My sister worked at a charter school. Because of previous labor violations teachers were not allowed to show up before class started (they could only be there for the official class hours). They also were not allowed to stay late after class.

My sister thought this was ridiculous, how was she supposed to setup her classroom and answer questions afterwards? Unfortunately her boss warned her that coming early and staying late was not allowed.

Once unions start adding work rules like this you'll see a push to disable after-hours emails, banning weekend work, etc. So while the trope of the lazy union worker is deeply flawed, there are some problems for workers who want to go above and beyond (and while most non-tech workers don't get extra compensation for unpaid overtime, tech workers who go above and beyond actually are rewarded with equity)

> Because of previous labor violations teachers were not allowed to show up before class started

So the school was expecting teachers to come in early to setup, not paying them for those hours and punishing those that didn't. This isn't a problem created by labor unions, it is a problem created by exploitative companies. And when the company decided how they would address the issue they decided that pre-class preparation wasn't worth paying for.

Would a potential solution to this be to negotiate with the Unions to raise pay but increase hours worked to include the before/after class setup times? I don't know the particulars, but these sort of disputes can often arise due to a perceived slight on pay increases or similar, which leads to things going a bit batty.

This seems like a punishment inflicted by management, not a concession negotiated by the union.

Please don't cross into being a jerk in HN comments. It only makes things worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> If you can't make yourself stand out with the same amount of hours as your coworkers, then maybe you should come to terms with the fact that you just aren't exceptional.

Or perhaps different people prioritize different things and who are you to judge or say otherwise?

This is a tragedy of the commons type situation. When your workaholism infringes on the lives of your coworkers, then your coworkers do have a right to say something.

It doesn't infringe on anything unless you believe everyone must make the same choices you've made. If your employer is making you work long hours because someone else is, that's on your employer, not the employee who is voluntarily working long hours. Nothing is stopping you as an employee from putting in more time if you want to or leaving if you don't, but depriving others of an opportunity to choose their own priorities is not a right anyone has.

Its unreasonable to say that individual exceptionalism is all that matters for success. There needs to be a way for hard work yo matter as well. Perhaps have both union and non-union shops and let employees vote with their feet.

No personal attacks, please, regardless of whether some other comment was being an asshole.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Europeans and union members are so lazy, with their 40 hour work weeks and paid time off and extra compensation for being on-call.