Shove it up your collectively bargained asses

The BBQ Pit
61

Standup Karmic, I repeat my question from my most recent post, that neither you nor any other of the anti-union posters here has offered an answer to:

Can any anti-union poster here explain to me exactly how unions can secure better wages for workers except by denying companies access to non-union labor?

The Canadian theater unions are simply doing everything that’s legally in their power to ensure that Blue Man Group either can’t get enough non-union workers, or will suffer financial pressure from consumer boycotts if they do get them, or both. Please explain to me how any union is supposed to negotiate better terms for its workers otherwise.

If you can’t explain that, then please explain to me why these perfectly sensible negotiating strategies are getting you so mad. Why on earth do you consider it so unfair (not to mention “weaselly” or “childish”!) for a union not to endorse the position that a company should be able to hire anybody it wants to without any pressure in favor of hiring union members? What is the union for except to pressure for the hiring and good treatment of union members? Duh!

I ask again, how is a union supposed to get more work, better pay, better benefits, etc., for its members without putting pressure on companies not to hire non-union workers? And aren’t unions supposed to try to get more work, better pay, better benefits, etc., for their members?

You know, I really have no strong opinion on theater union issues one way or the other, but the sheer nasty antagonism of your denigration of the unions in this case is tipping me into sympathy for their position. I really feel like boycotting performances of the Blue Man Group and urging their management to sign on with the theater unions, just because the unions are getting so viciously slammed for what seems so far to be perfectly reasonable and legal behavior.

(And let’s not even get into the irony of somebody protesting monopolistic tactics being used against a show that’s bankrolled by—wait for it—Clear Channel. Talk about sauce for the goose!)

Okay brothers and sisters, count me in: BOYCOTT BLUE! :stuck_out_tongue:

62

Perhaps I don’t understand how the theatre business works. As I understand it, Blue Man does not currently have any employees. They will soon be hiring. When they do, they will be hiring “employees”, not contracting out for that labour. Again, maybe I don’t understand how theatre works.

I must disagree. It appears, at least according to the news story, that the intent of he picket is to force Blue Man to agree to hire only members of the four picketing unions and nobody else.

I’m sorry for you. It must be difficult to face every day on this planet with such a dismal view of your fellow human beings. You do understand that it is human beings who own companies, yes? I’ve had a few occasions where I was genuinely treated poorly in my employment, a few occasions where I was treated ok, though the boss was a bit of a jerk (though this didn’t really have an impact upon my livelihood or happiness as a human being), and many occasions where my employers was a nice person who was concerned about ensuring that both his customers and his staff were happy. I guess I just have more faith in people than you.

Yes. Blue Man has been eyeing Toronto as a potential market for years. “If only they’d have a downturn in the entertainment market,” they would say in their Exploitation Committee meetings. “Then, for sure, when it appears that people aren’t going to shows as much any more, we can take advantage of the depressed labour market and make a huge profit. No, fellow Exploitation Committee member, that there is a downturn in the entertainment market and people aren’t going to shows as much isn’t a consideration for us whatsoever. After all, after we can exploit all of those out of work actors, it doesn’t matter of people come to our show or not, we’ll make a HUGE profit. Then shut down when the market improves again. Open low, close high, I say!”

Think maybe that’s how it went, Cheesesteak?

On preview, I see Kimstu has addressed me, but I don’t have time to read or reply to that post at this moment. I must run to a lunch meeting. It might need to wait until tomorrow given the busy rest of my day. Cheers.

63

I don’t think that’s how it went at all, I’m just pointing out how easy it is to portray someone’s position in the worst possible light.

Even Airman has suggested that truth probably lies somewhere inbetween demonization of each side.

64

Yes. They can lobby the government for legislatively mandated minimum wages.

Oh… wait. We have those.

Does Canada not?

And it’s a moot point - even if the path you suggest was their only way to raise wages - the issue is that they don’t have the right to deny the companies access to non-union labor.

No one’s saying “Yay, ClearChannel!” Monopolies are bad.

65

CG: Yes. They can lobby the government for legislatively mandated minimum wages. […] the issue is that they don’t have the right to deny the companies access to non-union labor.

Well, at least you’re logically consistent about it. You admit that unions have no effective way of pressuring employers into improving conditions for their workers, except by denying companies access to non-union labor.

Since you think that unions don’t have the right to do that, you recommend that they essentially give up being unions—that is, collective-bargaining entities that negotiate with employers on behalf of workers—and become lobbyists with the federal government instead.

Of course, whether it would really be an improvement to have theater people working for the federal minimum wage, with no available collective-bargaining option except lobbying the government for legislation, is a matter of opinion. But I can’t fault your argument on the score of consistency.

66

(emphasis mine)

No one’s denying anybody any rights here. Tell me: who’s rights are being denied? These unions are making their opinions heard in the most public way possible, in order to make their issues known and affect BMG’s decision. Corporations and associations do this all the time. It’s called advertising-- convincing your target audience why they should do what you want them to do-- and you can find it on a TV, website, radio station, ballpark, street corner, bus, university bulletin board, magazine or newspaper near you.

Blue Man Group has the legal right to hire anyone they so choose. But you can damn well better believe if they hire non-union labor, the organized labor in town will still make their opinions known.

67

Sometimes unions are necessary. I think they have, with improvements in legislation, become less and less necessary in the general case. So instead of fading away into the background - mind you, with the ability to re-appear in the event of grave injustices - the unions have become self-sustaining beasts. The union exists to prolong the existence of the union.

In a time of crisis, the workers should get together, unionize, and fight the power. When the crisis is done - the union should go away.

68

Please carefully read Kimstu’s post to which I was replying.

69

But it can’t if new contracts need to be negotiated after they expire, or if both sides agreed to re-openers. And if someone wishes to file a grievance, a union officer has to be on hand. If the members need to vote on something, ballots have to go out, and then there’s a need for an office, and so on.

I should note that I’m coming from a somewhat different angle here, being part-time and having been involved in two faculty unions on community college campuses. I have not had experience with Teamsters, registry halls, strikes, etc. I am aware of many horror stories, but it does bother me when someone wants to label every local out there as “bad.” (Broad strokes indeed.)

We’re talking about thousands of locals with tens of thousands of members in many different occupations. There is a wide variety when it comes to unions, degrees of effectiveness, and levels of corruption. I’m fortunate to be in a good, strong, active one interested in working not only for faculty but ultimately for students as well. I wouldn’t be so heavily involved if I didn’t believe the unit had integrity.

70

My interactions with unions over the years have been mixed. For some trades, electrical and plumbers for example, the apprenticeship training program is very good. In theory, they produce journeymen who are capable of performing work in an expeditious and safe manner.

The flip side of this is the jobs where I was forced to hire workers from the hall who couldn’t do the work. Two guys show up to perform final wire pull and termination of a motor bank system. The wire is on the jobsite, and I hand them two sets of blueprints with termination punchdowns marked. They look at the prints, and tell me that they have no idea how to complete the task. Then what in the flying four-alarm frog fuck are you doing here, shitstain? I’ve got my own people that have been put through company school, who have company provided trucks, tools, health, life, pension, vacation, and uniforms, and I have to detail one of them down here to tell the two of you how to do what he could do by himself in half the time.

In all fairness, sometimes you get good guys. The ironworkers sent out a pair to erect a modular vault. Five minutes of Q & A, and they were all over the project. It was done on time, done well, and their attention to detail was good. The problem is that you can’t count on it, because along with the smart independent workers, there are boobs. Boobs who shouldn’t have a journeyman’s card. Boobs that reinforce every negative stereotype, because they couldn’t count their balls twice and get the same answer.

The agreements union guys have with one another need a tweak, too. As part of a credit union job, we had a 12’ drive up bullet resistant vision window. I figured the glaziers would do it because it was (duh) glass, but the ironworkers bitched because it was in a stainless steel frame, and just to make the three way monkey-fuck complete, the electricians wanted a piece of it because there was a built-in plugmold strip and two fluorescent light fixtures on the interior. Two hours of my time was wasted while this trio pissed on one another’s shoes. Yeppers, that’s my idea of professionalism. :rolleyes:

71

You’re kidding, right?

72

Or for adding $30,000 to the price of a starter home. Or for having cars cost a few thousand extra each.

There are no free lunches. When an industry becomes unionized, the net effect is that the prices throughout the industry increase. This causes a shrinkage in that industry, which costs jobs, and which causes the consumers of those products and services to pay higher costs, which costs their own workers money and jobs.

In the macro sense, unions are just about workers clumping together to try to take a piece of the pie from other workers.

I’m in favor of unions, but against closed shop laws and police policies that look the other way when there is union violence. I also don’t believe that unions should be allowed to contribute to political parties if the union is a closed shop and therefore the workers have no choice in having their money go to causes they may not support.

When the power of unionization is limited to collective bargaining and the ability of the union to walk off the job, and the employer therefore has to go through the downtime and added costs of replacing the workforce, that’s fine. Collective bargaining then has strong influence over the company, but not a stranglehold.

73

That question makes no sense. What you’re really asking is, “Why not allow the company to hire non-union workers?” The reason is that you can’t have collective bargaining if you don’t have a bargaining unit. If the employer is free to hire as many non-union workers as he sees fit, then when the union employees attempt to negotiate a contract, the employer can just say, “take a hike”. The union would have zero leverage. It would completely negate the whole point of having a union at all.

74

I think this illustrates the most important factor in the value of a union, bargaining power. When the relative power of the worker and corporation is out of balance (either way) bad things happen.

Worker is too weak, you get highly skilled people struggling to make ends meet, and/or terrible working conditions. Worker is too strong and the corporation winds up paying a kings ransom for some snot-nosed kid with the “right” degree, or can’t move a critical box of parts to the factory floor until the union box-mover shows up in a few hours.

Back in the day, factory workers were in an inherently weak position, so unions really did a great job securing decent working conditions. Today, they’re much less necessary overall because there’s more ability to change jobs. There are still a few industries where the workers are in a bad bargaining position, teachers and actors are two that come to mind, IMHO. Not so sure about the IATSE (theater carpenters, props, electrics, etc.) guys, their skills are more transferable than your average chorus boy’s.

This is why, even though I’m generally anti-union, that I came down on the pro-side of this debate. I know how weak a position the actors are in, and what conditions they’d work under with no union, and it’s not pretty.

75

No. You don’t have to have a monopoly to have bargaining power, just as supermarket chains don’t have to have a monopoly to make a sale. A union will succeed if it can offer benefits to both employer and employee alike. Your argument presumes the existence of a large pool of non-union people who are willing to work for the employer on the terms he offers. Who are these people? Why are they choosing to work on these terms if they’re unsatisfied with them? If they’re unsatisfied, why aren’t they joining the union of their own volition, and reducing the employer’s ability to circumvent the union? And if they are satisfied, what’s the problem, again?

If a union is beneficial enough to attract the membership of the majority of workers, it will have power, and I’ll have no problem with it. If its monopoly is bestowed as of right, however, it no longer has an incentive to provide a benefit to its members. Just like Microsoft has for the last 5 years or so had no incentive to make a better browser. Just like Bell telecom had no incentive to reduce prices way back when. Monopolies are all the same, and everyone gets the shaft.

76

Or maybe the additional cost of union-only labor has forced shows to raise prices **causing ** the very downturn you’re talking about.

77

It’s illegal for dues money to be spent on anything political. Unions set up PACs for their members to contribute to, and that money is what’s spent on politics. This is very heavily regulated.

For example, my salary is paid by dues because I work for a union. If I’m working door to door, talking to non-members, campaigning for a specific candidate, I have to be taken off of the union payroll, and put on the PAC payroll.

78

In regard to what Dead Badger said, I think it’s a good sign that in my unit, over 90% of the full timers have voluntarily become full, active members (as opposed to unit members). I don’t know the stats on the part timers, but at least 30 of them joined just last fall.
I was giving a task force report at the negotiations table about a month ago and noted that the managers and faculty seemed to have a pretty good rapport and camaraderie despite the differences and disagreements that will always exist. This was markedly different from the very adversial and tense negotiations I participated in at a college which I have since left behind.
Just another example of the tremendous differences that exist between or among unions. They can’t all be lumped together as if they were one big blob.

79

Those two situations are not analagous.

Uh, they’re called “people”. There always tend to be people willing to work under substandard conditions. Think about it - unless we have 100% employment in this country, there will always be people looking for work.

Because they need work. Why did people labor in coal mines and get black lung disease? Because they had to make a living, and if they didn’t take the job, someone else would. If it were as simple as not taking the job if you don’t like the conditions, unions would have never been necessary. But it doesn’t work that way. You need the power of collective bargaining. If one individual asks for better conditions, with nobody else to stand with him, he’s just going to get fired. It’s really not that complicated.

They are joining the union of their own volition. They have the choice of accepting a union job, or looking for a non-union job. If they don’t want to have a union job, then they need not apply for a union job. There are plenty of crappy, non-union jobs available. (For that matter, there are good non-union jobs too.)

First, the word “monopoly” is inapplicable here. Second, a union shop is not “bestowed as of right”, it is agreed upon by majority vote. I think many labor unions in existence need to be reformed, and often are existing not for the workers, but for the union itself. But that doesn’t mean that organized labor is intrinsically evil. It is in fact indispensable in many cases. And if you allow workers to reap the benefits of a union job, without having to participate in the process that creates those benefits, you destroy the entire process.

Again, you are comparing disparate concepts.

80

Missouri is not currently a right-to-work state. Neighboring Kansas is, so maybe you were thinking of another state?