining town where everyone else works for the one and only company, then an union makes sense, because it gives everyone a leverage against a monopoly.
High-tech industry is not a monopoly. The only thing unionization would do is to complicate life of capable people who actually work by forcing them to work alongside unmotivated lazy-asses that are employed just because they can't really be fired. I can't pay good people better money and I still have to drag around these useless clowns that religiously observe their mandated 4 coffee breaks and time their arrival and departure with sub-second precision. This is counter-productive. Unionization in high-tech is a seriously bad idea. It's just a way for unqualified personnel to hold on to their jobs instead of developing themselves into someone actually employable on their merit.
If all you are looking for is a legal support in tight spots, then there's an actual regular insurance coverage for that. Just ask your insurance provider.
- fsloth 12y ago"High-tech industry is not a monopoly." While that may be, employers in the same field with geographical vicinity are known to negotiate on shared terms of employment - in effect creating leverage over individual employees when negotiating the terms of their employment. A union may devolve to many things but one of the valuable facets are that it creates leverage for the employees against the employers. I don't have to like it, you don't have to like it but that is the way the market works. "still have to drag around these useless clowns that religiously observe their mandated 4 coffee breaks and time their arrival and departure with sub-second precision." I would have just used the words 'non-productive' - that amount of verbiage creates the feeling that there is non-spoken behavioural pattern that is used as the metric of an employeed value rather than the value they produce. Especially in high tech the moments when an employee actually performs value adding work can be spurious, unlike in lower tech industries like logging where the work you see is actually the work input you are getting.
- rapind 12y agoAssuming this is what you're referring to when you mention shared terms of employment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Li...
- fsloth 12y agoIncluding that, yeah. It's a known fact companies have a tendency to form informal syndicates to game the market to their advantage, be it employment or pricing.
- tomjen3 12y agoThat is true for union-shops. There is a hell of a difference between paying a union to negotiate on your behalf and paying a union to come up with relevant courses for your speciality and paying a union to lend you a lawyer.