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Most people know they need to be diligent in their work, union people make good stuff the same as non union people, the difference is a simple one, compensation, you know.... that term that has a big meaning in the upper circles of American corporate life.
Union and non union people can make the same stuff, but the union person can't be fired if they do a bad job. As for compensation, the union worker is compensated no matter his job performance. Not true of the non union worker.
I'm late to this party, but as an ex union-negotiator for some respectably sized unions (>10,000 employees), I can come up with dozens of reasons....I started working in union negotiation because I wanted to be the catalyst of change. I wanted to be the one who reached across the table with an olive branch, I was convinced these were rational folks, by golly, if i just showed them that a raise would mean it costs more to make the product than we sell it for, surely they would understand. But alas, I have come to two conclusions:
1) Union leadership VERY rarely has the unions interests at heart. They have re-election at heart. Concessions and working with management is not seen as "being an adult", its seen as "weak". This leads to a number of really perverse incentives.
2) Union staff are lead to believe that they are worth more than whatever they receive, no matter how absurd their pay packages are, no matter how ridiculous the requests (and I could tell you some), no matter how financially dire the company... you can open the books, you can show them the finances, you can lay it out completely bare, and some kind of incredible cognitive dissonance will take over.
The examples are too many too count. The union rep who refused an extra $25 a day for staff that optionally carpooled to work (a cost-savings share) demanding instead "$50 or nothing" ... So we say "here's some free money" and they say "NO We want double!!" to which re reply "Well you got $0 now, we just want to share in the benefits"....... (despite the fact that our savings by sharing cars was demonstrably less). The union who demanded company paid massages after work shifts. The union worker who doesnt even have a GED, makes $40 an hour, pays $1.50 a month for family PPO healthcare coverage (because the contract stipulated it cant go up) and gets 6 weeks vacation bitching because he doesnt like his shift (which, i might add, is determined based on a system his very union asked for). Or the bus driver who, because the union contract says so, CANT do ANYTHING other than drive a bus, so when the bus is no longer needed, the company simply pays him to sit in a room until he retires, because its cheaper than firing him. How can that be? Take the case of the line cook who, upon the closure of the facility is offered an option to either transfer to anotehr office or receive 10 years of company healthcare, 2 years of pay and access to a company car for life. Why? Because thats what the contract says. Or take the union employee who accrues 1800 hours of sick time and promptly begins calling in sick every monday and every friday for years until he hits retirement (thats not the point of sick time), or the union guy who destroys customer property in a fit of rage but cant be fired because, hey, the employee manual says damage to company property is a fireable offense but NOT *customer* property! (But for a 2% pay increase across the board, the union will let you add it for next year!) Or how about the union rep who encourages his staff to game retirement by working as much OT as possible in their final year of employment, thereby increasing their end of year salary against which pension benefits are calculated? (Work really hard one year, get an extra $50K for life? OKAY!). Or the situation where things go wrong and management would like to volunteer to help alleviate the problems for our customers, but because union rules say non-union people cant do X or touch Y, management literally can't do anything and just has to watch as a union employee says he's not coming in cause, screw it, he doesnt have to and we cant fire him for it anyway. And of course, there's always the union rep who just decides he's going go to the wall with the requests and when the company declares bankruptcy, the union is bust and the new contract is twice as bad as what they had... all because a 3% raise was "bull" and anything less than "5%" is "management !@(!# you".
Not to say that there aren't good union workers or good union reps. There are, but the bad ones take so much that the good ones are left with little to do but to play along. Its a prisoners dilemma type game in many ways - if union A concedes but union B does not, B can take what A left on the table (or try). If they both concede everyone walks away happy, and if they both go to the wall, the company might fold/break. The equilibrium unfortunately, is all too often the last.
The stories go on and on and on... Unions may have had their purpose at one point; today, my experience is that they hurt both sides of the table more than they help.
Last edited by chicagotodc; 04-30-2012 at 04:57 PM..
Union and non union people can make the same stuff, but the union person can't be fired if they do a bad job. As for compensation, the union worker is compensated no matter his job performance. Not true of the non union worker.
I love the rebuttal statement for it's attempt to speak with authority on such a wide subject as organized labor. The truth of many union contracts is that the management has the right to administer it's business subject to those things that are already "agreed" on. This means that the work rules, pay, benefits etc. are already negotiated and the company has agreed to the fact of their existence. Firing an employee usually calls for a thorough review of work place violations, be it the quality of work or the failure to observe the companies rules that are PREVIOUSLY agreed on. Supervision is obliged to document the violations and if necessary get witnesses to support their contentions. The union is obliged under federal law to support the member in his attempt to tell his side of things.
Fair? Yes it is for the most part, I've seen cases wherein the worker was able to do marginal work and get away with it, I've also been witness to the laziness of managers to do their job with the diligence required by the contract that was signed by BOTH parties. People can be ruthless and lazy, they can be devious and hurtful, they are people with faults regardless of which job they perform in life.
To think that all things are so simple that even the unread can sort them out, or that all you need to do is turn on the radio to get your knowledge base, and worse to allow others to tell you what is best for you is really abdicating your own responsibility to yourself. The boss isn't going to have your interests at heart, he's the boss and he shouldn't have your interest as his priority. So, who is going to represent you? The boss? No, he doesn't care about you, the union Boss, no, he's also human and wants what he wants, so you need to educate yourself, if you are union you are supposed to vote your will, not take the leadership's position as the holy grail.
To characterize union members as drunken slobs or worse, as some posters have, is to reveal contempt for these workers regardless of their individual merit, it's humorous to see the knee jerk reaction of those who immediately want to demonize the unions, first they said the union bosses were leading the "poor worker" from his true potential, when unionists responded favorably to their union affiliation they began to attack the members outright, for their "foolish" ways, "sheep", they called them. The real sheep in all of this are those who have failed to think for themselves and instead opt out for the likes of Glen Beck, Bill O" and others to decide what makes sense for workers. They focus on the flaws of unions rather than the fact that neither company nor union has reached perfection or has what it takes to achieve sainthood.
I'm late to this party, but as an ex union-negotiator for some respectably sized unions (>10,000 employees), I can come up with dozens of reasons....I started working in union negotiation because I wanted to be the catalyst of change. I wanted to be the one who reached across the table with an olive branch, I was convinced these were rational folks, by golly, if i just showed them that a raise would mean it costs more to make the product than we sell it for, surely they would understand. But alas, I have come to two conclusions:
1) Union leadership VERY rarely has the unions interests at heart. They have re-election at heart. Concessions and working with management is not seen as "being an adult", its seen as "weak". This leads to a number of really perverse incentives.
2) Union staff are lead to believe that they are worth more than whatever they receive, no matter how absurd their pay packages are, no matter how ridiculous the requests (and I could tell you some), no matter how financially dire the company... you can open the books, you can show them the finances, you can lay it out completely bare, and some kind of incredible cognitive dissonance will take over.
The examples are too many too count. The union rep who refused an extra $25 a day for staff that optionally carpooled to work (a cost-savings share) demanding instead "$50 or nothing" ... So we say "here's some free money" and they say "NO We want double!!" to which re reply "Well you got $0 now, we just want to share in the benefits"....... (despite the fact that our savings by sharing cars was demonstrably less). The union who demanded company paid massages after work shifts. The union worker who doesnt even have a GED, makes $40 an hour, pays $1.50 a month for family PPO healthcare coverage (because the contract stipulated it cant go up) and gets 6 weeks vacation bitching because he doesnt like his shift (which, i might add, is determined based on a system his very union asked for). Or the bus driver who, because the union contract says so, CANT do ANYTHING other than drive a bus, so when the bus is no longer needed, the company simply pays him to sit in a room until he retires, because its cheaper than firing him. How can that be? Take the case of the line cook who, upon the closure of the facility is offered an option to either transfer to anotehr office or receive 10 years of company healthcare, 2 years of pay and access to a company car for life. Why? Because thats what the contract says. Or take the union employee who accrues 1800 hours of sick time and promptly begins calling in sick every monday and every friday for years until he hits retirement (thats not the point of sick time), or the union guy who destroys customer property in a fit of rage but cant be fired because, hey, the employee manual says damage to company property is a fireable offense but NOT *customer* property! (But for a 2% pay increase across the board, the union will let you add it for next year!) Or how about the union rep who encourages his staff to game retirement by working as much OT as possible in their final year of employment, thereby increasing their end of year salary against which pension benefits are calculated? (Work really hard one year, get an extra $50K for life? OKAY!). Or the situation where things go wrong and management would like to volunteer to help alleviate the problems for our customers, but because union rules say non-union people cant do X or touch Y, management literally can't do anything and just has to watch as a union employee says he's not coming in cause, screw it, he doesnt have to and we cant fire him for it anyway. And of course, there's always the union rep who just decides he's going go to the wall with the requests and when the company declares bankruptcy, the union is bust and the new contract is twice as bad as what they had... all because a 3% raise was "bull" and anything less than "5%" is "management !@(!# you".
Not to say that there aren't good union workers or good union reps. There are, but the bad ones take so much that the good ones are left with little to do but to play along. Its a prisoners dilemma type game in many ways - if union A concedes but union B does not, B can take what A left on the table (or try). If they both concede everyone walks away happy, and if they both go to the wall, the company might fold/break. The equilibrium unfortunately, is all too often the last.
The stories go on and on and on... Unions may have had their purpose at one point; today, my experience is that they hurt both sides of the table more than they help.
^^ This is spot on.
Generally speaking, large union outfits have self imploded. Why? Bureuacracy at the highest level. The one thing that unions fought for was to have a voice at the table and some structure to protect their members. Due to abuse, negligence, too much red tape and self serving officials, they have outlived their usefulness. In addition states have caught up by adopting many laws that protect workers and companies not too dissimilar to union rights. Unions on the other hand have had a very difficult time in modern times to address these type of changes that truly create a benefit for prospecting worker.
I dont have a problem with the workers themselves. Its like saying ALL politicians are crooked when in fact that is completely false.
I think a good majority of unionized workers WANT to work and contribute.
But as with any large organization that is delivering a service or product, if it fails to keep itself current and flexible it essentially fails to evolve with the changing times.
In other words using mid 20th century tactics and methods for newer generations and work force expectations just doesnt work and hurts both sides.
Generally speaking, large union outfits have self imploded. Why? Bureuacracy at the highest level. The one thing that unions fought for was to have a voice at the table and some structure to protect their members. Due to abuse, negligence, too much red tape and self serving officials, they have outlived their usefulness. In addition states have caught up by adopting many laws that protect workers and companies not too dissimilar to union rights. Unions on the other hand have had a very difficult time in modern times to address these type of changes that truly create a benefit for prospecting worker.
I dont have a problem with the workers themselves. Its like saying ALL politicians are crooked when in fact that is completely false.
I think a good majority of unionized workers WANT to work and contribute.
But as with any large organization that is delivering a service or product, if it fails to keep itself current and flexible it essentially fails to evolve with the changing times.
In other words using mid 20th century tactics and methods for newer generations and work force expectations just doesnt work and hurts both sides.
is it perhaps a case of unions needing more democracy? The fact of union imperfection needs to be addressed by the workers themselves, to take your cues from data that can't be supported is not an acceptable argument tactic and often leads to the notion that this disagreement on unions should revolve around the flaws of unions while never discussing the fact of business excess that brought unions to the fore.
I'd be the first to agree that union
leadership is far from the saintly type. On the other hand I've been on the other side of this coin working twenty years in a trade where we were once unionized and paid well, with benefits that enhanced our lives and that of the community where we spent our dollars, once the union was gone we saw the intent of the bosses to leave us at the old union scale and suffer the effects of inflation with little or no pay raises or benefits. I left that trade and went to a union company where I was offered a great pension and medical coverage, 401K, sick leave, and representation to address the companies intent to lower wages, and gut the benefits. The company I retired from is one of America's premier manufacturing companies. They have tried to rid themselves of the union, their campaign to get the young workers to give up their bargaining rights should reap them the same kind of workforce deflection that other non union companies have experienced, of course once ALL unions are gone they can have their way, this is what the "hate the union" yelping is really all about, a return to the "good ol' days when the boss was king and the worker was nothing but a number.
This from the other side of the anti union perspective, an excerpt from an article that dealt with the question so many have chimed in on..
Are unions increasing production?
" Feb 22nd 2007, 17:44 by The Economist | NEW YORK
IF YOU'VE ever spent time in a union shop, in America at least, it's hard to believe they do. It is not that union workers are lazy, a favourite canard of the right; at least in my experience, union workers are higher quality than you would expect for the job they are doing. However, unions often offer resistance to new work processes that might increase efficiency, and not just ones that would decrease labour demand. A friend whose brother is an engineer for an auto parts supplier often keeps us entertained for hours with stories of the epic (and so far fruitless) battles to do things like install digital gauges, or measure things using the metric system1. Unions also spend a lot of time trying to work in featherbedding provisions to their contracts—forcing companies to use more people than are needed for a given job. This makes perfect sense from the standpoint of the union; more people doing a job means more workers paying dues. But it should put a drag on average productivity. Think of all those GM workers being paid to sit in warehouses, waiting for a job to open up.
But when conservative corporate law blogger Steven Bainbridge avers that, at the very least, unions do not decrease productivity, one must take the argument seriously.
To be sure, unions often do very good work. New York's Local 3 (electricians) is widely known for the slow pace at which union jobs proceed, but also for the extremely high quality of their installations. This is not inconsistent with economic theory. Union electricians get paid more to do the same work, which predicts that they will get more skilled workers than non-union shops, and the workers will be more keen to keep their jobs. Plus the union, eager to prove that there is some sort of value proposition to employing their workers, enforces a higher standard on its members.
Does this bolster the argument you used to hear quite a lot in the late 1980's (and still do from some sectors of the left) that Europe outperforms America because of high unionisation levels? Well, no. First of all, Europe doesn't outperform America, though perhaps that is changing. But also, the economic logic suggests that unions will only keep productivity high so long as they are a relatively small portion of the workforce. If everyone has a high-paying union job, there is no incentive for workers to strive to keep their plum spots. One of the reasons that Local 3 does such a good job is that New York's construction trades work on an ad-hoc basis; even though their tenure in the union is permanent, their tenure with an employer lasts only until the building is completed or the rewiring done. If they want to be hired for the next job, they had better do good wiring on this one. There is also an excess supply of union members over available work, which gives the least competent room to sink out of the labour pool, as well as forcing them to compete with each other to hold the available jobs.
This may explain why some unions are equally well known for their lack of productivity; the American teachers' unions are generally believed (by everyone outside of the teachers' unions) to be the primary obstacle to improving America's appalling public schools.
One possibility is that, to the extent that unions do increase productivity, they do so by forcing less competent workers out of the labour market, because they are not worth union pay. In teaching, where the average wages are nothing special for the target, college educated applicant pool, this doesn't work. Indeed, by compressing wages, it makes the problem worse. In areas where there is an oversupply of graduates, such as English and history, teaching programmes choose from the applicants who have relatively few other opportunities; while in areas like science and math, where almost any qualified applicant has higher-paying alternative opportunities, they face permanent shortages.
Some thoughts on markets where unions will produce higher productivity:
There are opportunities for deploying capital to replace low-skilled labour
The union wage is higher than the average prevailing wage for the workers' cognitive endowments and/or educational level
There are significant transaction costs to finding and retaining labour, such as the construction trades, where it is more efficient to call the union labour hall and tell them to send over 50 guys than hire them individually
The work easily lends itself to classification and regularisation
Productivity is easily measured
Presumably if the good professor is correct, those higher productivity shops offset the lower productivity of union shops elsewhere, producing, on average, no result.
You make some great points. But again, I digress. I was speaking about the LARGE union shops as in AFL-CIO type being bloated, NOT all union shops or locals.
I even went so far as to agree that there are applications where unions really do work. Instead it appears this has become a platform for your own agenda and not the actual OP's intended question.
The issue is that, its the expectations NOW vs the mid to late 20th century push and pro union attitudes and how relevant or useful a union can be in todays society.
My explanation, in its broadest sense seemed pretty straight forward. I still cant believe that a union worker would generalize their own respective industry and still have the audacity to stick up for "Unions" on the whole when its clear the end product across various industries and applications vary.
In other words: One size does not fit all.
Last edited by shmoov_groovzsd; 05-02-2012 at 05:27 PM..
Personally, I wouldn't want to see unions completely disappear from the scene; I mean, it might be instructive to have 1-2% of business activity regulated by the unions and their lazy, overpaid bosses. That would serve like a vaccine against someone floating the idea of unions in the future. Like the smallpox virus, we should keep some around just in case.
Personally, I wouldn't want to see unions completely disappear from the scene; I mean, it might be instructive to have 1-2% of business activity regulated by the unions and their lazy, overpaid bosses. That would serve like a vaccine against someone floating the idea of unions in the future. Like the smallpox virus, we should keep some around just in case.
When you mentioned lazy and overpaid bosses............You surely meant middle and upper level corporate management correct??
When you mentioned lazy and overpaid bosses............You surely meant middle and upper level corporate management correct??
Yup, lazy middle- and upper-level union management. Have to spend those union fees on something more than just prostitutes, mob payoffs, and democratic candidates.
Yup, lazy middle- and upper-level union management. Have to spend those union fees on something more than just prostitutes, mob payoffs, and democratic candidates.
Ho Hum, much of the same old replies that don't measure up as a demonstrable ability to participate in thoughtful discourse. These outdated crybaby repetitious tirades only prove the suspicions of those who have repeatedly called for a real debate on the merits of organized labor, period. The term,"union bosses" being just one of the spins on language being utilized by those with an agenda to depict the union members as some type of sheep being led by the "evil union boss". Of course the corporate bosses role is never brought up by those who would denigrate unions because of personal agendas.
Organized labor will survive and thrive, why? You would have to understand the evolutionary nature of this attempt to level the field by workers, the most oblivious moron should know that the lower classes do not have any power, political, economic, or social, unions, despite their flaws do provide that forum for the lower classes to speak to power.
ALL of the law that protects workers came from the political power that unions represent, this is the crux of what is bothering so many on the right wing, they do want the clock to be turned back, they do want the boss to have the ultimate say in all things pertinent to the well being of workers. Showing their hatred for the unions and not being able to discuss their own thoughts on workers rights, workers democracy groups and other feared intrusions on "their" turf is the real proof of the need for union organization.
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