Zseni wrote:

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.

That's fascinating. Unions are the source of working inefficiency in blue collar jobs, but white collar inefficiency comes from the employees themselves?

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.

Did you ever start thinking about this topic? Or did it all end with your near-fatal tussle with getting paid $17 an hour (how ridiculous!)

I took it kind of personal

I don't dare probe the defenses of a man who has written off millions of union members as red-tape-gobbling slackers, because that dude must have balls of titanium alloy.

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.

I'm not your fucking shrink, and if you want to make a confession I'm sure there's at least one Catholic church in Toronto.

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.

Well I'll readily agree that you live in a stupid country that makes stupid decisions, but unions have only tangentially to do with your complaints at this point.