131–140 of 303 posts
Now that the Americans did it the Canadians won't want to.
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I realize mine is not necessarily a majority experience, but as a young single no-debt high-performing worker, I can negotiate a lot more effectively by myself than I could in a union because I can argue purely on my own merits and if the employer is unreasonable (and not all are) it's fairly easy for me to switch employers. I even moved to a different country early in my career for a better career opportunity. So no…
You can still negotiate and be in a union. Nobody takes that away from you. The union negotiates minimal conditions for all like minimal wage. You are a top performer - go the exact route you've described - nobody will stop you. It can work or not as you've said and the solution would be to find a new job.
Not correct for any union job I've held, or even heard of.
> You are a top performer - go the exact route you've described - nobody will stop you.
I mean, I guess you could try this - or just go to a non-union shop and make real money if you are a top performer. Unions in the US are not made for top performers capable of advancing their careers rapidly. I think you will find plenty of people stopping you in this scenario.
If the subject in question somehow did manage to follow your advice and somehow get paid above their peers - from my direct personal experience I'd expect a very toxic workplace up to and including physical violence once the other members find out. You would be seen as a scab.
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Okay, TIL. However, if you look at the "language versions" of that Wikipedia page, that also explains my confusion: Deutsch: "US-Amerikaner" Español: "Estadounidense" Italiano: "Statunitensi" ... so there are plenty of languages that do make a distinction between "American living on the American continent(s)" and "American from the US". Full disclosure: I'm from Germany...
It's funny: when Americans realize we're saying the name of a foreign city badly, like Peking for Beijing, Canton for Guangzhou, and others, we move to assimilate our naming to that of the natives. Why is it that everyone insists that we refer to ourselves by the wrong name? Is it even possible for us to be wrong about what we call ourselves ?
What I really want to contribute here though is that your "we" from "what we call ourselves" doesn't include me. Like a lot of people outside the US, English is my native language and calling Americans Americans has always given me pause for thought. So I put it back to you:
Is it even possible for us to be wrong about what we call you?
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It's incorrect but widely assumed that if someone says "America" they mean the USA. What's funny about it?
That Canada is also located in America, and if someone from Canada identifies "America" with the US they are belittling their own country? I mean, the sentence wouldn't have been less understandable if they had used "US-style" instead of "American-style"?
However if it's belittling Canada, it's certainly belittling the other 55 countries of the Americas that seem forgotten in this thread (say 54, Mexico is mentioned).
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I realize mine is not necessarily a majority experience, but as a young single no-debt high-performing worker, I can negotiate a lot more effectively by myself than I could in a union because I can argue purely on my own merits and if the employer is unreasonable (and not all are) it's fairly easy for me to switch employers. I even moved to a different country early in my career for a better career opportunity. So no…
How does being union stop you from negotiating for yourself or switching employers?
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Because that would be communism or something.
Good one. Now explain why unionized European programmers don't get paid nearly the same as un-unionized American ones. Is it because of fascism or something?
I'd be happy to be disproven (go unions!), but I haven't heard of other countries that have unionized programmers.
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You can still negotiate and be in a union. Nobody takes that away from you. The union negotiates minimal conditions for all like minimal wage. You are a top performer - go the exact route you've described - nobody will stop you. It can work or not as you've said and the solution would be to find a new job.
This is 100%, extremely, dangerously, completely, utterly not the case in any North American union I've witnessed in North America. (it probably explains why it is difficult to have meaningful conversations and everybody attacks each other, if we have such radically different experiences and knowledge of union laws and procedures) FWIW, from my experience, In North America, it is the whole point of a union that "ever…
In germany, the union does not directly determine the pay rate. Membership in a union at a very fundamental level allows you to participate in the union activities, access to their resources (+) and the right to strike for work-related reasons (++). Unions can participate in the organization of the work place when there are sufficient union members in a company by forming a workers council (Betriebsrat), which must be involved in certain kinds of decisions, for example firing people. Forming a workers council is a deliberate act - union membership is required, but there’s not automatism. None of this limits the ability of each union members or employee to negotiate pay rates.
On the employers side, you optionally (+++) can negotiate (or join a pre-negotiated) Tarifvertrag which covers topics such as pay grades, work time etc. There’s for example the TvÖD (Tarifvetrag öffentlicher Dienst) which covers all employees of the state/local governments, teachers etc. There‘s the option to join a Arbeitgeberverband (employers union), which then can negotiate that contract with the unions, so that the employers side gets a better negotiating position. A Tarifvertrag can be declared as „allgemeingültig“ which means that it covers all employees in a certain sector and the employer must conform to it, whether they like it or not.
But even the Tarifvertrag only sets a minimum bar - every employee can negotiate better rates. Whether that succeeds is a question of its own - for example teachers usually can‘t negotiate a higher salary since their individual negotiating power against the state is veeeery limited. But that’s not a legal requirement or limit - übertariflich (above Tarif) is a common word found in job descriptions where the employees have more leverage.
That said, there’s still problem you can have in unions - nepotism, people using a union job to slack off, protecting employees that should be fired are things that happen. But those happen in every power structure - I’ve seen the same thing happen where „favorite“ employees have been shielded by their boss from negative consequences. So that’s a fairly unspecific point to hold against unions - at least the representatives are elected by the workers and egregious examples are usually purged sooner or later.
(+) for example legal advice and also legal services - my mother fought their employer over employment-related matters and the union sent their lawyer.
(++) only unions are allowed to organize a strike https://www.personalwissen.de/arbeitsrecht/mitbestimmung/gew...
(+++) optionally can include „my workers forced me by striking“
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I would never join a union.
Isn't that irrational? If the union provides you with benefits, why would you not join?
My wife worked for the National Education Association for 15 years. I can't recall a single positive comment that she made about the union. The way the contracts are structured, educators get locked in to their home district after 5-10 years. They are useless for mediating anything but issues that are already written up in the contract and the ability for loafers to coast for the entirety of their career is commonly discussed and real. She would avoid the union because it coddles losers and doesn't lift a finger for staff dealing with real issues.
The only partial success story with unions that I'm aware of is with my brother, a lineman for AT&T. He's had that job for almost 30 years (through a variety of telcos ultimately renamed AT&T) and has been a member of the Communication Workers of America. He talks about endless frustration with the union, that the reps are useless and that the contracts they negotiate are terrible. But he does have the ability to tell his management to fuck off if they ask him to do something dangerous (which happens rarely but enough to matter) and he takes advantage of that from time to time. He might re-up for a union, i don't know.
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Can you explain why you skipped over these? > management has worked to isolate pro-union workers and threatened to relocate the warehouses if unionization succeeds. > One worker said his life has become miserable since he uttered the word “union” at work. “Every coworker who talks to me, after a few seconds, they are interrogated by the manager. When they do that, people don’t want to talk to you anymore. I’m being i…
Because it's vague and hearsay. The most frustrating thing about these debates is that the pro-union side are so hostile to anyone who questions anything, as though they assume that anyone who doubts the union must be a business owner. I'm a worker, I would like to be part of a union that worked. But I don't see unions that work, I just see unreasonable and propaganda-like articles like these. When there is a dispute…
And you're also not the person who wrote the initial comment.
But it seems dishonest of them if they first said:
> I fail to see how any of the things mentioned in the article are "intimidating and harassing"
...but to then shift the goal posts to saying that yeah, okay, the things left out would be intimidating and/or harassing but they just don't believe the allegations to be true.
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Okay, TIL. However, if you look at the "language versions" of that Wikipedia page, that also explains my confusion: Deutsch: "US-Amerikaner" Español: "Estadounidense" Italiano: "Statunitensi" ... so there are plenty of languages that do make a distinction between "American living on the American continent(s)" and "American from the US". Full disclosure: I'm from Germany...
Minor quible, but most spanish speakers I know refer to people from the USA as Americanos. Estadounidenses gets used as part of legalese and in the context of non US nationalism.