461–470 of 724 posts
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Okay so how did the Kroger union help my friend at all? Once again, membership was mandatory for employment, and a cut of each of his minimum-wage paychecks went to it, with him seeing zero benefit in exchange. Is there some hidden benefit both he and I (being his roommate at the time) just weren't seeing? (Trust me, we looked.)
Well for one thing he got a minimum wage.
I've been in a union before. The work ethic wasn't good. They had seminars on how to work less and push back against complaints. They directed the members to engage in behavior that was best for the union while bad for the workers and the company. The union itself is a big business, what would they think of unionizing the union? Unions allow substandard work for equal pay. That tends to hold back the major opportunit…
I think this means we need to re-think how unions work. It should be used to create fair workplaces. My concern with the anti-union rhetoric in the USA is that we then turn to the government to protect workers. I think it's a lot better to have a union vs government as long as that union isn't protected from competition like they are today. If we can introduce competition into unions then they might better serve the…
You can't get good results through bad means. Unions are fundamentally a destructive endeavor. Their use is practical but limited: the best thing unions ever fought was the state, not employers.
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Of course, his opponent was objectively unqualified for every conceivable post but had the opportunity to be elected president of the U.S. merely because of her husband's name. America's in a lot of trouble. 2020 is going to make 2016 look like Jefferson & Adams.
That's palpably false. She was the single most qualified candidate for President, from a policy viewpoint, the nation has ever had. It was dismissive nonsense like that comment, that was her biggest obstacle.
She wasn't even close. She had a fair amount of NGO issue advocacy experience (mostly in the human services domain), less than two full terms in the Senate, and a brief (and arguably none too impressive) stint as the weakest-incoming-foreign-policy-resume Secretary of State we’d had in a long time (but Rex Tillerson displaced her for that “honor”.)
You can make the case that she edges out Obama and certainly W in terms of initial policy qualifications, but not her own husband or Ronald Reagan (unless you focus only on foreign policy), not George H. W. Bush (unless you focus only on domestic policy), maybe Carter, probably Nixon, not even close to Johnson, ...
I've been in a union before. The work ethic wasn't good. They had seminars on how to work less and push back against complaints. They directed the members to engage in behavior that was best for the union while bad for the workers and the company. The union itself is a big business, what would they think of unionizing the union? Unions allow substandard work for equal pay. That tends to hold back the major opportunit…
Seems fair to do the opposite.
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>It always seems to degenerate into an "us vs them" sort of thing whenever I talk to them about where they work. Why would I ever work some place where things are so adversarial? Every workplace is adversarial, it's you versus the C-suite who profit from the surplus value created by your labor. A union just evens out the bargaining power between you and them.
>Every workplace is adversarial, it's you versus the C-suite who profit from the surplus value created by your labor. A union just evens out the bargaining power between you and them. I guess it depends on the equity split. Very early engineers with, say 0.1% vested of a unicorn still feel like owners to me, in addition to being workers.
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Your emotional response to my logical statement doesn't necessitate a downvote.... Edit: it should be inspiring, bc it shows that literally anyone middle class or above can be incredibly wealthy if principles are followed for 3-4 generations.
> Your emotional response to my logical statement Wealth inequality has been increasing for 40 years despite worker productivity rising. Nearly every metric shows the rungs to wealth being pulled away, and I'm the non logical one here? > doesn't necessitate a downvote You were already downvoted before I commented. > should be inspiring, bc it shows that literally anyone middle class or above can be incredibly wealthy…
Wealth has nothing at all to do with worker productivity. It has only to do with saving a lot more than one spends by spending less, or generating large value to society with a monetary reward.
The pathway for any middle class family is through inherited wealth and NOT some fantasty of wealth equality achieved in 1 lifetime. We need to stop thinking in small terms of 'years'.
Wealth can be achieved generally in a family over the course of 1.5 centuries. If a family applies good saving practices, and saves over 5-6 generational lifetimes - it is very hard NOT to be wealthy. My parents were a fireman and teacher. My grandfather paid for my college, my parents are paying for my kids college, and I'm paying for my grand kids and great grand kids college - SOLELY bc of saving over extended periods of time. That was our family deal - take care of those after you 2 generations down. Thinking multi-generational is the easiest path to success.
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None of these things applied to him. He did not get medical or dental benefits because he was employed there for less time than their minimum to begin receiving benefits (or maybe he had just qualified when his teaching license finally got through? I can't remember now). Membership was mandatory for employment, so anyone who works there part-time for less than whatever the minimum amount of time to receive benefits i…
> the propaganda in the training materials is outright laughable You say that, as you spout anti-union propaganda that would bring a tear to the eye of the walmart CEO.
Did you miss the last sentence of my outermost comment in this thread?
>The idea that unions are inherently, universally good is just as silly as the idea that unions are inherently, universally bad.
I've been in a union before. The work ethic wasn't good. They had seminars on how to work less and push back against complaints. They directed the members to engage in behavior that was best for the union while bad for the workers and the company. The union itself is a big business, what would they think of unionizing the union? Unions allow substandard work for equal pay. That tends to hold back the major opportunit…
So? Companies have seminars for upper management on how to squeeze workers harder and try to retaliate against complainers. Seems fair to do the opposite.
It will be interesting to see what this does for developer salaries at Kickstarter. If, as a top performer, I get penalized by joining the union then obviously Kickstarter looks less attractive to me. For unions in our industry to work they are going to have to be very explicit about how they are going to raise developer salaries.
> If, as a top performer, I get penalized by joining the union then obviously Kickstarter looks less attractive to me. I think this statement is used as an anti-union argument here a lot, and it speaks to the ego that many engineers/developers have. "Top performers" are single-digits in a lot of even medium sized organizations, and chances are that an individual employee falls outside of this "top performer" category…
The anti-union rhetoric in America is staggering. You like weekends? Then stop ragging on unions.