Re:PG on Unions
by Goladus on Tuesday May 08, 2007 @10:49PM
(#20643)
Three comments.
First, I think Henry Ford deserves a lot of credit for recognizing that manufacturing workers are people, not servers. He was the one who discovered the benefits of the 40-hour work week. I'm not sure how Unions factor into that, but treating workers like people does make economic sense (even if many managers even today still do not recognize this).
In any case, in addition to working for better conditions, Unions grew to combat corruption. Blacklisting, for example: One manufacturer fires an employee for trying to organize workers and puts him on a blacklist, preventing him from being hired by anyone else. This is a fear tactic that has a large destructive power in an economy where collective bargaining is not protected.
Recently, I heard from an acquaintance. He is a manager at a corporation that was putting on presentations about preventing Union organization. During the presentation, they shared a list of reasons employees form unions, and salary was _dead last_. I don't remember all the reasons, but mostly the issues were related to blatant Management disregard for(or mistreatment of) employees.
First, I think Henry Ford deserves a lot of credit for recognizing that manufacturing workers are people, not servers. He was the one who discovered the benefits of the 40-hour work week. I'm not sure how Unions factor into that, but treating workers like people does make economic sense (even if many managers even today still do not recognize this).
In any case, in addition to working for better conditions, Unions grew to combat corruption. Blacklisting, for example: One manufacturer fires an employee for trying to organize workers and puts him on a blacklist, preventing him from being hired by anyone else. This is a fear tactic that has a large destructive power in an economy where collective bargaining is not protected.
Recently, I heard from an acquaintance. He is a manager at a corporation that was putting on presentations about preventing Union organization. During the presentation, they shared a list of reasons employees form unions, and salary was _dead last_. I don't remember all the reasons, but mostly the issues were related to blatant Management disregard for(or mistreatment of) employees.