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Whether you support unions or not, whether you see union membership as a means to secure a bigger piece of the pie or not, this article is informative, take the time to read it through for a better understanding of the union/non-union issue. I found it interesting to see where the money comes from.
The need for unions is driven by the overall employer/employee situation, including its scale. The need for unionizing most jobs has been irrelevant for decades; it's almost entirely commodity/low-level workers like kitchen, janitorial and maintenance staff that are still "successfully" unionized in the traditional sense. Public employee unions have held on only through sheer muscle and are as irrelevant today as any for tech workers or professionals.
But the times, they are a-changin'. When competition for all jobs gets intense, look for a widespread return of collective bargaining and job management outside employer control. Possibly a bit more like guilds than traditional labor unions, since it will be a unique situation - unique in modern times, if not across all history.
The industry I worked in was extremely competitive with the cost of doing business rising quicker than the profit margins. The unions only benefited the older and slower, more expensive workers and did very little for the business itself. The business had no choice but to try to do away with the union or make radical reforms if it wanted to survive.
Unions are largely dead in America, but still flourish in other countries in particular Europe. In Germany even the McDonalds workers are unionized.
The public employees have NY firmly in their grip. The state is run for their benefit. It's their ATM. At this time of year, budget time, TV is saturated with ads from the prison guard unions, professor unions, hospital unions, any union that feeds at the public trough reminding everyone how great they are. And reminding the pols how powerful.
Somehow, Germany and its unions work differently. The unions make it tough on VW, Benz and others in global markets but they still do ok. (Although more and more auto plants are going foreign countries.) You don't see burned out hulks like Detroit or Youngstown blighting the landscape.
They have some kind of industry-wide bargaining. Wages are set for the whole car industry, e.g. In the US, the UAW used pattern bargaining, which was similar but they'd pick the strongest company to set the pattern and the others (i.e., Chrysler) would have to follow or be struck. This caused Chrysler's bankruptcy.
We should study Germany's and Japan's union set up and see what we could learn from them.
Public employee unions are one of the stupidest ideas ever invented by mankind. Do the taxpayers get to sit across the bargaining table from the union reps?
I'm not sure the supreme court case will do all that much even if they strike down "fair riders."
Anyone in a public sector job would have to be stupid to opt out of supporting the only organization fighting for them to have retirement and health care.
Just look at the posts here. Every public employee could kiss their pension and health insurance goodbye, not to mention get a pay cut to minimum wage, if these people had their way.
Newsflash: Public sector workers are paid more because it overwhelmingly hires college graduates. There aren't that many publicly held retailers or restaurants where you have a lot of unskilled workers.
The public sector is what hires people like geomorphologists. Jack in the Box doesn't need that many.
Just look at the posts here. Every public employee could kiss their pension and health insurance goodbye, not to mention get a pay cut to minimum wage, if these people had their way.
Newsflash: Public sector workers are paid more because it overwhelmingly hires college graduates. There aren't that many publicly held retailers or restaurants where you have a lot of unskilled workers.
The public sector is what hires people like geomorphologists. Jack in the Box doesn't need that many.
Public employees used to be paid less. The tradeoff was that they got better benefits and pensions. Now, they are paid more and still have better benefits and pension. Government jobs were for the unambitious, the slightly less competent who still needed a way to make a living.
Geomorphologist probably deserves the obscurity it enjoys. This is a favorite tactic of public employers and employees: make up impressive sounding job titles that imply serious responsibility and deep knowledge when the reality is pencil pushing and daydreaming.
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