 cdruGo ColtsPremium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
kudos:5
 ·Frontier FiOS
| reply to neotorian
Re: Cost of Worker Replacement Must Be Decreasing said by neotorian:Because if we don't stand our ground, the company will walk all over us. What they were bringing to the table wasn't just as simple as making us pay a percentage of our health benefits; they wanted to take our retirement, extend and reduce any future raises, and basically drastically reduce what we got in the previous contract. Don't take any of this personally, but this is what really irks me about unions. Not just your union, or "blue color" unions or sports unions. Just unions in general.
A union have a contract. The contract expires, is renegotiated...whatever the circumstances, but ultimately the old contact is no longer in effect. During the renegotiations it's just presumed that everything must get better otherwise the union workers get screwed.
We live in a more or less free market society. Workers should get paid what the market wants to pay them, and conversely, the market should pays what the people are worth. If either side is not happy with the arrangement then don't accept the contact...but then you have to live with the consequences. As a worker, then that may mean you are going to go without any pay and/or job. For the company, that may mean that your best workers are going to go elsewhere and your quality of worker will suffer.
That's not a negotiation, it's a giant company trying to cut costs at the place where it should be giving back a little more because it's us that keep this company going. Any worker at a company can say that they are the ones that keep the company going. And to some degree that is true.
But answer me this, do you have any co-workers that only do average, or below average work? Any medium or large company has a few people that fit into that category. Do they keep the company going? They may do some, but they aren't the ones that are really moving the company. If they aren't really moving the company forward, why are they still around? That's right...the union.
I work in a very small web development company. Total current workforce: 5. We were 6, but we recently let someone go. He fit in the average or slightly below average category. Yes he helped out some, but he wasn't putting in 40 hours of work for a 40 hour paycheck that others put in. He wasn't slacking off nor did he take excessive breaks. His effort just wasn't enough and we cut him. In a union environment, I don't think it would have been possible to just cut him...we'd have to go through all sorts of bureaucratic red tape, making our eventual losses even more.
I won't argue that unions once served a purpose. In the late 19th century unions made a definite impact on ending child labor, improving safety, increasing pay, etc. Fast forward though to the 21st century. Child labor laws really aren't an issue any more. While there are dangers in the workplace, I don't think there are too many major companies that are exploiting their workers with unsafe work conditions that a union can help fight. So it's really just down to compensation...and non-union workers don't seem to have problems, in general, being compensated.
It probably an overly broad generalization, but to me it would seem that the ones that have the most to benefit from unions sticking around are the the under- or average-achievers. The above average worker is the type that companies want to have around and typically do something to keep them around. |
