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Teachers Pay High Fees for Retirement Funds

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Re: Teachers Pay High Fees for Retirement Funds

#81

Post by esoterica »

Pfhreak wrote: post #17
seibelj wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employees have the ability to switch jobs, whereas unions make it hard to join a different shop at the same seniority level as before. I would rather be able to switch jobs easily than have to follow union rules.

This is FUD. There are seniority based unions, and there are merit based unions. Nothing about a union means you can't negotiate, have merit based promotion, etc. Also, as someone in tech, I constantly hear people talking about downleveling when they change jobs, I hear people talking about unclear promotion criteria, etc.

All unions are structurally designed to reward tenure. Current members of the union can vote but future members cannot, and current members have more seniority than future members, so union members will always vote to screw over the people who join the union after them.

Re: Teachers Pay High Fees for Retirement Funds

#82

Post by gamblor956 »

bifrost wrote: post #2

Unions in CA are also why teachers can't get disability insurance. Have to go out for surgery? You get nothing.

This didn't sound correct, so I polled my many teacher friends about it.

And it turns out you're not correct. The districts decide who gets disability insurance, not the unions. If the district doesn't offer disability, the teachers don't get disability unless their union chapter separately provides it or the teacher individually acquires a policy.

Re: Teachers Pay High Fees for Retirement Funds

#83

Post by bluGill »

frockington1 wrote: post #57
Ididntdothis wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can subsidize as much as they want. But they receive tax benefits that are not available to people whose employer doesn’t do this. In addition they choose health insurance and 401k providers for you. I am pretty sure their incentives and yours aren’t aligned so you may actually get a bad deal. It simply makes no sense.

I'm not trying to be dense, I don't understand why this doesn't make sense. My employer offers salary, insurance, bonus, perks etc. and others do the same. I look at my options and take the offer I value the most. What part of the contract doesn't make sense? Most contracts have two parties with different incentives

It makes the contract more confusing, and often you don't even have complete information. You get two offers for different amounts, both with insurance - which is the better offer? If the higher offer includes worse insurance it may be the worse offer, but it is really hard to figure this out. In fact in many cases they won't even tell you enough about their insurance plan until after you accept so you didn't compare well.

Even if we ignore the above, is the plan they offer right for you? If you don't have a doctor you can save a lot of money just taking an in-network doctor they assign to you - so long as they have enough doctors in network, and doctors are qualified it doesn't matter how many other doctors could see you. Or maybe you have one you like and are willing to pay extra for that. Both are reasonable choices for different people - but you don't get to choose. I'd personally take an extra $5/month in my pocket in exchange for a small in-network list of doctors (so long as it is large enough that I can get help when I need it), my wife is pickier and would pay an extra $10 to choose whatever doctors seems good at the moment - both are valid choices (I'm not sure what we would do if we actually had any choice in the matter: the conversation is only hypothetical now)

Re: Teachers Pay High Fees for Retirement Funds

#84

Post by gamblor956 »

bpodgursky wrote: post #46
kazagistar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a union isn't democratically controlled by the workers it's not a proper union, and if it is, it is possible to make work for the majority of its employees, at the very least. So what's the full story you are missing here?

Union bosses have control over raises, promotions, and hours granted to members. They also have built-in powers of communication and messaging control (both publicly and within the union) In corrupt unions, the bosses absolutely will use that power to punish employees seen as challenging their authority or a leadership change. Saying "oh, they can vote them out" sounds great from the outside, but if you have a family…

This is a very wrong understanding over how unions work these days.

Union "bosses" don't control raises, promotions, or hours, and haven't for several decades. Union bosses simply don't have the power they used to have (and for some reason, are still portrayed as having in TV or movies). The Irishman, for example, is based on a decades-old perception of union bosses that was only ever true of the NY-based unions...decades ago.

"Superstore" on NBC is actually a pretty accurate portrayal of how unions work in real life: pretty mundane, and not all that different from being non-unionized.

Re: Teachers Pay High Fees for Retirement Funds

#85

Post by bluGill »

dvdhnt wrote: post #72
bryanlarsen wrote: post #35

Unions are the reason that teachers have retirement funds in the first place. That doesn't excuse them from the ridiculously high fees, but don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

I can't believe how much union busting is going on in these comments. People take for granted the little wins labor has gotten over the last century.

The union has done good, but they are taking more credit than they deserve for those wins. Many would have happened anyway because labor is a limited competitive resource (at times, for some jobs) and so if you want to get good people you need to treat them well even when times are bad.

Unions have done good. They have also done bad. Most people will only acknowledge one side of that.

Re: Teachers Pay High Fees for Retirement Funds

#86

Post by gamblor956 »

seibelj wrote: post #10
aphextron wrote: post #6

Unions are not perfect. But they are the only protection individual laborers have left against the unstoppable power of modern corporations. Don't ever fall for the endless slandering laid against them by capitalists.

Employees have the ability to switch jobs, whereas unions make it hard to join a different shop at the same seniority level as before. I would rather be able to switch jobs easily than have to follow union rules.

Different unions work differently.

In Hollywood, for example, the unions are not an impediment to job-switching. In fact, they've enabled a sort of frictionless job switching that even tech is decades behind.

I have friends in Hollywood unions that have worked for multiple studios in the past month. No need to interview, or prove their chops. They just showed up for the job, worked, got paid, and moved on to the next shoot. And because of their union membership, they didn't have to worry about health insurance, or whether the checks would clear.

And I'm not even talking about SAG or the other guilds. I'm referring to the actual unions of all the people who work behind the camera, from the camera operators to the makeup artists.

Re: Teachers Pay High Fees for Retirement Funds

#87

Post by bluGill »

pnutjam wrote: post #64
aphextron wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unions are often rent-seeking monopolies. And so are corporations. Unions at least have the interest of employees as their central (espoused) tenant. There is and always has been a concerted effort between capital and the media to undermine that fact in the mind of the public. This is a huge contributing factor to the falling bargaining power of labor over the last 50 years. Don't fall for it.

This morning I was thinking of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle". If you've read it (and you should, it's a good novel) you know it's about worker rights and the story follows a guy who happens to work at a meat packing plant for awhile. If you haven't read it, you've probably been taught it is about the bad practices of food producers in that era. Nevermind that part is ancillary to the central story. Just pointing out…

Note that the book is fiction. Reality was exaggerated to make is point.

I'm not arguing it is a bad book, but it isn't real.

Re: Teachers Pay High Fees for Retirement Funds

#88

Post by AnimalMuppet »

aphextron wrote: post #33
ummonk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are often rent-seeking monopolies. Labor organization is important, but that doesn't mean those claiming to organize labor are actually always doing what is in labor's best interests.

>Unions are often rent-seeking monopolies. And so are corporations. Unions at least have the interest of employees as their central (espoused) tenant. There is and always has been a concerted effort between capital and the media to undermine that fact in the mind of the public. This is a huge contributing factor to the falling bargaining power of labor over the last 50 years. Don't fall for it.

> Unions at least have the interest of employees as their central (espoused) tenant.

You know, if they actually lived that out, there would be a lot less union-bashing. It's not just a capitalist conspiracy to slander unions. It's also (and primarily) that, within my lifetime, unions have been better at protecting union bureaucracy than at protecting rank-and-file workers.

They still have a role to play. I just wish they actually did what they're supposed to do. The workers need someone who's trying to help them instead of to exploit them. And unions are trying to help workers not be exploited by companies... while exploiting workers themselves.

Re: Teachers Pay High Fees for Retirement Funds

#89

Post by gamblor956 »

esoterica wrote: post #81
Pfhreak wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is FUD. There are seniority based unions, and there are merit based unions. Nothing about a union means you can't negotiate, have merit based promotion, etc. Also, as someone in tech, I constantly hear people talking about downleveling when they change jobs, I hear people talking about unclear promotion criteria, etc.

All unions are structurally designed to reward tenure. Current members of the union can vote but future members cannot, and current members have more seniority than future members, so union members will always vote to screw over the people who join the union after them.

This is FUD, and runs counter to what players' unions in professional sports have actually done...every single time they've negotiated in the past decade.

Re: Teachers Pay High Fees for Retirement Funds

#90

Post by gamblor956 »

mrep wrote: post #42
ralph84 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Some of the highest paid individual contributors in the world are actors and professional athletes. They're represented by unions.

Aren't those industry wide unions whose main purpose is to set wage floors because there are so many people desperately trying to get into the industry that without them, employee conditions would be terrible for those just starting out? I don't think that is a problem for programmers and it is way different than a company specific union. If you want to start an industry wide programmer union, by all means, start one…

Hollywood unions are not industry-wide. The unions have only negotiated with the major studios and some of the more prolific independent studios.

For example, Netflix hasn't (currently) entered into any agreements with the unions, though rumors are that Netflix will become sometime before the end of 2020.

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