Forum Overview :: Beer, Curry and Vomit :: Unions! (long!)

[quote name="Zseni"][quote name="Fussbett"][quote name="Zseni"]Why so down on the extravagances of unions? Fussbett: secret supply-side sympathizer?[/quote] I am indeed very pro free market economics, and since I'm also liberal on social issues, my brain does heat up a bit where unions are concerned as I try to sort out my feelings about them. I've basically arrived at "necessary evil" or sometimes "pendulum has swung too far", because while great in theory, you know, teamsters. On the flip side, it's disappointing when the unions let the corporations do the big things like move jobs out of the country. Those are the things that unions should be trying to stop, but instead they're concerned about benefit rate hikes and not getting raises in step with inflation. [/quote] I wanted to reference the M. London/Don Black-penned classic "Best of Both Worlds" here but find that the lyrics don't exist online. I did learn that Van Halen, Robert Palmer, and Jay-Z/R. Kelly have also written songs called "Best of Both Worlds" but they weren't as poignant and apt for the occasion. My take on unions is that most unionized workers do jobs that are difficult or physically disagreeable - they are cops and grocery store clerks (in some states) and package car drivers and metal fabricators and steel plant workers - and every last god damned one of them does more work during a strike than the Security Compliance group at the major health insurance provider where my brother works. They do more work in a day than I have ever seen or heard of in any of the glossy cubicle farms to which both my parents have committed themselves. I see white collar America as at least 80% welfare state and maybe 14% productive, the other 6% being comped meals. Bro and I are constantly amazed that the insurance industry gets anything done at all; in order for him to turn a twelve-week task doing manual data entry conversions from Excel to Access into a half-day of coding a little program to do it for him, he had to spend a week straight jockeying for political position under his supervisor, then cut a deal with her that he would write his program, let it run, and while it was running he would also start hand-converting. Of course the program worked, but the supervisor told her supervisor that the whole program thing was her idea anyway, and it was another two weeks to straighten out that whole mess. WTF? In that same three+ weeks the guys where I work came in, did their god damn jobs - for which the new shortcut system is being installed in October after many management delays - and sent out their trucks on time every morning five days a week. My group has never had a team-building meeting but every single time one guy gets swamped, someone comes over to lend a hand; when one dumb girl falls over, the union steward is there to help no matter what his personal feelings are. Unions make mediocre job performance safe, but Dilbert <i>lionizes</i> it. In a tight labor market, unions can become superfluous. But as long as there is an appreciable unemployment rate, the employer is in a position of power to ramp up his expectations and demands, and the problem, Fussbett, is that the employer usually <i>does</i>. The employer has a bottom line to look after and that's his business, and the unions are there to make sure his bottom line doesn't cost his workers too much. It's hard for me to think of unions as bad when my job is safe, my health care is paid for, and I can cover all my bills. I don't mind so much being asked to head in to work at 2 or 3 in the morning and bust my ass and possibly, yes, sprain my ankle or run the risk of carpal tunnel or any of the other common (and not infrequent) injuries at the facility, because I'm being paid enough to take that risk. I know I can afford to fuck up a lot before they fire me, but I feel a sense of responsibility to my co-workers and fellow union members, and I know that when I fuck up their jobs get harder. I guess that all boils down to "necessary evil", which is, by the way, exactly what the union steward said about it when I asked him why we have unions. [quote]Basically anytime I hear someone complain about their job I advise them to look for another job. Unions are the opposite, and act like everyone is trapped. Unions have the ability to bully their employer which just rubs me the wrong way. It creates an atmosphere of "us versus them" like I have never seen before I worked a union job. The employer being a dick, but sticking to the letter of the law, and the employees being lazy jerks, but sticking to the letter of the law. Of course, I don't see life from the perspective of a single ESL mother who can't just walk across the street to another factory job. To her I guess it's great that they went on strike and got a 2.9% pay raise, because she doesn't have a lot of other options.[/quote] It's really not always like that. Management pulls some shit where I work, and so do the employees, but in general there's a good relationship between the two bodies and I never feel like I can't talk to my managers if I'm having a problem with them and they talk to me when they have a problem with me. And yeah, there are problems with union representatives sometimes generating an us vs. them mindset, but the workers themselves are generally proud to be union and proud to be employees at this particular place. People tend to stay on a long, long time with this company if they don't quit right away. Maybe it's just Teamsters, I don't know. But, at least where I work, the lazy pieces of shit are 10 times over more despised by their co-workers than the managers, and asshole managers are despised by everyone. When I got served a termination of employment letter, the union stepped in automatically to protect my job, but it was the manager who deliberately made a mistake with the firing procedure who gave the union a leg to stand on and let me stay on. [quote]I should also point out that my union experience happened in the post office, so that's a confluence of several negatives: civil servants, post office, union. It's an extreme case. Seniors sat at the back and processed 10% of the letters that us temps did, yet the supervisors rode the temps for increased production all the time. The fulltimers were never told what to do and the seniors were completely untouchable as they counted the days to pension. I was being paid $17/hour, fresh out of high school, which is RIDICULOUS. Right now my tax money is paying some kid probably $19/hour to sort letters and that kills me. Of course the hardworking father of three who has been there 20 years is only making $21/hour, which I also dislike about the unions. The "every man is created equal" aspect that rewards seniority over ability and effort. It ensures that no one excels or tries harder because there is no getting ahead. The bare minimum effort will ensure the same incremental pay raise as busting your ass. Shop stewards. I totally forgot about them. Fucking hall monitors, of course they're all dicks.[/quote] $17 an hour in Canuck dollars? $21 an hour in Canuck dollars? What's the panic? Isn't that minimum wage? No, but seriously - is the job somehow harder for the father of three than it was for you? Prostitutes fresh out of high school generally command higher rates than hardworking mommy prostitutes with three children... how's that for unfair?! It does sound like a suck-ass setup to be a temp in, but jesus, even a really <i>able</i> letter-sorter is still just sorting letters. The old Mormon silverback, my long-time battle buddy, was working that union job at incremental pay raises even though he had two degrees and five kids because he knew that if he waited long enough, he was going to get bumped into the full-time driver positions that are the envy of the planet. He's going to wind up getting $50 (American!) an hour, plus regular yet not excessive overtime, more job security than you can shake a forest at, medical coverage for his whole family, and he never has to wear a tie or entertain a vendor or listen to lite rock or take paperwork home or worry about office politics. It's not a bad way to make a living, not at all, and the union seniority system made sure that he would get that job no matter what as long as he waited his way to the top of the driver list. It took six years but he became a driver just a few months ago. When he's driving one of the cars that my group is responsible for, we do an extra good job. Union hugs! Also, how totally cynical to believe that people only work as hard as they can get away with because they aren't paid to do more. I don't go waaaayyyy above and beyond the call of duty, but I do work as hard as I have to <i>to keep my group running smoothly</i>. Sometimes that means I pick up a little extra slack, and I don't bitch about it. Sometimes I'm working a lot harder for my hourly wage than other times. That's fine. The other guys aren't too much different. Recently I took the annual Employee Satisfaction Survey, and there were questions about relations with managers, relations with corporate policy, safety, ability, and on-the-job equipment, but there were no questions at all about how I felt about the people I work with on a daily basis. I keep coming back to this because seriously, everyone else in the fam has been to and grumbled about team workshops and morale-building meetings and all kinds of other bullshit. To me, the greatest benefit of the union is that it replaces all of that instantly: it's an established fact that your co-workers are watching your back and you're watching theirs. It's an established fact that you're all doing tough jobs and should pull your own weight. It's so hard to get fired that it's not worth badmouthing anyone: bad job performance shines all on its own, with daily feedback from the higher-ups. The union is my team and there's money in the bank and an AirCast on my ankle to tell me how important that team is. Nothing emphereal about it.[/quote]