Different than what?
Still looking for that crowd for support, huh? Have you no pride at all? Tsk, tsk, tsk.
So do you believe teacher, police, fire, air traffic, etc are easy to replace, yes or no? Do you think that a person needs to be in a union to join Denver Public Schools or the Denver Sheriff’s office or Denver Fire?
It is also clear by your previous posts and culminating in this statement that you really have no clue how public unions work, at least teacher unions.
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There is no requirement to joining the union. The closest you get is like in LAUSD that uses the closed shop method. That does not mean that you need to join the union but you still need to pay the equivalent of the union dues because the negotiation for the collective bargaining agreement benefits all teachers. I have worked in two districts where joining the union (and paying dues) was completely optional and one district with no union.
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Teachers cannot strike on a whim. As per NLRB first of all, they cannot strike during the term of the collective bargaining agreement. Second they must negotiate in good faith. To strike there are many steps such as filing an impasse. Only after the whole process (and I think it is longer than 6 months but I’d have to check) can teachers legally strike - and not get paid in the process.
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I have repeatedly explained that without any sort of collective bargaining or union protections to hold the district to the contract (which was unilaterally written because of no union), the experiences we had in one district was a living hell. far worse than anything I experienced in LAUSD. Imagine this, you are on a one-year contract and the boss says, “I don’t like the way you keep your cubicle so you are fired immediately. Here is nebulous paperwork justifying how you broke your contract so here’s you last check and these people will escort you out.” Here’s a great example. The district decided to let go of all first-year (in the district) teachers to cut costs. As I explained before you were rated 0-4 in various categories of teacheing however no one ever got a 4 (as was required to move up in pay) and no administrator would tell a teacher how to get a 4. So on my final evaluation every category was a 2 or a 3. So far so good.
EXCEPT that under the contract a first-year teacher was given a second year automatically even if they needed improvement (at which point they are given a written improvement plan) unless you were an unsatisfactory teacher with a final evaluation of 0 (zero). So guess what. All of my 2s and 3s averaged to zero just like every other new teacher in the district so we were all considered unsatisfactory teachers and our final evaluations say so.
So how can you say the idea that unions promote better work environments is based on false assumptions.
This.
Our conditions at my previous campus were horrible until we formed our own unit. Until that happened, the admins’ attitude towards PT faculty was “You will take scraps from the table, the same low pay, we can yank your classes away one minute before the first class meeting of the semester, no office space for any of you, and you will like it.”
Again, it depends on the time and the place, supply and demand. Generally, I would say that teachers would be the easiest to replace. The others require more specific training.
I do not know. Why do you ask? Are you of the opinion that one must know the hiring laws of every city and township in the country to discuss the issue, writ large, as presented in the OP?
Thanks for the info, but that does’t change my opinion one iota. I find it an insult to a person that he or she would not negotiate their own compensation. Or not be able to. You’re describing how things are. The OP asked should. And it certainly isn’t a benefit of the community that pays the salaries of the workers for them to create leverage that artificially inflates their worth.
Well, that sucks. But you’re asking to judge the should of the situation with the baggage of what is in place now. I have now doubt that the whole thing is a ridiculous Red-Queenish scenario. And I say that is because collective braining and unions have created that atmosphere.
The fact is that I’ve had a bunch of jobs and negotiated a salary without any union. And I’m really not alone in this. There are millions and millions of bookkeepers, engineers, accountants, graphic designers, paralegals, copywriters, even teachers, who are in a job and are not part of a union. And in most of them, there is no union to join. Yet, hiring and firing occurs thousands of times every day. All without out the Carrollian nightmare you describe.
By judging environments where unions have a strong presence, or created the landscape, to those where it is virtually non-existent. How can you claim the opposite?
May I ask why you don’t call the police and tell them someone was holding a gun to your head forcing you to work at a job that you considered to have such intolerable conditions?
Ah, the lovely right-wing fiction that the balance of power between employers and employees is EXACTLY equal, and all one needs to do to find a good job is walk away from your old one and ask…nay, DEMAND that a new employer snatch you up before you’re no longer available.
Actually, it fluctuates. Sometimes, the employers have more power, sometimes the workers. It’s really not all that difficult to understand.
I stuck around just long enough to help change those conditions. Not everyone can just walk off the job and easily find another one, especially these days.
I will admit that I was there too long, though.
Post #123.
Yeah, because everyone with a crappy job can just leave it, uproot everything and relocate to where their dream jobs are located. Jobs, decent or otherwise, are so darned easy to get these days, you know.
Well that’s certainly a different metric! Dream job are never easy to come by. The fact remains that millions of millions of people get non-union jobs and move to new non-union jobs, many of them better jobs. This notion that unions are necessary is as incorrect.
No. I was just addressing this statement
So do you need to be a member of a union to be hired as a public employee? If not, your statement is a red herring.
Then what does it matter what the specific situation is in Denver?
So far, the vast majority of this discussion revolves around pay. This seems to me to be revealing a great deal about the biases and stereotypes that some of the ‘antis’ hold.
Unions are not only about money, unions are about education, training, safety, equality and democracy.
Education is not an issue these days? Try telling that to the 50 year old who has found that the labour market has moved on and their skills are no longer relevant.
Unions have long recognised that education is a fundamental freedom, without an informed population the national government is free to do just whatever it wants, and for generations that’s exactly what happened - education tends to be attacked nowadays by jacking up the cost, which keeps it out of reach for those further down the working orders, and it is lack of education that is critical in ensuring that they will tend to remain in that position - sure one or two will make good, but they are the exceptions.
Training - we live in a globalisation economy, why are 50 year old car workers losing their employment, this is not even worth answering, but it then begs the question what to do with those whose work has been displaced to lower cost countries?
Legislation, just as companies with vested interests lobby legislators, unions must keep up, individual salary negotiation workers simply do not have the capacity to do this - but it is at the political level where many of the terms and conditions that ALL WORKERS, unionised or not are fundamentally affected. Does anyone here genuinely believe that companies lobby to ensure best practice for their workforce?
Look at the Arab spring, you can argue one way or another, the fact remains, that unions and collectives have been able to empower whole populations, and if you remove their collective voice, what we see is the type of repression that we have in Syria. Extremist governments do their very best to disenfranchise workers, not only through the ballot box, they select their favourites, the corruption in such countries is quite staggering.
Safety - if you think you are an asset as a worker, and that your employer values your services, then you are sadly mistaken, there are very few such workers that are truly ‘mission critical’ and for the rest of us, we are readily replaced - perhaps with a little inconvenience - but remember that the air traffic controllers thought they were flame-proof, and they were not.
It really is no use hoping that single workers, isolated as they would be could do a bit of public interest whistle blowing. Extremist governments hate to see workers organise, they crush journalism and they crush collectivism - anyone advocating the compulsory stripping of union rights should take heed and understand the only way their own rights were obtained and continue to be maintained is through the independence and freedoms gained by collectivisation.
You get long term illness from asbestos? How many more millions have to die before you decide each and every one must negotiate their own compensation package? How do you every expect workers to build up the expertise they will need to protect themselves from a host of dangers? Don’t give me all that rubbish about companies and moral concerns about safety, read the OHSA reports every week as I do and you quickly realise that companies or individual managers really don’t give one for you.
You could try fighting your safety case on your own, perhaps hire your own legal team - good luck on that. Unionised workplaces are known to have over one third, and up to two thirds fewer serious life threatening accidents than non-unionised ones. You can ask me for cites on that if you wish, but trust me, there is no point in you pursuing that since there is a huge amount of stuff out there.
Who do you think limited the driving hours of tube train drivers? Who do you think limited the number of hours semi drivers can work in a shift, or airline pilots - sure it would be more ‘cost effective’ to push these people further and further, but that unionised safety has also ensured safety for the public too.
What we have here folks, are very poorly informed individuals trying to dance to their own personal bias without the slightest consideration for the wider work that unions do, and how that in turn benefits everyone in society.
Pay is only one aspect of union work, its the aspect that the average shop floor worker can see, and its the one that the politicians flag up and attacks - in truth its about balancing the power relationships between the employer and the employed - surely those ‘antis’ are not so stupid that they realise that power must be shared and not just left ‘in trust’ to the ruling classes?
But it is a benefit to the community to not have the additional costs associated with individual negotiations. And it is more expensive. It might not make much of a difference for a small employer , or to only negotiate starting pay, but how much do you think it would cost NYS to individually negotiate compensation and benefits regularly with some 300,000 employees. And then remember that every county, town , city and village will have to do the same.And remember, unions don’t only negotiate pay- they also negotiate working conditions, work hours, rules for accruing and using leave,transfer policies , health insurance benefits. There’s a cost to having individual deals- right now, every member of bargaining unit X gets an X% raise on a particular date, or earns 10 days vacation after two years of employment. Individual negotiation will result in employee X getting a lower salary and 15 days vacation, or employee Y getting a higher salary and giving up health insurance, or Z giving up dental insurance and getting tuition reimbursement. They would have to either hire more people strictly to conduct these negotiations, or push the authority to negotiate way further down than either you or I would be comfortable with. It’s a lot easier to give everyone a 3% raise effective April 1 than to give different people different raises on different effective dates, and therefore there would be more work (and a need for more employees) in timekeeping and payroll departments .Not to mention how it looks when the teacher who is the police commissioner’s daughter negotiates a starting salary $10,000 above the average. Even if she legitimately negotiated it.
What leverage? A strike? That’s not the same thing as the right to collectively bargain and they don’t always go together.
Whether you acknowledge it or not , government employers also benefit by negotiating with a group rather than on an individual basis. There’s a reason my government employer will not bargain with me, even though I am not in a union.
And Los Angeles?
and Phoenix?
and anywhere else?
You made a statement that implies public-sector unions keep non-union members out. That (to use your words) is a false assumption.
And Los Angeles?
and Phoenix?
and anywhere else?
You made a statement that implies public-sector unions keep non-union members out. That (to use your words) is a false assumption.
So can teachers strike? You said those that are not easy to replace shouldn’t be allowed to strike and now you equivocate with
so by your own admission teachers can strike.
I have also demonstrated that you are wrong on
- Union influence on working conditions
- Unions using a closed-shop model
- The ease with which public employees can strike
So now tell us why public sector workers should not unionize?
You’ll either be a union man
Or a thug for J.H. Blair
Florence Patton Reece
Wait, are you of the opinion that public-sector unions don’t do that? That it is not a characteristic associated with them? That it is only non-public sector unions who do that? I will certainly be gladdened to learn that that is the case. Or that the propensity for them to do so is less than I thought. What do you think the numbers are?
Secondly, I was not saying that they all keep union members out, or that they all do so via a stated rule. Do you disagree that some do it by stated rule? Or do you disagree with the fact that many of the policies put in place at the behest of the unions over the years have made it it near impossible (if not impossible) for people to be hired solely on their merit…sans teaching credentials, for example?
Yikes. So much wrong with this. And you’re being very loose with facts here, which I think is getting us into trouble. So, I’ll ask you to point to my exact phrasing, in context, that leads you to conclude that my positions (evidently) are. But I’ll attempt to clarify in the meantime:
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“those that are not easy to replace shouldn’t be allowed to strike”
(I don’t think any of them should be able to strike) -
“teachers are easy to replace”
(I think you’ll see that where you got this from was making the point that teachers would be the easiest of the examples given to be replaced. I’m sure you’re logic course will come back to remind you that that is not the same thing as saying that “teachers are easy to replace”. Though they very well may be the case given the laws of supply and demand.
It would also do you well to not have us fall into the nonsensical loop of you arguing what is against my what should be, which the OP asked for. As far as my “Again, it depends on the time and the place, supply and demand. Generally, I would say that teachers would be the easiest to replace. The others require more specific training.” If you’re of the mind that public safety workers and/or teachers are immune to the laws of supply and demand, I don’t think I can help you.
In what respect? Please you my exact words, in context, again. Show what my position was and how you showed it to be wrong.
Please provide support for the extraordinary claim that no union shops do this. Or that most do not. And then you can acknowledge what I just wrote in this post indicating that rules preventing non-union hires is only one way unions keep them out.
Please supply my words indicating the specific position which I hold that you think I was wrong about, and then proof that I was wrong about it. I may have been. But I’m not clear on what you’re referring to and you seem to have a tendency to take things I say and think, put them through some strawification device, and then expect me to recognize them and defend them. Perhaps in your fervor you’ve conflated my positions with others you are arguing against.
Because it helps the union and the people in the union, not the municipality, from which the need for the jobs springs and who pay for the service. It’s a mechanism that is inserted between worker (fireman, teacher, dog catcher) and the employer (the community). And that brings up an important point. The people doing the hiring in these situations should be acting as an agent of the community. The moral and fiduciary responsibility lies there. But with the unions in place, there is a tendency for the agent is more concerned with creating a power structure which to then use against the community for their own primary benefit. Like the example I gave upthread about the cops and firemen padding their last year(s) of work with overtime in order to inflate the salary their pension is based upon.
You make a valid point regarding the nightmare of negotiating everything form a zero basis, but that really wouldn’t be the case. For example, there are no unions in the advertising agencies and marketing companies I’ve worked in, but their are guidelines and guardrails. Every company had a vacation policy, within which there was room to maneuver if you were experienced and valuable enough (2-4 weeks). While their was rarely a stated salary for anyone other than the lowest paying jobs, when the company was interviewing you they knew that "Okay, this guy is applying for a job that I’m probably going to pay up $55,000 for. If they could get you for less they would. If they fell in love with you, they could usually pay another $10 grand. Naturally the higher the salary the more the leeway they came to the table with.
As far as benefit, the companies I’ve worked for never bargained with things like health benefits. That seemed to be off the table and the company was not free to have them fluctuate, legally. I’m not in HR, so I could be wrong about that. But in talking to friends of mine who had reason to try to negotiate better health care, there was no chance they could. The company could try to solve this by giving the employee some extra money, but that seemed to be the only way. The only things that seemed to be open ended were salary and raises, which were simply based on the work you’ve done up until that point.
No, I didn’t mean that a strike was the only leverage.Collective bargaining is leverage all by itself. I think it’s fine for this outside of the public sector (not that I’d be interested in it), but for public-sector employees places the community in a position they shouldn’t be in.
I do acknowledge that there is a benefit. It’s one less thing for the employers to have to deal with. The question is do the coasts of doing so outweigh the benefits. I’m of the mind that the extra mechanism is an unneeded appendage that should be cut off. also, I do find it troubling from a moral standpoint that I would get out in a huge pool of workers that would all be treated the same as me. It strips people of whom they are. If you are twice as good as someone else, should you not be paid considerably more? If you do a remarkable job in a particular year, should you not be compensated for that? I know that many schools are now trying to institute policies that allow for rewarding the individual, which is great. It;'s a step in the right direction. But I do beleive that we’d better off without them generally. And for the specific subset of “public-sector” employees and find them counter productive, creating a conflict of interest for the entity: is it there to serve the community? Or the people in the union?