2kmaro
Think
Premium,ExMod 1 BC
join:2000-07-11
ColossalCave
clubs:  
| reply to bamabrad
Re: Although unions aren't the best thing in the world....
Actually, the 40-hour work-week and weekends and such came not from unions but from federal legislation. Check the history of the Fair Labor Standards Act. One of the things it did was establish the 40 hour work week as a standard, which in turn ended up with the side effect of creating the "weekend". This was primarily an effort to get people back to work: if you run a company 24/7 or just keep your business open 12 or 16 hrs a day, and the gov't says everything over X #hrs per day/week is overtime and has to be paid at a premium rate, what do you do to get the work done without increasing labor cost? You hire more people.
In today's U.S. economy, in any large business such as TW (or the one I work for - not as large by far, but non-union) management realizes that the 'threat' of unionizing is always there. So the tendency is to provide compensation and benefits packages that compare favorably or better than what the union might force on them, without having to provide 'featherbed' jobs as part of the package.
Beech aircraft was a great example. They treated their employees like family (well liked family). There were things like a workout facility and similar amenities available to all employees. Then they got unionized, and through some silly interpretation of some union rule - those facilities became basically denied to all. I don't remember the specifics, but why do I think it probably went something like this: only non-union members can use the facility. Union cries FOUL! And so the company just shuts the whole thing down.
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...then THINK! again. |
