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Unions seek gains in hostile territory: ‘If you change the South, you change America’
(www.politico.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
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"Unions make people lazy" "Unions make people less creative, less likely to work to fix problems" "Unions make employees fight with each other" "Unions mean we'll earn less money"
The propaganda I've heard from older generations is really incredible. We're still actively unionizing lol
There is some truth to that. Unions typically focus on seniority above all else so there is no advantage to being objectively better at the job, just don't be so bad you are fired and you are fine. They also insist that if you want to move to management you start at the bottom thus ensuring that someone who might want to change tracks is worse off and in turn there is no reason to try.
Unions are not all bad, but they deserve a lot of criticism as well.
Why is less productivity a horrible thing? Why is wanting a good wage for just showing up and doing your normal job a bad thing? Why is having no interest in moving into management so atrocious?
It's way past time to start questioning American work culture. I shouldn't be expected to be operating at the razor's edge of my ability to keep up with everything constantly and forever for the rest of my life. I just want to punch a clock, do my job, and also be able to afford my mortgage for having done that and nothing more.
More productivity means that you produce more wealth. If you are less productive you are worth less. (Stop saying the rich take the wealth, that is what unions claim they are preventing).
It is a logical fallacy to read what I wrong as saying there is something wrong with not wanting to go onto management . I said there is something wrong with stopping someone who does want to go into management. Those are very different things.
If you want to stay where you are, I have no problem with that. However if you turn your wish to not improve into holding back someone else who does that is wrong ' (improve here as defined by the other person's values and what they think would improve them)
Here's a crazy radical idea: Wealth does not improve people beyond a certain point. Leisure time and lack of stress improve people. The American culture of work yourself to death to accumulate is killing us and it's killing the world. It's time to stop.
Work, make enough money to provide, have plenty of leisure time to relax and spend with your family. Those are the lives we should be striving for.
That is an idea. Some agree with it, some do not. Who are you to judge those who do not?
Have fun killing yourselves for other people's profit, I guess? I'm joining a union.
I'm not seeing how this is a problem for anyone but the employer and people who get ahead based on the quality of their ass kissing.
There are ways to objectivity measure productivity in some cases. Unions typically don't allow them to be taken .
This.constantly stating that promotions in management is only about sucking up is another problem with unions. They believe this false world view.
And then you get one self-exploiting nitwit who burns himself out because he doesn't know how to pace his fool self, and his record becomes the standard everyone else is held to. Then everyone has to burn themselves out trying to get promoted or, in cases where unemployment is high, just trying to keep their jobs. And if they get promoted, every level has ambitious burnout nitwits.
That's not what I said. I said that ass kissers have a problem with it, not that all promotions are due to ass kissing. That would mean that no promotion was ever awarded due to nepotism, or no promotion was ever denied due to bigotry.
Metrics can be abused. That doesn't mean metrics are bad, it just means that you have to be careful how you use them. Which most people who work with metrics already know.
Not using objective metrics is very bad if you want to get ahead of the lazy do the minimum person who was hired just before you. If you can do better work: you should be worth more money. Note that I said better and not more. While more is a factor; safety, higher quality, not burning out, and cost are all factors of better (you should assume there are more factors as well that I'm not aware of)
Oh. It's a good thing bosses can be trusted to be upright and virtuous and never play favorites.
If you're working harder than he is, it's because you're a sucker who is voluntarily exploiting yourself. The union is not constraining your boss' magnanimity; it's constraining his ability to exploit you.
Or your ability to exploit your workers.
No, the union is constraining my boss's ability to reward me for working harder.
Working for wage is not about exploitation. That propaganda is one of the problems I have with unions.
Unions are worker associations, aren't they? So it's up for the members of the union to decide what they want. My, non US, union has different tracks for management and experts (so no problem to move up or change tracks), has a solid base pay but the company is encouraged to pay more than that. For the real rockstar employees there is there option to get paid well above union, then their rules can be mostly ignored (because you're earning a shitton of money as compensation)
Oh, and for a part of hard and dangerous work they're currently fighting for 4 days at full pay.
Not getting unionized is like going to war alone because you don't like the uniforms colour...
Fighting for seniority can have its downsides but without rules against it what tends to happen is companies firing skilled and experienced workers as a way to wage dump. Since so many in upper management only see wages as an expense without any meaning besides "low good, high bad" they'll gladly lose out on productivity by firing people who actually know their stuff.
This article is about US unions. Unions do work different in other countries.
This is not war. There are lots of options for someone who doesn't like how things are without joining a union. Unions are one answer, and not always bad, but they bring in all the negatives of belonging to a group as well. I'm not against unions as a concept, but the implementation as it is often has elements that I'm strongly against.
It's called class warfare.