Contrast that with my experience with Unions in Sweden; and that is that they basically don't exist except to ensure that workers rights are not infringed.
So they'll be involved in a termination, or help negotiate overtime pay.
There is no such thing as a "union job", it's just having what's referred to as a "collective agreement".
Yes there are benefits to the worker (esp when your job puts you in harm's way). Yes collective bargaining is awesome. Unions, if run well, are fantastic. In my opinion we tend to mess them up.
"Unions are bad!", no, the concept is fine, you have some bad ones.
"Police are bad!", no, the concept is fine, yours are just untrained and overburdened.
"Public transport is bad, I need a car!", no, the concept is fine, you just have bad public transport and that forms your opinion.
Also, in the context of comparing to other countries, I would think many did not have the land available to spread out in the same way at the time cars were available? I'm just curious how much of this may be related to the timing of the US
We're not going to get different results when we form a union in the US unless we make an attempt to get different results.
I’m just arguing that the concept is fine, and the implementation is corrupted. Removing the corruption would be great but the issue is not the concept itself.
If you think EU unions are great - then you'll need to first educate American union advocates about what they're doing wrong.
E.g. communism.
Im for unions, it beats the current situation, but im weary of the sales pitch.
Even some in the US as some commentators have suggested (Screen Actors Guild being one)
As much as I would like to believe that there is a massive pro-working-class institution in the US that can afford to spend billions per annum on under-the-table PR/propaganda campaigns to shill collective action, it just isn't the case. The MIC on the other hand... putting those socialized taxpayer dollars to work against the evil working class (around the world).
Not american.
Ps, i was not saying communism == unions. Thats fucking retarded on so many levels.
Hell maybe they all do. Maybe that is why modern day democracy actually works (checks and balances) and has very little to do with comunism vs capitalism.
https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/31/movies/review-film-a-wiza...
One of the liveliest things about ''The Wizard of Speed and Time,'' aside from the frantic Mr. Jittlov himself, is the film's animosity toward Hollywood in general and the movie unions in particular. Mr. Jittlov, who himself resigned from the Directors' Guild in order to make this film free of union requirements, includes a sequence in which he visits one union office after another, being told in each that he must play by expensive and archaic rules if he expects to play this game at all.
When he tries to rent studio space, he is given a list of costs right down to the fee for a parking space, and winds up shooting in his own garage. And when he films an outdoor sequence in a park, a helicopter appears overhead with a loudspeaker to chastise him for trying to film without a permit. ''Maybe I shouldn't make films for a living,'' he muses dejectedly at one point. ''I've got a bicycle. I could deliver Steve's Pizzas.''
Historically they were a often a feudal "link" of control for administration. They meet with the head haberdasher to discuss carrots and sticks of taxation and licensing so they pay willingly and let them shout about unlicensed competitors instead of trying to chase down every last haberdasher to tax.
Unions are more "if you piss off every affiliated habberdasher in the city they refuse to make hats until their demands are met".
American systems are not dependable, intercity and interstate travel is often not punctual to the point of futility.
There are very few examples that prove me wrong here (probably NYC<->NJ links being an exception)
Travelling around Los Angeles is just not possible, the buses are disgusting when they actually work and the time tables may as well be dinner menu's for value they bring.
Getting to LA from San Francisco required a coach, the coach was 8hrs late. There were no trains.
Going from NYC to Philadelphia by train cost me $300, when I returned it cost me $82 and was delayed by 4hrs.
Travelling around NYC using their underground was "ok" from a dependability standpoint; though I saw human excrement on many occasions, in one case it was smeared entirely on one of the benches where passengers usually sit.
I consider American public transport to be pretty poor. Where it is punctual it is disgustingly unhygienic. Where it is hygienic it is prohibitively expensive and non-punctual.
The rail networks prioritise freight and lines are fragmented heavily- it is common for one line of track to have several different owners as it progresses through a state. This causes delays as they do not seem to cooperate in using the tracks effectively, or delays from the use of a line causes cascading delays.
I've lived in Finland, England and Sweden- and I have travelled most of Europe (NL, DE, DK, FR, ESP) and have found public transport to be mostly punctual, in some cases it's actually "dependable" as in, I can rely on public transport getting me to my destination in a precise amount of time (+/- 10 mins).
This is definitely not the case in the USA outside of a few very major cities.
“Many occasions” sounds like BS to me. Until the pandemic I rode the subway at least 12 times a week, every week for the past 22 years, and only saw human excrement twice (and one time it was actually a pretty funny story.)
I do slightly suspect that peak hours are more cleanly than non-peak time due to various economic reasons.
But I saw:
* poopy seat (when I got on the train at JFK)
* little human sized nugger, near the door, nearly stood in it as I disembarked a train near penn station.
* sticky urine floor near the door, which took me a good 1m30s to realise was definitely male human urine as I inspected the piss marks up the side of the door that I was pressed against during a busy ride.
Next time don't take Amtrack. Using NJ Transit from NY Penn to Trenton then transfer to SEPTA train into Philly will be < $30. The delays are unavoidable if something is broken.
That was such a good experience, even the tickrt app brought me joy.
Alongside that you also have (putting aside the longstanding battle between them) a plethora of on-demand taxi services.
There are decent (although not high speed) train connections to most other major cities in the UK and even to continental Europe, there's an airport literally 10 minute car ride from the financial district, and two major European airports under 30 mins train ride away (obviously all dependent on your starting location within the metro area).
As an integrated system it's not perfect, but I'd certainly argue it's a viable aspiration for many cities to hit "good".
Admittedly sometimes I'd fall asleep and miss my stop.
With that said, I have lived in the following places for more than a year, and found the public transportation to be good, if not excellent.
- Paris, France
- Lyon, France
- London, UK
- Amsterdam, NL
- Bayreuth, DE
Despite some well-known problems in some of these places (strikes in Paris comes readily to mind), the advantages remain enormous:
- Reduced motor vehicle circulation in the city
- A high degree of mobility at a moment's notice
- The ability to move around without breaking a sweat (sadly important when going to a meeting in a suit)
- The ability to get home while inebriated
- The ability for suburban (read: underprivileged) employees to participate in the heart of the regional economy
The list goes on...
Could you start a new kind of union as a kind of non-profit startup?
If I wanted to do this I'd leverage modern information technology to create covert communication channels for organizing and leverage big data, machine learning, and game theory to drive organization and bargaining strategies. You could apply pressure across supply chains, not just in individual industries, and you could really be quite a pain in the ass. Cambridge Analytica for the working class?
Also ditch the work rules and other antiquated industrial era ideas. Just go for pure financial and quality of life outcome. Work with industries if they're willing to play ball, but be a major pain in the ass when they don't. Negotiate, you know.
Honestly the hacker in me would be tempted if I had the time, skills, background, and connections. It would be a chance to wear a black hat and feel good about it. :)
If you did this you'd also have to be damn serious about opsec and tradecraft. When you threaten to increase labor costs, the gloves come off. I'd be about as worried about security doing this as I'd be running a dark web drug market.
It would really help if people would just use some qualifiers "US Unions", "US Police", "US Public transport", "US government".
The 'left' argues for unions based on the concept. The 'right' argues against them based on their execution. So we go round and round and round and round because neither is willing to consider or admit that we might be talking past each other.
Makes for great web traffic though.
The point is: many (most?) first-world countries have unions that work well overall. Same with police departments.
What you're describing are putative reasons why the American execution is a failure.
Sure, I'll freely admit that unions have worked very well other places, but the US seems to blow it every darn time. Why would this time be different?
Why assume that the day after a tech union is invented, suddenly you're stuck with a massive clanking bureaucracy that's identical to the ones that were formed in very different industries many decades ago?
Q: "Why is X so bad?"
A: "You're doing it wrong"
Could it also be that Y is always/sometimes just better?
The last two generations of western civilization were raised, out of good intentions, to be culture blind, and now with what's happening in the country we are seeing the result.
We should seek to raise rights and standards of living for all people. The focus on whether other people have cultures compatible with specific forms of government seems very suspect. Such talk keeps people down. Self-determination is a human right; therefore, it is a society’s right to determine government and culture. Your focus on culture is very strange; it suggests that the culture is a thing that justifies itself independent of the people. The culture is a thing people live and do. Your phrasing makes culture seem insidious, seeking to resist changes to status quo. Some monoculture advocates reject alternative cultures and seek to outcompete them. By implying there are singular cultures, you wipe away self-determination.
I don't know where to start with this comment. Perhaps you should stop grouping arguments by stereotype.
At an individual level, different people require different interventions, because they have different personalities. Some people can handle responsibility. Some people need financial motivation. Some people respond to love. Others best learn through violence or fear (I was far too smart to listen to my parents until they threatened a spanking, for example).
If you take all of these different personalities and force them to live under together under a single set of rules, regardless of whether their needs are met, they will compete, if not for resources them for social clout. It is human nature. Particularly in a universe where resources are scarce and time is short.
Though large scale human interaction has a normalizing effect, within the high dimensional space of human belief and behavior there is ample room for these same micro behaviors to be reflected by macroscale cultural trends. And, similarly, because the "ideal" form of government depends ultimately on widely varying beliefs, forcing multiple peoples with significant cultural distance will inevitably lead to inequality and clash - this is not a statement of superiority, sand though it can be used as part justification for some of the antisocial beliefs you raised, that doesn't mean it isn't untrue or that these real problems that we are seeing emerge across the world will simply go away if we ignore them. This pattern has been repeated across time and space and is an unnecessary source of unacknowledged strife in the modern world.
That’s why I drew the logical connection to authoritarian concepts. No one is forcing anyone to be more free. That would be impossible. Freedom is a choice one makes for oneself, individually. Keeping someone from being free can be forced upon another. Society can do this collectively through laws. These are nuanced differences between freedoms and liberties, which some people don’t have.
I don’t know why you focus on the culture when people are why the culture exists as it does, not the other way around. The status quo benefits from dominant culture and from keeping established power structures in place. You can’t use the culture as an argument to justify a form of government that removes human rights. Just like I can’t sign a contract that gives up my Constitutional rights. Those in less free countries are not given the choice of more freedom.
Those definitions should be loosened in an office setting, rather than dismissing the entire idea of a union.
They have real experiences of a union in their company. You have examples of unions in your country. Who is correct?
If your answer is yourself, then you're not understanding the point or the concern that people who are against unions have. It doesn't matter if Sweden implemented it well and somewhere else implemented it poorly. Bottom line is that the poorly-implemented scenario can happen, does happen, and in fact happens more often than anecdata of "oh no true union does that".
Unless you can propose a foolproof way that the "wrong way" is always prevented, then you will get opposition to your beliefs. Calling people or things stupid doesn't solve that.
Don't like your deal, which doesn't let everyone move tables? Negotiate a new one. Maybe you can offer them something they'd rather want instead.
Having a let hostile environment also let smaller, more agile unions thrive, instead of forcing them to all join together.
I won't retort with a similarly vulgar comment because:
1. we probably agree on the value of unions
2. I understand your exasperation with American ignorance and cultural bias on the subject
3. it's not constructive
However, it brings me no joy to assert that you are dead wrong. Union jobs can and do exist in places. The deleterious nature of these jobs is a subject of frequent debate in France: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_syndical
"Ignorance and bias" is apparently now equivalent to "decades of experience that differ from your preferred reality".
Unions in America are clearly a dumpster fire, but only someone profoundly ignorant (and arrogant, to boot) could claim that unions are a failed concept.
If you don't have these kinds of things in the contract, what can sometimes happen is a situation where all the "monitor movers" are unionized, but then management hires a new "screen transporter" for $10 an hour who isn't in the union.
Broadly summarizing, the potential for the remaining tie-breaker to defect to either side tends to keep participants honest, even if they're bitterly opposed.
Often you find yourself in a situation where nobody can win, but anyone can choose who wins if they commit to losing.
Unfortunately, it's rare all three participants realize the situation.
You can say "unions are a no brainer - America is so backwards not to have them".
I can say "unions are awful and poisonous to a company."
...and given the different definition of "union", we are each correct within our national context, but often incorrect when saying it online.
US unions != EU unions.
[0] Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
As a result, it's a race to the bottom as governors try to pursue business-friendly policies to attract jobs. And on the other "side", to pursue union-friendly policies to attract votes.
Both of which tug decisions to the extremes, the better to win their base, rather than seeking compromise that's acceptable to both parties.
One reason proletarian internationalism remained a hotly debated topic in communist theory for decades.
I find it fascinating, particularly in a country like America where democracy is a core part of our being.
Unions allow people to vote on their own preferences, then use their collective voice to negotiate. If you don’t like some bullshit union practice, then that is the fault of the people in it not the unions themselves.
Power perpetuates power
Eric: It isn't if you can't go and work somewhere else.
— J. B. Priestley
Not everyone is in a position to find another job. And what do you do if the best place you can work is still rubbish? What if you're an ISP tech?
Okay, sarcasm aside; I've worked for many different tech companies and good managers are exceptionally rare and there is no pressure from the top to change that, and pressure from the bottom doesn't work. There is, however, a lot of pressure to not fire or demote managers as it looks bad for the management above them.
You can’t get rid of power, just redistribute it. As flawed as democracy is, that’s what it attempts to do.
Or do we want to get rid of governments? ;)
In that case I’ll happily make the same snarky comment about whatever collection of humans accrue and then abuse power in our new government-free society.
People are naturally social. There will always be power, wielded in one way or another. But we have and will figure out schemes to wield it in a to benefit the many more than the few.
For seemingly silly rules like the ones you're describing, the union is attempting to protect jobs and hours.
I wish my union was more like some European unions I've read about, where they're involved in the decision-making process. Mine fights for wages, positions, and conditions, but management decides how things work - so long as they're not violating the agreed-upon conditions. I expect your workplace is similar. Instead of mapping out a path with management, my union reacts to the path set out by management, and I think a lot of the weird rules come as a result of reacting, rather than helping to create.
I also think this sort of collaboration would be better for companies, particularly larger companies, where there is a disconnect from how things actually work and how corporate thinks they work. We have this particularly terrible piece of machinery that corporate is obsessed with justifying. We have other machines that do its jobs better, but it does the jobs of many machines - just much worse. It just wastes a lot of time, but corporate incentiveses management to use it, and when discussing the POS machine, management cites those incentives as reasons for why the machine is actually good. When you say, "Yes, but how does wasting all this time using this particular machine help the company?" management highlights the incentives.
Maybe that's true of low labor jobs, but Employees in six figure jobs have tremendous power.
One of the reasons companies try to create anti-potching rules is exactly to try to get back some power.
The unemployment rate in the US was 4% prior to covid, and even lower for tech and white collar desk jobs.
This issue simply must take a back seat to bigger problems in America.
What if labor rights is actually the single biggest problem that drives all the others?
I can think of things like a higher minimum wage, paid sick leave, anti-discrimination in hiring, maternity/paternity leave, and guaranteed PTO that could be helped by unionization to make us a stronger country, collectively.
And no, leveraging a union to force your company to drop a controversial customer has absolutely nothing to do with labor rights, that's just taking advantage of a organization your tribe happens to control
Unions could absolutely have an impact on racial discrimination and wealth disparities.
[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-walmart-the-ceo-makes-1-188-...
It's okay, society can handle more than one issue at a time.
1. https://www.wired.com/story/how-kickstarter-employees-formed...
You may be right. I don't know enough about those specific dynamics to argue against it. It doesn't feel right to me, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. It does bring to mind professional sports in the US - Football, Basketball, and Baseball. All have player unions, and all have players that make six figures at minimum, with a fair amount making tens or millions and some making hundreds of millions. But, the NFL is famous for having the most toothless union, and, as a result, its players have the worst contracts/conditions - by a wide margin. It seems to me that unions could still help people who make six figures.
One issue I saw with the pre-Covid job market is that it's too often all or none. Either you spend a ton of time and resources getting a position that pays well and then asks you to work 60+ hours a week, or you take a job that lets you scrape by (even if those positions still ask its workers to put in a lot of hours). It's hard to find balance in either situation, and unions could help restore some of that balance to both situations.
>One of the reasons companies try to create anti-potching rules is exactly to try to get back some power.
What I've read indicates that anti-poching rules are BS. They seem to exist so that employers can control their employees without adequately compensating them. Pay for talent or let it walk.
>The unemployment rate in the US was 4% prior to covid, and even lower for tech and white collar desk jobs.
Beside the point, but the 4% figure doesn't account for gig work, underemployment, or people who have stopped trying. I believe you, and it makes sense, that white collar desk jobs would be in better shape than lower-class positions.
>This issue simply must take a back seat to bigger problems in America.
The hollowing of the middle class is as big as any issue imo, and if we prioritize building the middle class, it will aid in solving many of our other issues. As far as I can tell, nothing would help bring people out of poverty more than a strong union presence.
Are your union members actually paid by the hour or are these hours tracked to justify/demand a certain headcount of salaried union members?
The tracking of work affects future contracts, though, because management (particularly at the corporate level) is continually looking to cut hours and positions, and the union looks to justify keeping them.
In non-union jobs I've worked, those hours/positions get cut without meaningful pushback, and the workers left were forced to do more work without receiving more compensation.
Most of the time? Some degree? Any union that does not represent its members to the best of its ability is not a good union.
That's also why it's vital that no single union has a monopoly on a certain type of work; if union members are unhappy with their union, they need to be able to leave and join or start a new one.
This is as naive as saying that "any good country does not represent it's population" and then therefore expecting good governments.
> That's also why it's vital that no single union has a monopoly on a certain type of work; if union members are unhappy with their union, they need to be able to leave and join or start a new one.
Again, the reality on the ground is one of union monopolies. Union power derives from its collective bargaining power - so separate unions always end up merging and union bosses always end up as major power brokers, accountable to no one.
Many countries have healthy unions. The problem in the US is not the concept of unions, it's the American concept of unions. It's how the US goes about dealing with unions. That's the thing that needs to change. Claiming that all unions are bad when that is clearly not the case, is a nonsense argument.
This is the case for many corporations, leading to corporate mergers too, accountable to no one. That's why we have mechanisms to deal with it. Some mergers must be approved by the government. Sometimes companies are split up. We just need to apply the same regulations around anticompetitive behavior and monopolies to unions, so that we can have unions while keeping them from being all encompassing.
I absolutely agree, but there are unions and unions. The SDA in Australia for instance is, for some members, useless, and for other members actually harmful - but it has been effective at winning better conditions for some workers. (SDA isn't the best example because RAFFWU, which is another union founded by workers and organisers who believe that SDA has failed workers, does a better job everywhere it goes.) A good union is better than a bad union, and a bad union is often but not always better than no union.
I also agree that unionised workers need to be able to effectively organise, which might involve starting a new union. That being said, union turf wars can devastate actual efforts to better conditions because of issues that could be resolved without splitting the union. The best reason to pack up shop and set up a new union is because the union doesn't have an effective means to, or a culture of, internal democracy, which means problems with the way the union is run can't be addressed. But if a union does have this, it's better to 'work within the system.'
There absolutely are legitimate reasons to not want to join a union.
However, “both sides can be right” so to speak, whitewashes (word chosen deliberately) away the historical fact and current reality of systemic suppression of and propaganda against union organizing by US workers.
Let us review GM.
They knew they needed to cut down product, would the union let them?
They knew they needed automation as their labour costs are too high.
The union position was always the same, use the profits from some cars to subsidize the losses from others. How long can that go on for when you continue to lose marketshare?
Their pension is a mess as fewer and fewer workers are supporting it.
Or, you can review Daewoo motors (sold to GM).
The banks flat out told them to cut costs or no loans and they would go bankrupt. Did the unions agree to anything?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre
I feel like your point, although containin validity, kinda misses the forests for the trees w/regards to what I was trying to express.
By no means am I claiming every particular union is perfect. What I am claiming is that organized labor is, at present, an important way for people in the working class (which really does include us white-collar knowledge professionals, at the end of the day) to gather power and use it to negotiate decent pay, humane treatment, fair treatment, etc, when there's a long and very visible history of the folks in positions of management and power being very comfortable with exploiting and abusing the employees of their own companies, if they can get away with it.
Unions are a means, not an end -- like government. Like the market.
This is known as a 'closed shop' in the UK. Closed shops are not synonymous or required for unions to function.
Case in point: my girlfriend's workplace has been recently purchased by a multinational. Everything fine and well, until they had to pay her. Her monthly salary was cut by about €400 because they refuse to pay past overtime work (which is perfectly legal here, was required by the old employer and was 100% documented). She then gathered with her colleagues and they decided to sign up with an union to put some pressure to the new employer. It happened last week so I have no more news. Anyway, that's what unions are for, at least over here; they shouldn't be used to move furniture or things like that.
Unions, unlike in Europe, function to protect hours for hourly workers, carve out job functions for union-only work, set standardized salaries, and prevent dismissals. Historically they did a lot more with worker safety, but that's been taken over by the federal gov't (OSHA).
It's just not comparable to the EU. The words almost mean entirely different things - and that's why talking about it in this forum can be very confusing, and often needlessly antagonistic - because the words just don't mean the same thing.
They can be, undoubtedly.
But don't forget the times when they go into bat to defend the rights of workers who have been treated badly by their employers - whether during employment or when they have been made redundant and procedures have not been followed correctly. When you're a part-time worker who is in a union who has very little input in your day-to-day work, but they come to your rescue with a considerable amount of legal muscle behind you in such a situation, the £10 a month you've paid them looks like very good value indeed.
I totally get that unions can be the embodiment of self-protection and bureaucracy, and can lead to expensive and crazy situations (indeed when I see some union leaders here in the UK it appears that is their desire). But that isn't all they are there for - they can also help the little guy out when their back is against the wall.
when i was in my early 20's and unaware of how the world worked i had a job as a contract IT guy at a very well known Power company. People would call me up with their problems and i would fix them. After a few months, somone took me aside and explained to me that they are really bad, as they are "using" me to avoid having to deal with other unions to do this work. I was simply unaware that "plugging in a network cable" was a union job and i just did it as it was easy enought.
The sad thing is it was union employees attempting to avoid other union employees...
That being said, there are some obvious counter-arguments to your experiences, however they tend towards "guilds" as mentioned in another comment more than unions as I understand them.
> Oh, you want to move that folding table and a few chairs to the conference room so you can have a design meeting with the whole team? Sorry furniture movement is union-only work.
Bob grabs the table and lifts with his back, in a twisting, jerking movement. Bob is then unable to come in to work due to back pain for the next two weeks. The union keeps Bob from hurting himself unintentionally.
> Need that extra monitor moved between two adjacent cubes? Sorry, equipment relocation is union work.
Someone notices that a bunch of monitors have gone missing. Have you been burgled?! Noone has any record of where these monitors have gone, however you eventually track then down to Alice's cube where she has finally completed her dream 9-monitor nest. Phew, false alarm!
> Need to plug that new PC into the socket? Sorry, equipment installation is a union job
It gets cold in the winter, so Dan brings their own heater to put under their desk[1]. One day they forget to turn it off when going home and burns down the department; On the other side new employees don't just materialise out of the ether. The organisation should have plenty of time to set up their working environment
[1] Funnily enough, if Dan was part of a union they would have enough bargaining power to make sure their employers provide adequate working conditions, however their manager simply filed away their request away under 'C', for "Complainers - Fire these people first"
I'm totally on your side about these examples being ridiculous, but I do like to steelman the other-sides arguments
Now introduce a powerful union - and now you have TWO incompetent authorities fighting one another, which often results in a hopelessly ineffective company - not a better one.
I appreciate the humor in your responses - but the difference is that my examples were real-world examples - not theoretical.
A company cannot put process in front of every theoretical risk - that will just run you into the ground because an unbounded inefficiency.
For anyone who thinks that this is just hyperbole, it's exactly the sort of thing that happens.
When I worked at a unionized television station, I was watching an aircheck of a recent broadcast. When I was done, I ejected the tape and put it back into the archive.
The union filed a grievance against me for pressing the eject button. As a manager, I could use Play, Stop, and the shuttle controls, but not Eject. Only a union member could eject a tape.
At another television station where I worked, there was an employee retiring after 30 years with the station, and we thought it would be cute to show a ten-second clip of him working while the anchors said goodbye and thanks. It never happened. He worked upstairs, in the tech center, and the members of the photographers union weren't allowed to operate any electronic equipment up there because that was the province of a different union. This included working their own cameras. At the same time, the people who worked in the tech center weren't allowed to operate any of the station's cameras, because that was the domain of the photographer's union. As I said, we were never able to air a clip of this good employee doing his job.
At another television station, I worked weekends. Naturally, I was expected to work five days a week like every other employee. So I was assigned to help write during three weekdays. A union grievance was filed against me for taking a theoretical writer's job. The result was that for the next FIVE YEARS, I did nothing three days a week but look at lolcats, and the station had to keep paying me my full salary.
I'm not anti-union. I think unions are essential for coal miners, maids, janitors, and other people. But I'm not convinced that white collar people need unions. Or at least there should be a method of calling out and publicizing union abuses to let their members know what's going on.
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/30/business/japan-s-producti...
People throw the word "union" around a lot with their support, not knowing that it's not the same everywhere.
No, it is the responsibility of the laws surrounding unions in USA. They give ample of protections ensuring you can't easily oust or change bad unions. Even worse the left is championing anti worker laws like banning "right to work", a right that everyone in EU has which protects workers from bad unions, but somehow in USA "right to work" is anti union.
Companies that operate this way must be in slow paced industries. To innovate you must be able to just do stuff. As soon as you add a bunch of hoops and sign-offs you lose momentum.
My own hypothesis on this is that it's not just a matter of high overhead but of slowing things down to the point that it breaks the dopamine reinforcement loop for the human beings involved. Humans need to be able to see results or at least movement toward them in a reasonable amount of time or it becomes really difficult to stay focused and engaged.
The work rules and bureaucracy element is like 100% of my skepticism about unions. Get rid of that stuff and I'd be all for them.
That being said, unions aren't the only source of inane bureaucracy of course. Many organizations without unions manage to invent worthless tar pits of their own.
1. Vow never to work in the software industry.
2. Allow that perhaps mine is a bad example, that there might be good software shops to work in, and wait for more data.
Though I would not fault anyone for choosing #1.
Does it really, though? Because literally every one of your complaints above would be solved, if your companies employees stopped actively fighting the union, and just simply joined it instead.
Have you ever been involved with trade show setup? The trade show unions have elaborate rules about work attendees can and cannot do for themselves.
At low-budget startups, we built our trade show booths ourselves. We had to carefully read the union rules during booth design so we made sure we could install our lighting without the use of a ladder and tools, for example. We used a lot of tool-less fasteners and kept everything low enough that our tallest person could reach it without standing on anything, because otherwise it would trigger union labor rules that required us to pay extra and wait for the union labor to get around to our booth.
Sure enough, on the trade show floor we had a union member watching us to make sure we didn’t get up on a ladder or use tools when installing certain pieces of equipment. Presumably they were getting paid to monitor us and ensure we didn’t actually do any of the forbidden work ourselves.
This is the inefficiency that people see when they think of unions. That inefficiency isn’t going away, because it’s central to how unions maximize income for their members. That inefficiency is why many developers don’t want to form or join unions.
I'm trying to think of how this is different than how the mob operates but I'm at a loss.
I could have gone to Best Buy, bought what I needed, installed it, and been back at work in an hour. Sigh. So I limped along.
A month later, along comes the new RAM and gets installed. But I was long done with the project that needed it.
Anyway, no fan of unions that get their feelers into every crack, in an attempt to pad union jobs. I am definitely in favor of some feedback that helps them be useful and productive - time-to-response on tickets for instance, that affected their pay maybe. Then we might all be happier.
<edit> Sure unions are not the only ones doing this. But unions are doing this. So its 'fair' to blame them.</edit>
EDIT: Non-union shops are just as culpable in the deficiencies you describe (creating and defending bureaucracies from innovation or creative destruction), which is why your pejorative opinion of unions poisons the ability to have a legitimate conversation regarding their benefits to workers (who have very little power against corporations). Unions have challenges, but all organizations of people have challenges.
It'd be fair to say, its union supporters that can't have a meaningful discussion. Because they have a chip on their shoulders. So discussing the negative is instantly off the table.
Anyway, I've worked my whole career free of that particular brand of dysfunctional organization. Worked with guys who were part of them, including one 'enforcer' who's whole job was to threaten other employees into line on critical votes. How's that for dysfunctional?
Imagine you did get your RAM in time, or could have bought it and expensed it. ...then you had to raise ANOTHER 2 week ticket to have it installed in your computer.
I also would like more realistic examples of bureaucracy, because yours are frankly bullshit. Yeah yeah the MTA is bad sure, and I've interacted with unions before that exemplified their stereotypes. But if you really think employees would suddenly not be able to plug in a monitor or move it across the room because there's a union, I think you're completely incorrect.
These were real examples that infuriated everyone. I also think they're bullshit. That's what made them infuriating.
> How does that work at a large company that's already bureaucratic?
It effectively doubles the amount of bureaucracy, because it adds to the list of work that requires a ticket.
> I still have to wait a long time for new equipment.
Do the examples in the comment above currently require a ticket? Plugging in a computer? Carrying a monitor one cube over? Grabbing some chairs from another office? I suspect not.
That's not a union, that's a guild. A medieval-style guild has a monopoly on a certain type of work. A union merely represents its members in workplace negotiations.
Because the argument "the wrong way is the only right way" makes no sense. If it's wrong, you fix it. Being forced to choose between two wrongs is no good.
I worked at a unionised company in the UK and the CWU would have got short shrift if they Tried that with my members (I was Branch's secretary For the M&P union)
What about the Writers Guild and the NBA players union? Would the people in those unions say that?
Semi-genuinely asking? ;)
Or, is this a hypothetical, rational-actor thought experiment you're conducting?
A UBI can possibly help prevent this type of silliness.
Ironically the best examples that come to mind are Uber and some other start ups which manage to both pay terribly and be hardly viable businesses.
UBW would probably work best in a productive sense in a massive stack of prespecified mini-jobs that could be done without supervision like "mow this section's grass, paint this fence".
The Soviet economy tended to have supply side issues - everyone had enough money but getting things to buy was difficult.
I'm not sure how the two are really related and it's a deep and interesting thing to study which I haven't really done. So I don't know all the nuances but that would be an actual example of it.
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/16/basic-income-not-basic...
I'm not so sure. That's a handwave past social issues, and sounds like a bandaid-for-a-bandaid.
So if we give UBI out, can I suddenly plug my monitor into a socket without violating a union contract?
At my company, the majority (all?) employees in my local office are un-unionised. We have the same system (it's just departmental). This is a system that emerges in large old bureaucracies regardless.
Which is why it's present in many unions tracing their formation back to the early 20th century. They're big and they're old.
Anyone who's actually had to deal with a union can agree with this point.
At our company, a number of job functions are union-only work, meaning it is a violation of the union contract for any non-union employee to perform that work.
In principle, you might think that makes sense, until you need to get something very simple done - that you are willing to do yourself and cannot.
It becomes infuriating. Need to plug that new PC into the socket? Sorry, equipment installation is a union job. But the new employee can't start if the new PC on his desk isn't plugged in? Tough shit - please put in a requisition and it'll get scheduled within the 48hr SLA, and completed in 7-10 business days.
Need that extra monitor moved between two adjacent cubes? Sorry, equipment relocation is union work. If you do it yourself, you'll be fired. But it's just a monitor, you say? Tough shit - please put in a requisition and it'll get scheduled within the 48hr SLA, and completed in 7-10 business days.
Oh, you want to move that folding table and a few chairs to the conference room so you can have a design meeting with the whole team? Sorry furniture movement is union-only work. But it'll take me literally 10 minutes and the alternative is to cancel the meeting. Tough shit - please put in a requisition and it'll get scheduled within the 48hr SLA, and completed in 7-10 business days.
These are real examples at my company - I didn't make them up.
So what's the ultimate outcome here? Employees obviously look for ways to circumvent the union. Then the union finds out and sends a few reps in to take pictures of things that have been touched/moved by non-union workers, and sends it to their lawyers (paid for by union dues). The lawyers then send formal notices that the company has violated the company contract, and notices go out to the whole company - union workers get all riled up that the company isn't respecting them, and non-union workers roll their eyes and vow never to work for another unionized company again. Bad feelings all around & Giant waste of everyone's time.
The alternative to carving out job functions for union workers, is to force everyone to unionize - and that's got its own problems.
Unions are great in unsafe industries in an unregulated market - ie. 1940's coal mines (extreme example). Six figured desk jobs can manage with some reasonable labor laws made at the State level. A union is a huge additional layer of bureaucracy.