She seemed like a genuine, regular person. And smart. That story is true...apparently, she taped the bug into a notebook or something...
Posted on 06/30/2009 12:04:41 AM PDT by rabscuttle385
Imagine working at a company that treats every employee exactly the same, irrespective of their individual effort. No matter how hard you work or how much your co-workers slack off, you get exactly the same pay. For millions of people, America's outdated labor laws and one-size-fits-all collective-bargaining agreements make this a reality.
Maybe this is why studies show union members are less satisfied with their jobs than are nonunion workers, and many Americans simply refuse to work in union shops. Indeed, just 9 percent of nonunion workers tell pollsters they would like to join a union, and private-sector union membership has declined steadily for a generation.
Why is it that a bargaining process designed to improve workers' satisfaction and happiness collectively should produce such dissatisfaction and unhappiness individually?
Perhaps the simple answer rests in that unique human desire to excel in what we do and to be recognized and rewarded for that excellence. True, collective bargaining increases the ability of workers to take a position in negotiating terms of employment, thus raising the median position of all workers in the group. But the situation then leaves them in the unenviable position of abandoning any additional rewards for individual skill and achievement. More important, it ties employers' hands in rewarding exceptional employees in order to encourage that hard work and innovation.
For that reason, we have introduced the Rewarding Achievement and Incentivizing Successful Employees (RAISE) Act to allow hardworking union members to escape the false choice between collective bargaining and individual reward that our outdated labor laws have forced upon them. Without this legislation, union workers end up trapped in a one-size-fits-all contract that denies them the opportunity to be rewarded for individual excellence and achievement. Under current law, it is impossible for the most determined achiever to be rewarded in any material way beyond the most complacent co-worker.
Why shouldn't employers be allowed to add individual rewards to the union-negotiated wage base? Why does the wage floor set through union contracts also have to be a wage ceiling for those union members who go the extra mile to get ahead?
Many owners of unionized businesses would gladly pay individual workers more if they could. Some have tried, but over the years, the National Labor Relations Board repeatedly has struck down individual raises and bonuses.
Any employer will say that the key to a successful business is to reward hard work and attract quality workers. Any worker will say that the key to job satisfaction is knowing that greater effort will produce greater reward. Neither is possible when union negotiators put a pay cap on employees regardless of individual merit or effort.
Under the RAISE Act, union members would retain all the collective-bargaining rights under current law, and employers would be bound to the wage-and-benefit schedules negotiated under those laws. But in addition to the floor established by the union contract, employers could add bonuses for those workers who go the extra mile - combining the benefits of collective bargaining with the rewards of individual achievement.
Years ago, Adm. Grace Hopper observed that in all her years in the U.S. Navy, she had determined that the greatest impediment to human progress was the phrase, “But we've always done it this way.” That is the only answer we have heard in opposition to this simple reform, and in an era when change is in the air, that's no answer.
fyi
“We do not and cannot accept the principle that incompetence justifies dismissal. That is victimisation.” - Peter Sellers as Fred Kite in I’M ALL RIGHT JACK, 1959
Just a little factoid: Adm. Grace Hopper was the originator of the term, 'computer bug.' Which was an actual bug that, as I understand, crawled up into the inner workings of the early computing monstrosities and caused a short of some sort.
Minimum wage, child labor laws, OSHA, Americans with Disability Act, and volumes of other pro-worker laws now do what unions were created to do in the 19th century. Democrats keep them alive for their votes, muscle and money. I have a German Shepherd named "Wooly." I think my late wife named the dog after Sheb Wolley who wrote "Flying Purple People Eater."
You have a purple dog??? Oh... no... wait... it’s late.
I worked ten years in a union shop where everybody got the same money after they’d been there a while. The guys who’d gotten to the top of the three year salary escalator devoted full time to screwing up anything difficult they were asked to do, so they’d only get assigned to the easy jobs. The organization survived off the work of the new guys who were hoping to get their salaries bumped up ahead of time. If we’d ever had to stop hiring, we’d have been dead.
I belong to a union. I work for the postal service. I had never belonged to a union before. But, now that it seems, we may be on our way to socialized health care, being exempt from it via way of being in a union...well, not so bad after all.
I worked for one of these companies...Bell South.....CWA.....As far as I could see the Union only existed to protect people that did not want to work. As a matter of fact the Union “leaders” the local presidents and vice presidents were the laziest bunch of bastards I ever worked with...they were totally useless. If you were one of the un-lucky ones to have say a vice-president in your work group you were screwed. They were NEVER at work , they were always out doing “Union Business” ( screwing off at the Union Hall ) and you had to take up their slack, it was like having one person in your work group out sick all the time....we were always one person short and WE the union members had to do THEIR work while they were out which was all of the time....I know one Union vice-president who probably worked one year total during his 30 years at Bell South.....they were the laziest most useless bastards you could think of...
She seemed like a genuine, regular person. And smart. That story is true...apparently, she taped the bug into a notebook or something...
(Note: my comments on unions are not an attack on individual union members per se, but are directed towards the leadership, structure, and basic concept of unions. It is difficult as a union member not to personalize these criticisms, and I understand that.)
One of my main issues with unions is that they take an adversarial approach to dealings with a company in order to wring more benefits from a company.
Through strikes, intimidation and other union tactics, they hold a company over the barrel until they force them to submit.
This submission by the company removes market forces from the equation, and the costs of doing business are no longer driven by the market, but are instead driven by intimidation, emotion and a variety of other factors that have nothing to do with market forces of supply an demand.
These costs of increased wages and benefits are simply passed on to the consumer, where market forces WILL take effect. The company then is faced with having to produce a product or service that is unsustainable in the face of market forces, and consumers will not buy the same (or sometimes inferior product) at an increased price, and the company will do poorly, often going out of business. This is one of the key reasons the US Steel Industry went belly up in the Sixties and Seventies, because they refused to modernize (which would have required fewer people to produce the same amount of steel) The unions were not interested in staying competitive with a market, they were interested PRIMARILY with increasing wages and benefits while ensuring no jobs were lost.
The Japanese did not have the same kinds of issues, because their unions are not the same as our unions. Their unions work WITH the company. Our unions work AGAINST the company.
The UAW is going to ensure that the US auto industry goes the same route as the US Steel industry. And the same thing is going to happen to the autoworkers.
The people in charge at the unions are going to pull up their tents, shrug their shoulders and say “Sorry folks, we tried! The evil company would rather fold than meet our demands, so...you all have a good life and all...Bye!” They will find some other unionized industry to get involved in.
Union members love to point out that the higher wages enjoyed by many people are due to their efforts. It is also worth noting that the higher prices paid by all of us for damn near everything that comes out of a unionized industry is also due to their efforts. Too many of them view their unions as operating in a vacuum, but they don’t. If a company has to pay higher prices to a truckers union, you think they are just going to eat those profits? If an electricians union sets a floor on wages for their members, do you think any of us as homeowners don’t simply pay more for those services?
” one-size-fits-all collective-bargaining agreements”
This is good evidence that unions are Communist. That’s what killed the Soviet Union. Production failed because nobody was motivated.
Fallacy...... the whole point of being in a union is to eliminate the will and power to achieve.
> This is good evidence that unions are Communist.
I’ve been to Russia four times. They have a saying there.
“They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.”
I had a union job, once: IBEW. Worst job I EVER had. I had two bosses. My corporate manager and the union steward, both working at cross purposes with us working slobs caught in the crossfire.
I saw the IBEW president one day. Pulled up in a chauffered limousine chomping on a big, smelly cigar. Looked, talked, and acted like a Mafia street thug.
Even though I was Left-leaning at the time, I always despised unions.
They just discovered this? I was in a close-shop union for 11 years. Everybody in a job classification got the same pay. Whether they put up an effort or not.
That is what I detest about unions. They use the workers (sometimes, but not always with their consent) to hold a company over a barrel, and when it doesn’t work out, there is no accountability.
[I belong to a union. I work for the postal service.]
A friend of mine went to work for the Post Office after 12 years in the Coast Guard (This was 20 years ago). After several months he kept complaining that he was still a substitute carrier working odd routes. He said coworkers were indifferent or hostile to him. I asked if he was a union member. He said no, but people had “sure been bugging me” about it. “That’s probably it,” I said. He joined the union and was assigned a permanent route within a week. In other industries people have told me about getting the “silent treatment,” having their cars vandalized, etc. as the union pressured them to join.
The one time I worked in a union-dominated company I joined within two weeks. I got written up regularly for working free past quitting time on a particular project I wanted to finish before leaving. This would amount to 15 or 20 minutes at most. One guy in particular would watch my every move. We also had older union members, within five years or so of retirement who did virtually no work and often just disappeared for hours.
In the modern day unions are mostly parasitic growths on production, profit, personal advancement and creativity. But in some work settings there is little choice but to join.
In Florida (Orlando) my brother-in-law was hired because he was an old friend on someone in management. He felt that joining the union would be showing ingratitude. Finally, the brake-lines on his car were cut in the parking lot at work. He joined but hated the union.
In “Post Office”, Charles Bukowski nailed down that whole scene quite well. Adult rated, but enlightening.
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