Seaver

Mars, not to take anything away from your experience, the military is a whole different beast and we both know that.

Had that been a civilian job, you could always get letters of recommendations in order to leverage your dedication with a new heirarchy within the company or apply to a whole different company all together. Right now with the bad economy it's not the best conditions, however companies are always looking for the hard workers. Instead of paying someone to leverage your work capabilities do it yourself. The great thing about a fluid work environment is employers can only take so much advantage of their workers as they will always leave to greener pastures.

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Locobot

Very true, but very similar situations do play out in the free market. If that was a workplace run by a decent union you can be sure that a rep would be demanding pay for people like Mars be higher than for the incompetent desk weight of a manager.

Military in the Netherlands are allowed to collectively bargain their contracts (No, I don't think this is a good idea for the U.S. military for all the obvious reasons).

The focus of this thread so far has been on blue-collar unions which make up the most egregious examples. But as RB pointed out the economy is shifting away from manufacturing and unions need to adapt or die off.

I used to work for the largest union in the U.S., the National Education Association and I can tell you that no one is more responsible for maintaining standards for teachers and education. Payscales for teachers are based on seniority but there's a big difference between a first year and a third year teacher. Also there are a lot of new teachers do it for a few weeks or a semester and decide it's not for them. Yeah, we represented some major fuckups but that typically only involved explaining to them why they weren't going to be teachers anymore. Union lawyers will plea bargain in court if it comes to that. However there are 13 year old kids who will lie and not give a shit about getting a teacher fired. There are teachers who opt out of the union and don't pay dues but principals and superintendents are well aware of who they are...they tend to not get raises or benefits and are the first to get pushed around. Several times we would have non-union teachers ask if they could use our lawyers or representatives once they got into trouble .

The movement in the U.S. is towards non-union charter and private schools. Don't get me started about No Child Left Behind. I think Obama's move to change the rules for unionization are a good idea because they will make it easier for those schools to join the union when they need to (most will eventually).

dc_dux

IMO, it has little to do with "leveraging your dedication or work capabilities" (whatever that means) but rather ensuring that employee rights are protected.

In any case....there is a simple solution if you dont like unions.

If you are working for a company where employees are interested in a union and the majority vote to do so through a card check and you do not support it...leave for that "greener pasture" that you suggest is out there.

Union busting and intimidation of workers is still wide spread....ask the employees at Walmart, Starbucks, Verizon... A common practice on the rise is the hiring of union busting consultants to "teach" employers" how to do it legally.

Just last month: Judge Finds Starbucks Guilty of Union Busting

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dogzilla

So if I'm a 25 year employee and there's a successful union vote, my choice is to either join the union or leave. That doesn't seem very fair, especially if I'm that close to qualifying for a full pension and I have no real option to start over.

If the company wants to keep the union out, and can do so legally, fine by me. If the employees want a union vote, let them have a secret ballot, which right they have today.

dc_dux

The "greener pasture" reference was in response to Seaver's odd suggestion.

The process to implement a secret ballot union vote takes months....ff you are unable to acknowledge that employer intimidation is often (before and) widespread during that time, I can see why you think the current process works just fine.

-----Added 21/1/2009 at 09 : 24 : 47-----
But ask the employees at Cintas, the country's largest manufacturer of business uniforms.
Just because a company can hire a union "avoidance" consultant like Jackson Hewitt, The Burke Group (TBG), Labor Relations Institute (LRI), etc. to unleash a propaganda campaign and legally create an environment of intimidation..doesnt make it right.

__________________
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Seaver

From what I've gathered, Union dues generally don't help.

http://www.aftermarketnews.com/Item/..._struggle.aspx

Ryanair attracts union protests over non-union salary increase - Forbes.com
If the place I work at decides to unionize... I leverage my non-union status for higher wages. If my counterparts want to make my own pasture greener I'm all for it.

__________________
"Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

dc_dux

Seaver...I dont question your anecdotal examples.

But no one here has yet to explain why the EFCA is "undemocratic" for the purposes of organizing.

Under the proposed law, If the majority of workers want a secret ballot, they can have it. But if the majority support a card check system, they should have that right as well.

Show me where there has been union "intimidation" with a card check system that comes anywhere close to the current employer anti-union "avoidance (intimidation) tactics.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

aceventura3

Have the unions been "dancing to their own music"? Have they been open to diversity (race, religion, sex, sexuality, disability)? Have they put the needs of members ahead of the needs of their leaders? Have they been fighting for the most disadvantaged? If they have not why would we want them to be able to force non-secrete ballots? Seems to me that the end result could be that those to gain the most from unions can intimidate those who would gain little from the union. It is not always about management being intimidating.

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"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

dc_dux

ace..I know its not always about management being intimidating......just far more often than employee representatives using intimidation tactics, unless you have data that would suggest otherwise.

There is NO forced non-secret ballot....the EFCA offers a CHOICE among the employees for a card check OR a secret ballot based on the expressed wishes of the majority of workers.

__________________
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~ Voltaire

dogzilla

If activities such as those at Cintas happened, those responsible should be prosecuted under current laws.

If my manager wants to present the company view of the union, that's not intimidation. The group that was trying to unionize where I worked tried to claim that was intimidation. Their view was that the union should just be able to walk into the company and organize the employees without opposition from the company.

I don't see why the unions need extra help in organizing. In a secret ballot, nobody is going to know how I vote unless I choose to tell them.

dc_dux

If a company suggests that it will shut down if unionized....that is intimidation.

If a company suggests that it will replace workers who unionize and strike in the future..that is intimidation.

If a company requires that every employee meet individually (and privately with no record of the conversation) with management prior to a vote...that is intimidation.

Those are the most common practices that take place during a period between the time an election is called and when its held.

Again..how is it "asking for extra help" in organizing by offering a CHOICE among the employees for a card check OR a secret ballot based on the expressed wishes of the majority of workers.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

dogzilla

As I understand it, the first two cases you mention are illegal and prosecutable.

Private conversations with my manager on their own are not intimidation.

As it was explained to me by the people who wanted to organize a union, the card check campaign might be kept secret from the company. How is that fair?

Also, what's to stop the union organizers who are meeting one on one with employees from intimidating the employees? As it is, union organizers here make up crazy rumors about layoffs, benefits and salary cuts to scare employees into wanting the union.

Tully Mars

I completely agree that the military is a whole different beast then any other occupation. I detailed the experience I had with the Navy because it's something that happened to me personally. But as I stated I've seen this happen to other people several times in my life. From fast food restaurants to offices within courthouses.

I believe there really is a "Peter Principle." Not saying it happens all the time but sometimes no good deed really doesn't go unpunished. Some people really do rise to their level of incompetence.

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aceventura3

I am not sure how old you are or what your background is, so you may not be aware of the actual practices of some unions from about 1960 until today. The type of data that you may be looking for does not get tracked based on what I know. But for the record I am 48 years old, my father, uncles, and men in my neighborhood were all union members. I was a union member during some brief times when I had summer jobs. I was forced to join even though I knew I was going back to school at the end of the summer and could have used the union dues for books or food (at the end of the school year things would get tight). First, when my father moved from the south to Illinois as a young man, there were unions who would not accept him due to his race regardless of his ability. There were union who would stop charitable construction work being done by non-union people. With UAW there was often a strategy of picking an employer for a strike so that other UAW workers could continue to work. So you often had a small number of families carrying the burden for the UAW as a whole. This strategy was not by choice of the individual, if a man could not make it - he dared not cross the picket line. The irony is that many of these men were forced to take non-union part-time work else where. For guys near retirement, they often never made up for the money and benefits lost.

Women where not allowed to join many unions.

Union cards in some unions where distributed on a cronyism basis, if you dad was in - you were going to get in.

When I lived in Southern California there was a grocers union strike. I had a friend whose son accept a job at a store during the strike, this was maybe 2004 or 2005. His vehicle was vandalized one night and lost his job after the strike.

All of this is anecdotal and is certainly subject to the observation that not all unions are like the above or whatever comments follow, but it is clear in my mind that the decision to join a union should be a private choice free of intimidation. No person should be forced to take a union vote publicly. No person should be forced to strike or face intimidation. I am surprised that liberals are o.k. with intimidation tactics and are not willing to fight for the victims of unionization bullying tactics.

Perhaps compromise is in order - perhaps in exchange for this "free choice", there is real consequence for intimidation.

There is NO forced non-secret ballot....the EFCA offers a CHOICE among the employees for a card check OR a secret ballot based on the expressed wishes of the majority of workers.[/QUOTE]

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

roachboy

the practices of american trade unions follow largely from the sector-monopoly model.
so they are particular to it, and are not statements about why unions are generally preferable to their absence.
unless you prefer being powerless, or unless you have somehow been persuaded that the interests of capital and those of people who sell their labor power for a wage are identical. on the second, it follows from general political and/or aesthetic dispositions, and so is circular--conservatives tend to pretend that these interests coincide, others do not.
so there's almost no point in bothering to lay out arguments, since they're little more that repetitions of more general political viewpoints.
so for example, had ace written something in support of union activity, i would have been incredulous.
but he didn't.

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it make you sick.

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aceventura3

There is "intimidation" and there is reality. If a business knows unionization will increase costs by XX%, and threaten profitability or competitiveness and then they say that to their employees with a clear message that they will relocate (and they are being truthful) you can call this intimidation if you want but I call it giving people information upon which will help them make a decision,

All we have to do is look at the areas of the country with the biggest percentages of union penetration during the past 40 years, and see what has happened to employment opportunity in those areas. The truth is many of these union jobs (the one's that could be moved, i.e. you can't move a teaching job or police/fire job) have gone overseas or have moved south or west into areas with less union activity.
-----Added 21/1/2009 at 04 : 46 : 14-----
I have written that unions have proven to be very valuable in the past, much of current legislation protecting workers in the workplace is due to what unions fought for. Early in the industrial age there was no balance between labor and management. That is not true today and you have government protecting workers in the work place. The useful life of unions appears to be past us today in my opinion.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

roachboy

that's great ace---you aren't trying to pass that nonsense off as actual history are you?
that's no different from making stories up in which you dress all capitalist in snidley whiplash outfits and talking about the Evil in their voices and the way they twirl their moustaches in a sinister fashion as they deliver monologues about how much fun it is to exploit workers.

it's ridiculous.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

aceventura3

I know what I know, I don't try to pass anything off as anything other than what it is.

If you know the history and disagree with what I present why not set me straight?

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

roachboy

i already mentioned the large-scale problem of sector monopoly, and i outlined a bit of what it is, why it came about and what it's meant earlier in this thread. for every anecdote you muster, there are dozens of stories that could be lined up against it that demonstrate what unions do well, the kinds of benefits they've forced into being and so on.

personally, i think that the american fear of an actual political left was the primary motivation behind the sector monopoly model coming to the fore. if you don't relativize that model---if all you know about is the united states----then you imagine this model, with its advantages and *very* significant drawbacks are inevitable. but that's parochial. maybe read about western european unions sometime, ace. an entirely different set of relationships. working people are in the main better off there than in the united states---and, strangely, the kind of self-destruction of the manufacturing sector hasn't gone anywhere near as far as it has in the brave new world of rapidly imploding cowboy capitalism that is the states.

no way around doing a bit of research.
without it, what i said about about positions on unions being a simple restatement of broader political predispositions is all that one can expect.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

aceventura3

What have been the net benefits of unions in the past 40 years?

My premise is simple. People should not be subject to union intimidation practices. People should have a choice regarding union membership and a choice regarding strikes. I don't think the current legislation lessens the potential for intimidation and may in fact increase it.

What do you suggest regarding Western European unions. I know nothing about them. Why do they have different relationships?

I know what has happened to real people affected by union activity. text book history has limitations. I would rather get real information from average people who lived it than through Phd. types who live in ivory towers. To each his own.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

dc_dux

I'll stick to the last 15 years.

Unions were among the first to recognize the changing nature of the workforce, particularly the necessity of both parents having to work to make ends meet and the resulting diififulties in balancing work and family obligations.

They were the driving force behind the Family Medical Leave Act that provides more than 50 million workers (union and non-union) with the right to take unpaid leave, without a fear of losing their job, for family medical emergencies.

The growth of unions in recent years has been in the service sector......janitors, hotel workers, health care workers, food service workers, etc.

The benefits? A livable wage, in many cases for minorities and first generation immigrants.
-----Added 21/1/2009 at 06 : 14 : 13-----
The past 40 years....I forgot the migrant farm workers.

__________________
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aceventura3

What has the "net benefit" been? Sure some people earn higher wages, but many more incur higher costs for goods and services. There is a reason Wal-mart is gaining market share and is able to provide low prices to consumers during these recesionary times. I side with the right of an individual worker to choose if they want to participate in a union and to be free not to strike, both without the fear of intimidation. I also side with the consumer having access to lower price goods and services.

I am not sure the evidence clearly shows that FMLA is a "net benefit" to the worker.

A livable wage? What is a "livable wage"?

Also, we need to understand the data. On the surface statistic show union workers earn more than non-union workers in the service sector (and other sectors), but one has to ask is it due to union activity or other factors. For example this data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics first states the difference in wages between union and nonunion cleaning and building services is statistically not significant, although there is a difference. Secondly we see that there is perhaps a big difference in the percentages of unionization for government sector employees compared to private sector employees. Perhaps government has more to do with the difference in wages than unions. And perhaps within government there is a tendency for urban centers with higher costs of living and therefore higher base wages in the explanation of the difference rather than unions. For example unionized worker in New York may make a bit more than non-union workers in a small city in Mississippi.

Differences in Union and Nonunion Earnings in Blue-collar and Service Occupations

The link gives much more information, including the following statement of note:

So, perhaps the "net benefit" of unions has reach the point of diminishing returns.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."