http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/01/22/snoozing-ttc.html
Love how I’m jumping over the ‘working’ guy.
The union blamed the public for taking this picture…
Instead of apologizing and fixing laziness in the work, they blamed the public for taking pics.
Oh here’s another one… lovely union workers.
You think management policies have nothing to due with labor negotiations?
Yes, I do. It may be only one voice among many thousands. But it exists.
Unlike my control over the management of General Motors which is zero.
Which, coincidentally, appears to be the influence the facts have on your opinions.
Of those of you who defend the union, how many rely on it for income?
Either through parents working in one, spouse or children working in a union.
Not me. I’m don’t have any family members or personal friends who are in a union… except maybe one high school friend who is an airline pilot.
When I was younger, I worked alongside unions in several jobs I had. I was not in a unionized position. I don’t consider that union’s performance to be ideal. There were continual squabbles about who is supposed to do what work, some workers were just deadbeats, and so on.
So why am I not anti-union? Because the criticisms of the union I worked with could equally apply to management.
Why are you asking about whether I rely on a union for income? What’s your point?
It is not a case of defending unions, it is a case of saying that what is good for managers in terms of pay deals, is plenty good enough for workers.
Whatever argument you use to justify the salaries of managers, you can make a counter argument that workers should also have similar means of expression and negotiation.
There are no bad workers, only bad managers.
If the workers are not doing their job, then why are managers letting them get away with it?
Managers have responsibilities, and if they can’t or won’t make use of them, whose fault is it?
The only thing that is really under discussion is the balance of power in the labour market, and nothing else, sometimes it goes too far one way, and in turn it goes too far the other, but the reality is that the power tends to be in the hands of managers and it is unusual to see it go the other way.
There are no bad workers, only bad managers.
My wife works for the federal government as a white-collar worker. Her pay is good, but while there used to be a lot of security and little stress, that is no longer the case.
She is under tremendous pressure to meet various metrics. The job is extremely stressful. Exployees who don’t meet performance expectations are unceremoniously walked out of the door.
I think it is because many applicants have this expectation that working for the federal government will be a cake walk. Some new employees recalibrate, but many do not. Her director has no problem firing people who don’t adapt quickly enough.
Oh, and she does belong to a union, but it is not very powerful. The union will not lift a finger for an employee fired for job performance issues.
I’m not an anti-union type.
People are free to associate and form a union if they choose to do so.
Companies are free to fire them, and hire someone else if they are free to do so.
If the formation of a union makes a company non competitive, then they will fail. Unless the government bails them out, as they did with GM. Or unless the ‘company’ is not subject to any competition, such as the government itself.
The problem is when the government and the union are on the same side of the bargaining table, as they are today. And they are bargaining with our money, taken from us against our will.
One of the most bizarre sights of the past few years was John Corzine (then gov of New Jersey) pumping up the government-employee union crowd with cries of “I’m going to fight for you, and a fair contract!” before his recent (unsucessful) re-election bid against Christie.
Hey! Dude! Corzine! You are supposed to be on my side! You are supposed to be negotiating against the unions, on my behalf. I’m the taxpayer. I’m the customer. It’s my money. Who is on my side, here?
Also, I work for local government agency, and actually belong to a union as well, which is unusual for an engineer. Being a union member is mandatory for the position.
I will say that there is one big benefit to belonging to a union, and that is protection of retirement benefits. When I worked for a private engineering consultant, I worked on an at-will basis and could be fired at any time. However, I had a 401(k), which I could take with me. I also knew I could quickly get a job with a competing firm. One frustrating thing with working in the private sector was that they did not readily give promotions and raises to in-house employees, so over time one’s salary tended to fall below the market value. The only way to get a significant raise was to jump ship and go to another firm.
With my current government job, I have a defined-benefit pension, and raises are the same for everyone. However, without a union, nothing could stop my employer from firing me before I vest in the pension plan. If I leave my job before I vest, I simply get my contributions back. This is money that I could have invested in an IRA or 401(k). So as long as there is a defined-benefit pension plan, I want the union there to protect my benefits, which are not transportable.
If my agency dumped the pension plan and went toward a 401(k) plan, they’d have a lot more trouble attracting and retaining qualified personnel, because the job is very stressful and bureaucratic. On the other hand, the union tends to protect under-performing employees, which is maddening for the rest of us, who have to pick up the slack.
I pointed out that $40,000 is about the national average for ALL WORKERS; that includes brain surgeons with 20 years experience. (looking it up, it’s actually $42,270)
Call me crazy, but I don’t think “entry-level bus driver” should be a high-paying job. And in the private sector, it isn’t. I have no problem with them making a decent living (drivers at Greyhound start at about $35K, though I’d bet most of them have some experience); but when a bus driver is pulling down over $100K a year of taxpayer money, something is seriously awry, no matter where they live.
Anecdotally, I had dinner last night with two government employees. Topics of conversation included 1) my girlfreind’s unfirable coworker who spends 6 hours a day playing solitaire, 2) our friend’s bump in salary (she is a proofreader) which will enable her to make almost $60,000 a year one year out of college, 3) how I need to work on making my resume more government-jargon-oriented in order to get government jobs, because 4) the people who process resumes for federal agencies are brain-dead unfirable idiots.
In Toronto, the union holds a lot of voting power. They can literally change who gets elected. That’s how our current mayor got in. So he defends unions and gives in to their demands after a small act of defiance to look like he is on the public taxpayer side.
Management can’t fire bad workers because of the union. The union protects them. That’s one of the issues.
I wouldn’t have a problem with unions if they managed things well. Fire lazy workers, don’t keep people around if the job doesn’t require it, and don’t hold the public hostage so you can give the workers 3-4% raises every year (private sector is getting 1-1.5%)… I just want the union/government to not waste my tax money with an inefficient workforce.
If you get a union lawyer that works 80 hours and gets things done very quickly, sure pay him/her 20% more than private sector.
But do not keep 3 lawyers hanging around doing the job of 1 and pay them 20% above private sector. that’s wasting my money. Fire 2 of them.
And as always, do not pay a low skill job like cashier or ticket collecting 60k+…
On another note, how could a group of people start a union?
A very good article in the Toronto Star on daycare workers.
Daycare workers have to get a diploma, get no summer vacation like teachers, etc. Yet they make half of what a union ttc ticket collector makes. These are workers entrusted to educating our infants in the very formative years.
I stand corrected. The government lawyers I know are non-union, and I assumed. Thanks for the correction.
Which would make a lot of sense if federal employees were allowed to go on strike.
This does not reflect the fact that the government has been outsourcing more and more of the unskilled and low skilled labor to the private sector. Perhaps it might make sense if the CATO institute compared salaries for similar job descriptions. A government employed doctor typically makes less than a private sector doctor, an SEC lawyer makes less than a private sector securities lawyer, an FDIC bank regulator makes less than bank controllers, etc. There are probably areas where you can make more in the government than you would in the private sector, but I can’t think of what those areas might be.
As far as I can tell, Unions can’t do very much when it comes to federal pay (other than lobby congress), its part of the annual budget process.
The one thing that makes federal employees different tahn private sector employees is that theya re very hard to fire. This is intentional to prevent the entire bureaucracy from turning over every administration and to prevent the over-politicization of the bureaucracy. The unfortunate side effect is that it becomes very difficult to get rid of dead wood.
State employees can strike in all sorts of places, federal employees cannot strike anywhere.
Its a federal crime to strike. I don’t know how they define it but I think the last timea nyone tried was the air traffic controllers strike during the Reagan years. IOW, the federal employee unions are not extorting concessions with threat of strike, which might explaint their relatively poor pay compared to their private sector counterparts.
Federal employees do not need to provide a doctor’s note unless they take more than three sick days
And wouldn’t capitalism tell you to move somewhere else? Free choice and all that. In the US, we are being told that tighter regulations on bankers will make them all move to London or Nevis.
Yes they are.
But they make less? right? even on an hourly basis, they make less right?
I have worked for some fo the most elite law firms in the world and it was easier to get those jobs tahn it was to get a job in government. Not because standards are so high but because the procedure for hiring a federal employee is so complicated.
The CSRA (Civil Service Reform Act) eliminated the right to strike.
Unless they are classified as confidential, supervisory or in a very special agency, your non-union attorney friends are likely to be part of the bargaining unit and the union to which they do not pay dues still owes them a duty of representation under certain circumstances. Moreover, their union negotiates their contract and the rights contained therein. Basically, they’re enjoying a bunch of rights their union team works for (on a volunteer basis).