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Oh no, you mean you are forced to pay people better wages? The horror!!!
What all your complaints boil down to is "They made it more annoying for us to do stuff".
Well, you know what is fucking annoying? Paperwork, work records, safety standards and a host of other shit.
Just cause it's annoying and pricier doesn't mean it's worse.
:^:
To add to this: you know what else is annoying? Clients who don't plan ahead sufficiently and blind side you with requests when you get on site. Requests for things you didn't think to bring because they didn't ask you to in the first place.
I don't think anyone has proposed otherwise.
That was my biggest pet peeve. I didn't really care for the supervisor stand in nonsense, but when you risk my life to push some extra work then I will fucking kick you in the balls. Or if you try to reprimand me for doing something I didn't do because of a fuckup of one of your cronies, I will also kick you in the balls.
Indeed. And I'd say that if we handle corporate overreach union overreach would probably take care of itself.
I demand everyone choose a West Wing avatar!
No, we're making it a black and white Union-vs-No-Union issue.
Which is pretty much is.
I mean, let's get right down to it:
Who wins if Unions disappear?
The answer is not "middle-management". Or "the country" as the last several decades in the US have shown.
Except that's not really what we've been talking about for a while now, at least on the current tangent and at least not me.
The assumption that some people are making is that if you have a critique about unions you're suddenly against unions, which is a bit odd.
I vote Thanatos be C.J.
:winky:
Actually Thanatos should probably be Toby if we think about it.
But I'm not giving it up.
You still haven't proven that it was the Union that screwed you over in the first place. You have just said that you got charged 250$ when you asked for extra work. A charge added to your bill by the convention hall company.
You really think the company wouldn't have tried to do the same if it was non-union. They would just pass up 250$?
Edit. wait it was Wulf that told that story. My bad. Still would like an answer to it though. Unions can't charge customers shit, its the company that has to do it.
As your president, I urge you to change your title to "What's going on, Leo?"
No, it's more that people are saying "Unions are bad because of X situation" and people are either pointing out why that situation isn't bad, pointing out why that situation exists or saying "Yeah, that's bad, but that's no reason to be against unions in general".
Until we overturn Citizens United and aggressively push for stronger worker protections and benefits programs, they're still the answer.
If Union members who are also PA Forum members can't admit that Unions have problems; why would anyone expect any Union Member to admit there are some problems?
And really; the whole forcing this issue into a black & white, Us Vs Them, No Compromise thing is just silly goosery. I really am done with this topic. I hope this thread can move on to something more productive.
I will admit that there are problems with my union, and I will always work to fix them within the bounds of the framework that binds it together, but I will not call for it to be dismantled until such a time as it becomes a dinosaur in every definition of the word.
Who's said unions don't have problems?
What people are saying is that just because they have problems doesn't mean they aren't better then the alternatives.
Company =/= union workforce = Company =/= non-union workforce
If you pass a worker rights law, and i try to use it to protect myself, i get fucked without solidarity. It doesn't matter if the text of the law is draconian, it matters if i am actually able to use the law. We have history as proof the employer is at a substantial advantage in this power dynamic.
It's pretty defensible (and the logic has already been outlined) why many folks here would be inclined to side with labor in these situations, though.
I suggest from this point on we all take as read (unless there is specific evidence in a post) that we can talk about union reform without thinking we should junk the system all together or absolve management from any responsibility.
After all, unions are needed, now more than ever. But that shouldn't make them beyond reproach. I think most of us could agree with that, no?
(muahaha @kasyn, another convert!)
I had to act fast to claim one of the more desirable characters that was left.
That is literally the most sensible thing I've read in a while.
And how.
Basically, I understand why workers should be respected and protected while they are needed as employees, but I can't understand why anyone should have a right to employment, and damn technology or efficiency. This is clearly a capital centric view, but what is the rational behind slaving capital to labor?
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
Goose shit. Name a PA forum member that can't admit some unions have problems, or bad policies, or whatever. They are institutions. Institutions have problems. That's how it goes. That's why we try to make them better.
However they are also the most pro-worker institution in this country, for obvious reasons. That's why union workers tend to get real suspicious real fast when someone uses blanket generalizations and other stereotyping to attack them. Because there are powerful forces in this country that would rather see unions gone and it's that kind of PR they use to make it happen.
it's a symptom of a labour market where some segments are unionized and some are not; preventing the stealthy substitution of unionized labour with non-unionized labour justifies such work condition rules. Observe that if the truck unloaders are 'just as expensive', so to speak, in terms of their surplus productivity captured by the employer, the employer should be indifferent between asking truck drivers to occasionally substitute for unloaders and unloaders to occasionally substitute as drivers when appropriate, and the union gains nothing by the rule.
Of course, once such rules exist, they start being used to featherbed too.
There are labour law frameworks where unions gain less via featherbedding - a simple example would be to force truck drivers and unloaders into the same union in order to access legally enforceable collective bargaining rights. Here featherbedding occurs less frequently.
Because its not the employee's fault that their receptionist job (a poor example since that would be a non union job I'm guessing?) became obsolete. To give a UPS-Teamster example a few years ago, there was a number of Loss Prevention jobs that required people to scan a box as it came out of a truck. This job was replaced by an enormous mounted camera/laser system that does the same basic job, making their jobs obsolete. These employees, because they have a union, were then relocated to other positions in the building and retrained. In a non-union shop, I'm guessing those employees would just be let go. Having a union contract allowed them to be retrained and given a chance to keep their job. Now if they were having problems in their new positions, that may lead to their eventual dismissal but at least they've been given the choice.
And when you ask why doesn't the driver just leave to a position where he doesn't unload also? Truck driving (the UPS/FedEx delivery style) is an extremely limited market. People wait years to become drivers. They don't have the option to just pick up and go, especially when they've put a number of years into the position. In a position like yours, a lawyer that makes a good sum the option to move is always there, as you have money to fall back on correct? When you're doing lower-middle class work, that option isn't there typically, there isn't much money to fall back on. Plus those years they've put in, to accumulate vacations and seniority are hard earned, and not easily given up.
This is the troubling part of the recession. I don't know that employment picks up because over the last three years employers have used the crisis to overwork us and now it's just accepted.
There's no pressing need to expand employment because the bottom line says we can do more with less. And when there's Xmillion people out there who is going to stand up and say "waaaaaaaait a fuckin' minute"
But even in this example, they are still using rules to prevent outright work reductions. Even if we had every worker in America in a union, I assume unions would still have rules to try and keep companies from using two workers instead of 3 once technology improves, for example.
The idea of "fault" seems inappropriate here. This seems to paint a picture of a world where workers have the exact same entitlements to keep their jobs as the owners do to run their companies, but I can't see how that makes sense since they literally own the company. It is true that if a company replaces half it's workers with robots, it caused those workers to lose their jobs, but they haven't done something wrong to the worker (assuming no employment contract), they have just made a different decision about how the company will operate. And the retraining idea doesn't neccessarily work either, because there may simply be less need for employees in the aggregate, in which case, the company has to fire someone. When we reach that point, I don't see why the 10 year driver should be retrained as an unloader and the 3 year seniority unloader should be fired.
Here is an open question: if GM could completely replace all it's factory workers with self repairing robots who build better cars faster than people, but they will have to let every single factory worker go, should they do it? If not, why? What if the robots are cheaper than union workers, but more expensive than nonunion labor? Should they switch to nonunion labor instead of robots, if a switch is happening no matter what?
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
Trying to take the savings from technology upgrading is more likely, I daresay. It's not just "in a union", it requires being in the same union, where said One Big Union can give split Man #3's former work hours into extended vacation time for all three.
That is a good proposal, but in practice I think people will not be happy with a furlough in exchange for people staying employed. We faced this exact issue in NY recently. There was a proposal to furlough government workers one day a week instead of firing people, and it was met with bitter resistance.
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
Naturally. Furloughs entail lower total pay. But if the contention here is cost savings, there should be revenue to go around.