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| ANECDOTAL WAR by Fussbett 09/05/2004, 2:00pm PDT | ||||
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Zseni wrote: The noble savage, blue collar workers. Working class heros, them. Can you get away with murder at non-union jobs? Of course. But the employer is able to fire you at those jobs if they are competent enough. If the employer doesn't have it's act together enough to identify problems, why should I care? If you tell me a story of stereotypical middle manager inefficiency, this doesn't make me sympathize with unions more, it makes me want to watch Office Space. Unions make mediocre job performance safe, but Dilbert lionizes it. So both are acceptable? No, neither are acceptable. But again, the first is a product of strong arming and the second is a product of other people in Dilbert's company fucking up. Which I'm fine with, because of my beloved free market economics which means that if their company still turns a profit despite being massive morons, then more power to them. More likely their bloated infrastructure will make them less and less competitive and they'll eventually slip into problemsy. Companies without unions die off all the time. 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 does. 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. Yeah, this is what's good about unions. This is my ESL single mom version. 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. Unions are great for people in the unions. This is not part of the discussion. The discussion is about your union making your labour job cost the employer much more than market would've bore, and how this makes me feel sad. 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. Yes! So the embedded union expert and I agree to the point of using the exact same cliché? I think that gives me permission to stop thinking about this topic. I'm done. 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. Yeah, it's hard to ban you. When he's driving one of the cars that my group is responsible for, we do an extra good job. Union hugs! I'm not sure when you perceived that I was against all blue collar workers, but I'm not. I don't even mind black people, despite my jokes. That you projected and wrote a big defense of hauling packages for a living versus meetings with vendors makes me wonder about the nature of your shoulder chip. Misgivings about continuing your education? Guilt about enjoying a job which some part of your educated brain thinks is beneath you? Or am I seeing ammunition you've used or are stockpiling to fight with your glossy cube parents? I recognize this in myself when talking with someone who has a masters or whatever, and I try to work their student loans into the conversation. Or the time I delighted to find a junior designer at a recent job have more education than I. I made sure to ask him if he had a car. What a jerk, insecure me. 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. I did just realize that my government takes care of the worker's compensation and the AirCast/Taiwanese doctor bill, again decreasing one of the roles of a Canadian union. So there's another root of our different opinions. |
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