A couple of days ago, on Sep. 26, a local Detroit tv station took an informal poll. Would you like to be in a union, if you could, they asked. About 60% said, no, they would not like to join a union if they could and only about 40% said yes.
I know unions are going down hill now. But I always thought people wanted to join them if they could. What am I missing here?
Unions fight for your rights. They make working conditions more favorable. They make it harder for your boss to fire you. All good things. Also, my aunt, who was an avid supporter of unions and whose husband belonged to one, said all the good things people take for granted now in the workplace, like medical benefits, for example, are there because unions fought for them.
I am going to get off my soap box now to ask the simple question I have in this thread: Why wouldn’t someone want to join a union?
Every time I see a story about how the rich are getting richer, and the middle class is more or less holding onto what they’ve got, and the poor are getting screwed, there is invariably some who immediately blame Bush’s tax cuts. While they’ve contributed to poor fiscal policies, in my mind, and I’m only basing this on gut instinct, the number one reason the pie is being sliced more and more unfairly is because of the decline in unions. Stagnant pay, eroding benefits, no retirement security: these are the issues unions are built upon fixing.
I’m a white collar professional, almost management kind of guy so I don’t see any union ever coming my way. But I think anyone who is earning the national average or less has got to have a screw loose not to want to organize and join a union.
The one time I was forced to join a union the dues were higher than the raise I got for joining. Also they prevented me from doing anything most of the time and wouldn’t let me go full time because I didn’t have enough seniority. I lasted maybe 3 months then got a full time non-union job for higher pay and much better benefits.
I’m in tech, and frankly I can’t imagine a union doing well in this environment.
One reason often cited is that you are no longer treated on your own merits, but you are treated as a collective. If you are a good worker, hard worker, or both, you may not be properly compensated or rewarded for it, because your boss may not be able to single you out.
I certainly can’t speak for everyone in that 60%, but in my 20 years in the workplace I always avoided union companies for a couple of reasons.
First, I don’t want to pay dues to some organization to represent me when I’m perfectly capable of representing myself. I never want to be in a situation where I can’t directly communicate with and influence management.
Finally, I always have had a preference for working on teams where all the employees work hard and and give their all. I wouldn’t suggest that union workers don’t work hard, but at the same time I don’t want to work for a company whose management can’t fire the dead wood at a moment’s notice. I’m confident that my performance will keep me employed. I want the management of the company I’m working for to have the freedom to make decisions that will ensure the success of the company, regardless of how unpopular those decisions may be with the employees. If they make bad decisions that affect me in a way that I don’t approve of, I (and many of my colleagues) will find employment elsewhere.
I respect that, historically, unions have made some positive contributions to the modern workplace. I just wouldn’t feel comfortable working at a unionized company in 2007, as I feel sufficiently protected by today’s laws and regulations.
This may have been true in the early days of unions, before the concept of “the weekend” existed, but unions have outlived their usefulness.
I was a member of CWA and I found the opposite to be true. A union is as good or bad as its members make it, and too many times there were jerks who used their union status as a club to beat everybody else into submission. Members must grieve everything, in order to maintain the union’s potency.
Workers use unions to prevent management from being flexible when it sees the need. Workers use unions to force management to treat all workers identically, regardless of exemplary behaviour or lackluster performance. Exeptional performers can’t be rewarded, and poor performers can’t be punished or let go without a mountain of paperwork proving they were given every chance, and then some.
I was one of the best packet switching techs in my shop, but made the same wage as the worst performer. She was the sweetest lady you’ll ever meet but bless her soul she just didn’t grasp the concept of packet switching. She was near retirement and started with the phone company as a switchboard operator.
Eventually I was offered a promotion to management. Yes, that is one way a company can recognize and reward excellent workers, but look what happened as a result: The shop lost one of their best techs and retained a dial tone operator in an environment totally alien to her. As management, I was no longer permitted to do any production work.
No one owes me a job. All employment should be at-will.
Well, the question was pretty open-ended, and will probably be taken by most people as a referendum on “are unions good or bad?”
To the general public, unions are often seen as
A nuisance,
Representative of workers with a reputation for laziness (government workers can be almost supernaturally lazy) entitlement, and greed, and
Prone to irritating political stances; in a famous recent case, the Canadian public service union suddenly passed a resolution calling for a boycott of Israel (where did that come from) and went so far as to hold the vote on Saturday so no observant Jews would be there.
Unions generally get into the news when it’s bad PR; public service unions defending lazy and worthless employees, professional sports unions whining over marginal differences in bazillion-dollar contracts, and, currently in the news, giant unions and a giant corporation squabbling over the bones of a dying business (GM.)
The GOOD things unions do don’t make the news because they aren’t news, and their positive impacts are largely preventive in nature. Unions are by nature collective, and exist to protect the individual from exploitation. “Local worker not unjustifiably dismissed because a union was in place” can’t be on the news, because it isn’t news. “Montreal public service union appeals dismissal of worker who deliberately ran over his supervisor with a truck” IS news (and that really did happen.)
So you can ask the question “would you join a union or not?” but the question people will ANSWER is “do you like unions?” and, for the most part, their impressionis negative. If you actually put someone in a parti0cular job and gave them a choice between joining the union or not, they’d usually join, no matter whatr that poll says. I’m sure a loudmouth or two - hell, I know who they’ll be - will come in and deny this, and in most cases there always WILL be people who opt out, and in some cases it’s logical to do. But most of the time people would opt in to the union because most of the time it’s the easy and/or logical choice in that circumstance.
Which, of course, is why unions keep losing membership in industries where they already have had control.
Unions are best suited to pure labor. By banding together in solidarity to demand recompense from management, they are able to secure better conditions, (or were before the SCOTUS began gutting a lot of 1930s - 1950s era labor legislation).
However, when a worker is not an easily replacd cog that requires solidarity to avoid being smashed by management, unions hold no particular appeal. As a an analyst or programmer, I really do not want to have to go through some committee to tell my boss that his plans are lousy orfile a grivance to handle a problem with a co-worker or user. It just makes no sense to me. I have always been recognized as the go-to guy for all kinds of technical issues as well as analysis and design. I really do not want to be treated as an identical cog to the guy that does little more than produce “acceptable” code. I can earn my own perks with management by outperforming the rest of the group, so I have no incentive to plod along with them.
I am NOT anti-union. I have worked many labor jobs and I have seen unions genuinely protect workers from abuse. (I have also seen unions protect jerks from legitimate consequences, but there are certainly parallel situations in the non-union white-collar world.)
However, automation and other high tech situations have reduced the need for unskilled labor and unions in this country are suffering for it.
What happens when the management is the dead wood? And they’re firing or making trouble for the workers to cover their own mistakes? Do you assume management is never at fault?
I’ve known plenty of workers who work hard and take pride in their work, but get confused by a fast food menu, let alone a 100 page contract that dictates their salary, benefits, and responsibilities. Are they suppose to be just thrown to the sharks because some people can do it themselves?
Personally I think unions can do a lot of good, and I’m glad I’m in one. Yes, people abuse them as well. Unions shouldn’t be allowed to grow so big that they take on a life of their own. Management shouldn’t sign bad contracts that strangle the companies growth either. The union contracts for GM and the other automakers were agreed to by someone in management at some point, they didn’t just appear out of nowhere.
And a union that’s making political statements is just stupid. That’s not what a union is for and the workers should be voting the idiots in charge out of office for that.
Out of curiosity, what general field of work are you in, and is there a union that represents workers of your skills in your area? If so, how does your pay, health care, and retirement plan stack up against your unionized competitors?
I remember being saddened seeing the folks out of work during the SoCal job action with the big three grocery chains a few years back, and thinking about my grandpa and my dad and their thoughts on unions. For one thing, they were never going to be told that they COULDN’T work at their job and support their families because of a job action. That lockout dragged into the holidays, and those people were screwed. I felt like they had made several poor decisions (not enough formal education being one, trusting a union to “move them up” in the absence of that education being another) and were now in a terrible position, unable to pay rent, feed and clothe kids, etc.
My grandpa started his own company in order to be in control of his own destiny, and it was a non-union shop (still is, even though my dad is almost completely retired). In their business, there are some unions but it’s not universal (painting contracting).
Me? I will succeed or fail based on my own merits and hard work. In this day and age, I don’t think I need a union to fight for my rights.
I worked in a non-union shop when I was in college. The company was extremely generous in it’s wages and we had an in-house grievance process where your peers judged you. 9 out of 10 times the person lost the process. We were able to weed out the slackers who made it harder on us.
This is in direct contrast to a union shop down the road who thought it was still 1960 and the world was kissing our ass. They had a 25% no-show rate. Their union kept the slackers from getting fired. It was once a thriving factory with a huge parking lot full of workers. It’s been whittled down to almost nothing.
So I guess it depends whether Unions understand the difference between supporting a viable work force and a win-at-all-cost job security blanket.
I am not a union supporter (Workers of the World Unite) but I do belong to a treacher’s union due to my district being a closed shop. You would not believe how abusive some managers (themeselves protected) can be if a union does not protect the workers. But of course, it equally protects the lazy and incompetent.
I had the option of joining a union about 15 years ago. New employes in my classification were forced to join or pay a “fair share” which was the equivalent of union dues. I was grandfathered in since I was employed before the union was formed.
I chose not to join because a significant portion of the dues went towards national politics. If the union had stuck to representing us in our interactions with management, I would probably have joined. I frequently give to political candidates, often the same ones the union supports. But I don’t want someone else to decide what political causes I must support as a condition of my employment. I would deeply resent being forced to join this union and am glad that I had the option of opting out.
I think it’s easy to say, “I’m smart enough, I’m hard-working, I don’t need the union.” (And to imply that those who aren’t as smart or hard-working should suffer for the crime of being inferior.)
I know I’m not that good at dealing with contracts. I know a lot of other people aren’t either. Are we supposed to be easily replaced “at-will” cogs? (Whose will? Not ours, that’s for sure.)
I don’t think unions are the best & final evolution of workers’ rights. I think unions do better in most cases by being smaller, & not part of the expansive & vague AFL-CIO. I do think most people who think the union is screwing them are actually better off than they would be in a total “at-will” context.
That said, I don’t have much love for public-employee unions. They can take advantage of an employer who may be a monopoly in that sector by necessity, not by choice–& thus for long periods, take unfair advantage of the economy as a whole. And their employer is funded by a kind of morally acceptable extortion, so there’s “always more money.”
I also take a dim view of employer-provided health care, which is one of the main things that unions have accomplished, because I think socialized medicine is more sustainable (& happening anyway as government guarantors take up what the private sector won’t pay for). Which is a bit in the opposite direction from my last paragraph, but there you go.
Well, that sure doesn’t sound like the kind of company I’d like to work for. But in all fairness you sound like the typical union employee: “all management is stupid and bureaucratic, and the workers are intelligent and omnipotent.” In most cases there are share holders to answer to, and incompetent management rarely exists for long. Incompetent union workers can be hired for life however.
Well, I have a Gov’t job and we have a sort of a Union. When I ask why dudes won’t join, the two answers are “Get the same benefits if I don’t and thus I don’t have to pay Union dues” :rolleyes: and “I don’t like the Union’s politics”. Of course, there’s always “Union? We have a Union?”
Actually, there’s very simple reasn as to why unions are less popular: they’ve gotten old. As organizations, they don’t or can’t keep up with a changing economy. Aside from which, they have a nasty habit of taking credit for things which they did not, in fact, cause or create. Most of the benefits and opportunities of the modern workforce are there because the workers are worth it, not because some union fought for it.
Getting back to my first point, a good union can’t make up for bad management. but a bad union can wreck good management, or exacerbate problems. They offer nothing useful these days, and inevitably create an entrenched union bureaucracy which is devoted solely to maintaining its power and income. It has, after all, no real purpose apart form this.
Beacuse of this, over time, all unions will pretty much destroy themselves unless backed up by force of law, which they are very anxious to get and keep.
A very timely topic for me, as some men at my Husband’s workplace have been promoting a union.
One: this is already a government workplace (City) and is held to fairly rigorous standards (as per workers’ rights stuffs).
Two: some men working there fled unionized companies because either (a) the union stance caused the factory to fold or (b) they got tired of being told you CAN’T go to work.
IMO the unions were very effective in their time and served their purpose. I can’t say the same for today’s work world.
In regard to (b), Mississippi already has a Right to Work law and strikes would not fit in with that. Add to that the culture and … I just don’t think it woud fly.
JimB let me turn it around and ask you: Why WOULD somebody want to join? If they have all the same benefits and clout now, without paying dues or being dictated to about when to go to work or not?
The factory closings referenced above woud be several plants in the Jackson area, I can try to dig up cites if requested.
