I wish this were an exaggeration. I have absolutely no reason to make this up.
Manhattan, when you write recipes for making vaccines, you need to go into the production area, which means having to interact with operators constantly. That’s not an unusual occurrence where I work. Also, machinists are not the ones cleaning the toilets. I don’t think I said that.
I was surprised to hear that blue collar work paid more than an office job.
I don’t know if all union workers earn the same (and I didn’t say they did), because that just wouldn’t make sense. Experience would be a factor, not so Glee?
Is that $100 American? Oh wait, I see where someone mentioned a 48-week year, so it can’t be American. Reasoning further, I deduce that we’re talking Canadian or Australian dollars. If it’s Australia, that means said toilet cleaner earns only $52/hr. I feel much better. Yeah, right.
Which “union workers” make $100/hr? It makes a difference. I have a friend who was making about $70/hr as an electrician but do you know what? He had to have more education than a toilet cleaner (at least an associate’s degree, and I think it was a bachelor’s),and spend years as an apprentice to get that rate. You know what else? He never worked a full year after he got to that rate, so he didn’t earn the the $140,000 or so a year it might look like.
It’s not unheard of for supervisors to make less than the people you supervise (and if you’re a pharmacist, i don’t see why you’d be supervising the toilet cleaners and machinists-interact is not the same as supervise).My supervisor makes less then some of my co-workers and he’s in the same union we’re in.. Doesn’t have to do with his job being worth less than theirs- it’s a function of a salary schedule with an entry rate and a top rate for each job,based on years in that job. The top rate for my job is above the starting rate for his job,and he’s only had his job for two years.(BTW, my job requires experience in a lower grade job, which in turn requires a bachelor’s degree and experience in a related job, so you can’t just assume all union members have no education.My bargaining unit is called the Professional, Scientific and Technical unit,and our members include doctors, lawyers, social workers, teachers , pharmacists, research scientists etc)
3] Getting paid time and a half for over forty hours ,in the US at least, has nothing to do with union membership. It’s a federal law that applies to every job that doesn’t qualify as being exempt ( and most jobs don’t qualify to be exempted). And if people are being paid on an hourly basis, you can’t really expect them to be willing to work extra hours for free.Would you give up a week’s vacation for no compensation? And would your company let the hourly workers leave an occasional hour early with no deduction either to their pay or to their vacation? And why is it that you’re willing to work 12 hour days for no additional money? There must be a reason. My husband does it, and I know why he does. He can get a substantial bonus at the end of the year based on how well the company did, and on his contribution to it. The “union guys” where he works, however, get no such bonus.
{added after GIS’s last post)
I don’t know why you’d be surprised to learn that someblue collar jobs pay more than some office jobs? I certainly expect my mechanic, plumber or electrician to earn more than people with white collar jobs that require no particular training (receptionists,sales clerks and the many jobs which require a college degree,but in no particular area). And as Manhattan said, supply matters too.If there are three qualified applicants for every job in your field,that’s going to depress the pay in your field.If there aren’t enough machinists to fill all of the machinist jobs, it’s going to raise their wages.
Generally Unions try to eliminate experience as a factor. Everybody’s equal. It would be unfair, and the company could be accused of bias, if one Electrician made more than another electrician (other than for things specifically spelt out in the contract, such as leadership positions).
NONE of the Union guys work with make more than $30 an hour on straight time. On the other hand, they don’t work unpaid overtime, so on an annual basis, they currently make more than I do, too – no salaried overtime currently. Even the production workers (Union, unskilled labor) slightly win on the annual scale. On the other hand, I appreciate having the time off and NOT having to work overtime to pay for things I never can use for being at work 12 hours per day. So I don’t gripe.
Middle management is important, but it depends on the manager. There are some “wastes of skin” in my department. But there are also very hard working supervisors. Without them, the “real” workers don’t get their paychecks. The don’t get the parts and tools they need to do their jobs. They don’t approval for their ideas. They don’t get NEW assembly lines to replace the end-of-lifed assembly lines, thus guaranteeing future employment. It’s fun to play us-versus-them in a union shop, but the real fact of the matter is NOTHING will get done for too long without BOTH parties present in some capacity.
I do remember reading a magazine article some years back, that noted that the salaries of some long-time New York City public school janitors was higher than the starting salary of many of the teachers: $67,000 total benefits was the figure they gave, but they didn’t elaborate. It’s a nice sound bite and it might be true, but the lack of detail made it suspect, IMO.
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Unions are slowly failing in most mainstream or economically-emerging countries because the conditions that unions depend on for survival are not consistent with free trade policies.
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Generally, unions in the US are moving out of high-tech and educated jobs and into more lower-educated positions, simply because that’s the jobs that poorly educated people take, and poorly educated people make the least money and are most likely to vote for benefits and the least likely to understand the associated disadvantages, or to be affected by them. My own example: where I work, many people are high-school dropouts with no skills and no plans for learning any. They will never get promoted into management and make a real income & benefits and they are unlikely to find any other job elsewhere that’s much better, so voting union is basically getting something for nothing.
The one exception to that, of a white-collar area that unions have expanded in, is government jobs: mainly because there’s only one group of people who know how to do them. Eventually, however, government will begin to outsource jobs, and that will very likely be the final toll for unions in the US. - MC
Everybody’s equal until it’s lay-off time - then it’s SENIORITY. So a 15-year employee, who’s a major slacker keeps his job, while the new guy who actually does the work and is up to date on the latest technology, etc. is sent packing. REAL fair.
(Of course, getting raises without having to fight management over them every year IS nice)
The reason some union workers earn more than college grads is that a diploma is not a magic ticket to wealth. Companies don’t pay six figure salaries to you just because you have a degree.
As wishbone said, the advantage of an education is that it allows you to advance as far as your ambition and skill can take you.
In a union, you don’t have that ability. Seniority is usually based on time in the union, not on competance. So no matter how good you are at your job, you can never advance higher than some shmoe with 15 yrs seniority.
The worst part is that union workers are discouraged from taking ANY initiative. Have you ever had to wait hours for another union employee because the one sent to change your light bulb isn’t allowed to carry your monitor? But some union shops are like that.
Don’t feel bad if some union employees make a few thousand more than you. It’s a lot easier for a college educated person to find a high paying job in any number of fields than it is for a union machinist to find a similar job in another machine shop.
One of my best friends has a PH.D in Chemistry. After getting laid off at work (Dow), it took him a very long time to find another chemist job. Years. That PH.D actually was a liability. He eventually got a job at a small company that nuetralizes and disposes industrial waste, replacing a B.A. in chemistry. He hated Dow, he loves his new job because he is not stuck in the lab all day. He gets dirty with the work like the other guys, gets to make management decisions, hire and fire people. During unemployment, and now, he talks about how easy it would have been to just become a pharmacist instead. He makes a comparable salary to a pharmacist who works just a little overtime.
This lady friend of mine is a pharmacist. She has quit jobs and got new ones a day apart. Getting a bachelors degree in pharmacy so you can put pills in a bottle at Walgreens for doctors patients seems a bit much, but the pay is very good.
I don’t blame you for not going that pharmaceutical route. It seems soooo boring. There is more to a job than money.
Any company seeks to pay every employee as little as it can commensurate with its corporate goals. Just about everyone’s labour (that’s how we spell it here in the UK) is bought and sold on a free market.
If someone in your company is earning more than you, it’s a reflection of the prevailing market forces and the ease/difficulty of getting someone to perform task X rather than task Y. College qualifications are part of this equation, but not all of it. Unionisation is also part of the equation, but not all of it.
The answer to your OP is: the company pays you less because it can.
I don’t think the terms “marketable” and “universal demand” mean what you think they do. They mean “desirable”. During an “economic hiccup” as you describe it, they are no longer desirable by definition. You don’t have a continued job because you are “marketable” or in “universal demand”. You have a job because your union threatened your employer with economic violence if they did not give you this employment guarantee.
I don’t think “supply and demand” means what you think it does. Your job does not exist in bad times because of your highly demanded skills. It exists because your union took the tactics that OPEC or any other cartel takes.
As to the skill-less-ness of middle-managers, all I can say is you really are putting on some blinders.
That sure rings a bell, except the 15-year thing. We have certain tradesmen with 28 years of seniority who are the lowest seniority in the plant!
The rest is right on; some electricians, for example, that have 35 years don’t know a thing about robots, PLCs, CNC’s, and don’t care to learn. But, when layoff time comes, they’re the only one’s we’re stuck with. THEN it becomes salary’s job to carry the some of the union people, and risk a union grievance!
I generally don’t think much of the particular union that represents our industry, but, I’m kind of glad they bullied job guarantees – the good, young, educated guys won’t be let go.
I’m just bemused by the 97-day old bus strike happening now in Vancouver. Guys who earn $44,000 after one year of work walked off the job April 1, and now they’re bitching because their employer won’t let them go back to work :rolleyes:
FYI, the main sticking point isn’t salary. It’s that the union refuses to let the company bring in part time workers, or contract out routes with low ridership.
So we’re at loggerheads. The union wants to protect jobs, while the crown company (ie. ultimately run by the government) wants to provide more buses for its buck.
Meanwhile our province wants to make cleaning elementary schools an essential service. :rolleyes:
I’m with JeffB. Stupid the reason the union gets better pay is they use collective bargaining, while you go up to the powers that be by yourself and say ‘please sir I want some more’ they go together as a union. They all ask for their salary and job demands together and they fight for each other. Say if there was an unsafe condition in part of the plant affecting union workers then all of the Union would fight to condition made safe. They work together while you are all alone in the world.
Since that I haven’t conducted any formal surveys, I have to base my statements on personal encounters. Call it wearing bliners if you like; the remarks are true for virtually all middle managers I have had the pleasure of working with.