621–630 of 724 posts
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> You can't get good results through bad means. Like a 5 day work week from 6 days? Like 8 hour work days? Like safe conditions for workers. All things unions helped deliver.
Legislators delivered it. It's not clear unions were a required interim for that to happen.
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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…
> fair workplaces What is this? EDIT: I don't mean to snark, it just seems like an inherently utopian ideal. Material concerns should dictate workspace conflict resolution. I certainly agree with your overall statement.
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> If you can't make yourself stand out with the same amount of hours as your coworkers, then maybe you should come to terms with the fact that you just aren't exceptional. Or perhaps different people prioritize different things and who are you to judge or say otherwise?
This is a tragedy of the commons type situation. When your workaholism infringes on the lives of your coworkers, then your coworkers do have a right to say something.
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> You can't get good results through bad means. Like a 5 day work week from 6 days? Like 8 hour work days? Like safe conditions for workers. All things unions helped deliver.
You may find this link interesting: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-factory-wor... Here's another link that I think has balanced coverage: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/sep... Ford even wrote an article on the subject (which I can't seem to find at the moment). In it he discusses hiring private detectives to follow his workers to ensure that they spent the extra money he wa…
One thing your comment made me think about was a story I heard about a company who had a fairly draconian contract. One of the employees brought this up with the CEO and the CEO said it was what their lawyer suggested and so they did it.
Lawyers are there to protect the company. Sometimes they make recommendations that will help with the law but not necessarily with company culture and hiring people.
Kudos for knowing enough not to get suckered into a contract that wasn't good for you.
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> Here's a fact about unions: Average union wages are 18% higher than non-union wages. According to the paper you referenced, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in private industries and under the category "Management, professional, and related occupations" employees earned more actually – $35.70/h – compared to workers represented by unions, who earned an average of $32.95/h. I would assume the majority of softwar…
As other commenters have said, the paper continues on to include an analysis that suggests the descrepancy is not due to some unique characteristic of the private sector but rather the concentration of union jobs in relatively low paying occupations in private industry. This and other BLS published reports suggest, therefor, that unions like the kickstarter union will ultimately put upward pressure on wages in profes…
Unless it adopts a more rigorous methodology, the paper paints a limited picture. [1]
For example, according to PayScale, Google pays on average $15,030 in annual employee bonuses (anywhere from $1,000 to $80,000), and for comparison, Facebook pays $12,860. These numbers will have a significant effect on hourly compensation.
Unfortunately, statistical analysis is tricky to get right, and plenty of papers contain errors and omissions, and I'm not necessarily saying that's the case here, but one ought to be aware. More on this topic, in case anyone is interested – Statistics Done Wrong [2]
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I looked it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reassignment_centers > Although teachers are now being charged more quickly, it still takes several years to complete the hearing process and for the arbitrator to render a decision. So they get stood down until they've had a misconduct hearing, that seems fair, we don't want to ruin careers on allegations alone. > In June 2012 it was revealed that the New York State Educ…
I'm not blaming them for the number of people in those rubber rooms or for the terrible administration of that school district. I am blaming them for how hard it is to fire a teacher the administration doesn't want, for whatever reason, to the point where new, exceptional teachers are being let go because they have to keep around older teachers with tenure who are phoning it in. That drags down the average quality of…
I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but is there any evidence that it is a huge problem and not isolated cases?
> That said, I also think that good teachers should be paid much more to attract more talent, and make it a viable alternative to more careers for people who aren't willing to sacrifice their finances to teach.
The problem is not having a way to quantify what a good teacher is. Is it the one that imparts a love of learning on there students or the one that gets better test results? Is it the one in the wealthy area or the one in the poor area where kids aren't even being fed? If the students do poorly is it the teachers fault or did a teacher in a previous year skip crucial topics?
Paying good teachers more isn't possible until you can identify good teachers.
> I just disagree that teaching should be a tenured position.
Well there I agree, it should at least be very rare. It does sound strange to me, I don't think it's a thing in my country and even in academia tenure isn't as strong.
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I'm not blaming them for the number of people in those rubber rooms or for the terrible administration of that school district. I am blaming them for how hard it is to fire a teacher the administration doesn't want, for whatever reason, to the point where new, exceptional teachers are being let go because they have to keep around older teachers with tenure who are phoning it in. That drags down the average quality of…
> I am blaming them for how hard it is to fire a teacher the administration doesn't want, for whatever reason, to the point where new, exceptional teachers are being let go because they have to keep around older teachers with tenure who are phoning it in. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but is there any evidence that it is a huge problem and not isolated cases? > That said, I also think that good teachers should be…
You're right that it's hard to quantify whether someone is a good teacher or not, but I don't think it's impossible to judge. It's probably impossible to make it a simple succinct rubric, though. Maybe it's a challenge for a universal function approximator like a neural net :-)
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Start a "consulting" business that provides really good pay and benefits to all of the workers. Be very selective about who you let in. You're now in the business of providing workers for companies that produce stuff. If they want access to your workers, they sign a contract with your company. If some workers don't like working for some particular company, transfer them to places where they like to work. You've now c…
Just to point out the obvious, that doesn't serve the main purpose of the union at all: collective negotiation with the employer.
I'm not against unions in general or in principle, but some implementations are not great. I suspect like some folks here, my personal (negative) interactions with unions have turned me off of unions in general. I worked at an unionized shop when I first graduated and while I recognize some of the positives the union brought, there were also many downsides. Some examples: - Nepotism. We had an open position we couldn…
> Nepotism. We had an open position we couldn't fill for over a year because one of the union leader's son was graduating soon and that position was reserved for him. I don't know of any industry where this doesn't happen. Certainly in tech there's plenty of anecdata about nepotism in hiring, no unions required. > General complacency. Raises and promotions for the most part weren't based on performance, but rather te…
Of course this is anecdotal and I don't have data to prove one way or the other. All I can say is, given the choice I'd rather not be in an union for my next job.
I think if we want unions to be more common place and more embraced, a good place to improve are some of the ones we currently have.
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I am asking whether it is legitimate or not, I can't help but think how incredibly well it also applies to gangs when I hear that argument. If more money is paid to individual employees just because they demanded the added cost to the employer makes them inherently less competitive and therefore able to earn less and therefore pay said employees lower wages over time or go out of business.
It would help here if you clarified what you mean by "legitimate"; do you mean morally? The workers are responsible for creating almost all the value, since they do the work. Any money not going to the workers ought to be justified, rather than the negation. So to turn the question around: why are management & shareholders entitled to such a large share of what the workers produce? The answer is because management &…
I mean is it rational.
> The workers are responsible for creating almost all the value, since they do the work.
Completely disagree. I believe most of the value of a company is created by the vision of its founding team and the execution of its leadership not the numerous workers along the hierarchy. I also think the 80-20 rule maybe a good way to identify how much value creation should be attributed to a group of workers ie on average most likely 80% of the value is created by 20% of workers.