What’s in the collective best interest may not match with what’s in the individual best interest. Perhaps unions are more likely to be in the self interest of the below average employees, the ones with no negotiating power. The best school teachers are almost certainly being held back by their unions and the worst ones are getting a free pass. When I worked at a unionized place I was blocked from an opportunity my employer offered me because it was better than what the standard negotiated terms were.
The rising tide lifts all boats.
Denying people agency and power in their negotiation by claiming they are "not as good as someone else" is antithetical to the struggle of labor - work deserves to be compensated fairly.
>When I worked at a unionized place I was blocked from an opportunity my employer offered me because it was better than what the standard negotiated terms were
Your union blocked this because your employer was trying to break your unions negotiating power by separating your interests from the collective workforce. If people who are sympathetic to management and accept that they will be compensated greater by acting against the interests of the labor union, the union should block these promotions. If you don't want to protect your coworkers by negotiating with them, then you must be interested in exploiting them by negotiating against them. Labor is a zero sum game.
> Your union blocked this because your employer was trying to break your unions negotiating power by separating your interests from the collective workforce.
Be that as it may, for this specific employee the union was a negative. In effect, he is asked to sacrifice for the collective. It's understandable that that's acceptable to the collective, but it's also not hard to see why the sacrifice wouldn't like that.
> The rising tide lifts all boats.
Apparently not ALL boats.
Representation under a union is voluntary, and if an employee doesn't wish to be represented by that union, they may quit. I'm sure there are some other means of avoiding union representation in unionized workplaces in the US, but I don't know the speciics of them. This is generally called strikebreaking, though the act of working with a company outside of its unionized workforce isn't strongly defined outside the terms of a labor strike. Similarly to agreeing to the employment contract, agreeing to the union contract is binding and one ought to agree to its terms, which may be vague enough to state things such as "advancement in career title and duties may be subject to discretion of the union", or other similar terms. If you don't want to be represented by a union, you should choose not to be.
The tide is a local water level; every boat on the water is lifted by the tide. A swell or wave may lift one boat, regardless of tide.
>> Representation under a union is voluntary, and if an employee doesn't wish to be represented by that union, they may quit.
Come on, that's not voluntary in any true sense - especially since the same justification could be made for not having a union in the first place!
>Denying people agency and power in their negotiation by claiming they are "not as good as someone else" is antithetical to the struggle of labor - work deserves to be compensated fairly.
Labor is not a homogenous block. A huge chunk of workers are lazy as fuck and only do the bare minimum; it's unfair for people who work hard that their compensation should be lowered just so the lazy ones can be paid more. And lowered it must be, because a company only can only afford a certain total amount of spending on wages, so if the shirkers must be paid more than the hard workers must be paid less. It's not exploitation to pay the bare minimum possible to someone who puts in the bare minimum of effort.
Any company is free to hire whoever it cares at its own discretion, and in most (49/50) US states fire them without cause; perhaps due diligence is required of companies that are unionized to ensure that they are investing wisely in the labor they pay for, rather than accepting that all labor must be paid less on the argument that maybe it is of poorer quality than desired.
If you work in a unionized workplace and have complaints about a coworkers capability, your complaints should first be heard by your union because your union is the arbiter of your labor force, as per the contract you sign with said union.
Guilds were (and in some non-US places still are) a solution to this issue, in which some level of competence must be demonstrated through time spent and qualifications earned to gain acceptance to a guild. Some unions in the US still practice this measure of trial for their members, but they are generally relegated to the skilled trades, and this isn't something that common labor unions do.
> If you work in a unionized workplace and have complaints about a coworkers capability, your complaints should first be heard by your union because your union is the arbiter of your labor force, as per the contract you sign with said union.
The question obviously being, what are you supposed to do if they fail to address it?
Suppose the union leadership brought in a bunch of their own incompetent cronies and is now making a hash of things, but you can't vote them out because those same cronies keep voting them in.
if you joined a non-democratic union to begin with, that's on you. This is a rare anomaly though and most unions have democratic processes you can engage with and bring the change
It is a democratic union. There are 100 workers and 55 are the leadership's cronies who keep voting them back in. Classic democracy, two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
Also, how do you get to pick which union to be in? One can get certified even if you voted against it, or already exist at the company where you want to work.
The reverse is true. Unionization of the UK car industry in the 1970s, more than played its part in the collapse of the UK car industry, for example:
> The company became an infamous example of the industrial turmoil that plagued the United Kingdom in the 1970s. Action by unions frequently crippled BL manufacturing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Leyland#1975%E2%80%931...
'work deserves to be compensated fairly' - are you talking about Marx's 'labour theory of value'? Even though Marx himself criticised it?
Unionisation didn't bring down British Leyland, the management did. There was no upward mobility from the unionised shop floor up to the management and design departments and it led to designs and management strategies that were completely divorced from both the realities of building cars and what consumers wanted to buy. The unions were a convenient scapegoat for Margaret Thatcher, but the reality is that Ford of Britain, Vauxhall, Nissan UK, Honda of the UK, and Toyota UK workers were all part of the same union but they didn't have relentless industrial disputes because they were managed effectively by people with actual experience in car production.
British Leyland were extremely reluctant to produce clean-sheet designs as well to save on R&D, which hampered their production capacity because production techniques were moving on from things that were complicated to assemble and maintain towards simpler assemblies which took fewer manual operations to put together. The Morris Ital and Austin Metro launched in 1980 fitted with an engine designed by Austin Motors in 1951 with the Ital inheriting a crudely widened (with deleterious effects on the handling) and very anachronistic front suspension assembly designed during World War 2 by Alec Issigonis debuting in 1948 on the Morris Minor while Vauxhall and Ford were selling cars with McPherson struts in the front and a twist beam in the back like you'd see in a modern car. The shop floor workers saw the problems, but they had no agency to correct them. The industrial disputes were a symptom of deeper rot.
The labour theory of value is Adam Smith's, not Marx's.
> Denying people agency and power in their negotiation by claiming they are "not as good as someone else" is antithetical to the struggle of labor - work deserves to be compensated fairly.
Isn't that kind of the point? If you're good at your job and the company knows it, you could threaten to take a job somewhere else if they don't give you a raise. When there is a union, you can't do that, and the leadership uses your negotiating power to demand the things they want, which there is no guarantee has any overlap with what you want. Unions frequently demand things like seniority rules or retirement benefits (because the most senior people and those closest to retirement control the union), and compromise your interests for theirs if you're a new hire.
> Your union blocked this because your employer was trying to break your unions negotiating power by separating your interests from the collective workforce.
The trouble is that your interests are separate from the collective workforce. The company is selling its products for as much as it can. If it's in a competitive industry then its profit margins are thin and most of its revenue is already going to suppliers and employees. For someone else to get a bigger piece, yours has to get smaller. That's the consequence of your own logic:
> If you don't want to protect your coworkers by negotiating with them, then you must be interested in exploiting them by negotiating against them. Labor is a zero sum game.
If the union leadership doesn't want you to get the opportunity then they must be interested in exploiting you by negotiating against you.
Unions tend to use otherwise arbitrary criteria to determine a members value. Not all people with the same number of years of experience, the same job title or the same degree provide equal value to the company.
As a school board member, I had to deal with the situation of a nationally recognized(awarded) teacher who got paid the same as every other teacher with the same degree and years in district. When asked why we wouldn't pay him what he is worth, the answer was simple, your union won't let us. Not every job type/environment make sense to have a union.
What’s wrong with everyone with same degree and years in district being paid equally? Per the very definition of such a competition, not everyone can pursue and finish number one in national fame machines.
If they don't contribute equally, why should they be paid equally, especially when the individuals desire to be paid per their contribution. Some rest on their years and degree while others go above and beyond to deliver a difference. The union doesn't allow the employer to recognize that.
I think there are jobs where those distinctions don't matter as much, but creative jobs and other areas where the ability of an employee to deliver quality is very personal don't seem to work well with unions in my view.
I would have loved to pay that teacher more because he did so much more and had a huge positive influence on his students, but the union would never have allowed that.
Maybe because the union role is not to encourage anyone to burn themself down in relentless efforts? Maybe in the union eye, trying to protect people in the working class includes to dodge the traps of the exploiting class and the meritocratic myth?
Divide and rule is nothing new, and playing on the extra individual effort rewards is a very cheap trick to lower the working condition of everyone, possibly even the one doing the extra efforts. It doesn’t take a Nobel price in economy and a certificate of adhesion to Marxism to fathom this basic power dynamic leveraging on sociological imbalance, does it?
> What’s in the collective best interest may not match with what’s in the individual best interest.
The alternative isn't what is in your best interest, but what is in your boss's best interest
The mutual interest of me + 'my boss' might very well outweight my fraction of the collective interest. It certainly depends.
Also, if you are in ESOP that might change the equation as well.
that's certainly one alternative, but can we stop looking at everything as a bipartisan scenario with binary outcomes? Maybe there's lots of aspects with mutually aligned interests? Perhaps every single thing in life is not a "us" vs. "them"?
Sure, that's exactly what a union is for.
For me, the only one who has ever used the standard terms as a floor has been the employer. The union has always backed me up when I wanted higher pay.
I'll give an example. I've had managers switched on me, and they've then said my salary has to be reduced because it's higher than the median. The organisation I work for also has a salary policy where every level you advance, your "personal additional percentage" is cut. This eventually reduces everyone to the same, lower level. This is the employer, not the union.
The union, otoh, backed me up when I wanted to keep my existing extra percentage.
You can fall ill or need working accommodations regardless of whether you are above or below average.
And you can more easily take care of those needs yourself if you aren't required to subsidize your below average colleagues.
I mean, this is likely factually wrong even in a US context, because presumably the collective bargaining power of a union extends beyond salary to functioning as a buyers group things like health insurance, being loud enough to gain visibility, etc.
But it's a thought process that depends on the idea that you're always in control of staying on the better side of the average in whatever metric a company chooses to judge employees. Which is a bold position to stake out without the anti-discrimination and working time safety measures achieved by unions that are at obvious risk of falling away without them.
Many of the freedoms to individually negotiate with an employer about rights and payment are underwritten by safety nets that are negotiated by unions, and everyone thinks themselves better than average until they aren't.
I'm not sure how it can be "likely factually wrong" that you are better off without paying a third party who does very little for you as an individual who is above average in your field than you would be if you didn't have that money. Concessions in indirect benefits often come at the cost of higher wages and the portability of earnings, the latter being one of the major downsides for skilled professionals.
All above average employees I know don't need to worry about staying on the better of average for some arbitrary metric. If the company makes a mistake and fires them, they can quickly get a job elsewhere. It's the people who have no better alternative than their current job who need the protection provided by a union contract, and they have no better alternative because the company made a mistake in the other direction when agreeing to employ them, and the union's job is to bar the employer from correcting that mistake.
And yes, unions successfully fought for improved work conditions 100+ years ago. What have they done to earn their keep during the careers of anyone posting on this site? Why should I as a non-unionized worker today join one? It's certainly not going to improve my total compensation, and the people who did the hard work you mentioned are long gone so it's no benefit to them for me to pay dues into an organization they were affiliated with at some point.
> I'm not sure how it can be "likely factually wrong" that you are better off without paying a third party who does very little for you as an individual who is above average in your field than you would be if you didn't have that money.
Do you not purchase insurance? Same principle. Collective bargaining and buying power unlocks things even you, a wealthy above average human, might wish to have affordable.
> Why should I as a non-unionized worker today join one?
So they continue to exist and rules don't slide back further.
I mean if you are old and rich enough enough not to care about the next decade of working life then good for you, I guess. But society could very well be ripped apart by the very things that the tech industry is rolling out, and unions are one of the few things that stand in the way of absolutely massive regressions in the way humans who have the temerity to want to eat will have to tolerate being treated.
Personally I want to see them survive, and non-union workers joining them when they can is one of those ways that can happen.
(As an IT freelancer I cannot, meaningfully; I assure you that when my work pattern changes I will)
So it's insurance against some nebulous, unspecified catastrophe that if it comes to fruition, unions will be effectively powerless to stop anyway.
If that's the best case you can make, they're even more useless to skilled workers than I thought.
Would you like to buy some insurance against aliens destroying the earth as well?
This comment is much more revealing about you than I think you realise, but it's good to know at least that there's no point in wasting time on arguing things on the merits.