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Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say

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Re: Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say

#111

Post by FireBeyond »

andrepd wrote: post #88
PathOfEclipse wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is especially true of teacher's unions, who have been openly hostile towards any meaningful way of measuring teacher performance, and have made it astronomically expensive to fire any teacher no matter how bad or incompetent. The world would be a much better place if teacher's unions didn't exist.

How do you measure teacher performance? Have you looked at the actual proposals? They're atrocious, as if education needed to be any more of a rat race of chasing idiotic """performance""" metrics.

What might make for sensible, objective teacher metrics?

Re: Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say

#112

Post by ajsnigrutin »

kennywinker wrote: post #75
catiopatio wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions can also (and quite often do) capture as much value as they can, while producing none.

> while producing none increasing wages, workplace safety, and benefits for workers is something productive.

IF they do that.

Lower tax on paychecks would increase wages, but our union was against that. What kind of a union does that?

Re: Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say

#113

Post by ajsnigrutin »

cmh89 wrote: post #49
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many unions soon get corrupted and get in bed with the government (or atleast one side of it). Here in slovenia, many worker unions were against the lowering the taxes on paychecks (higher net with same gross pay), because their political parties were against those, even if the workers themselves would benefit from those. We also have some areas (eg. a government rail company), where you cannot even get a job, if you…

>Here in slovenia, many worker unions were against the lowering the taxes on paychecks (higher net with same gross pay), because their political parties were against those, even if the workers themselves would benefit from those. You can't lower taxes without some sort of tradeoff, which is usually a cut to services. I don't know the context here but it stands to reason that you are not giving the whole situation. >W…

> You can't lower taxes without some sort of tradeoff, which is usually a cut to services. I don't know the context here but it stands to reason that you are not giving the whole situation.

You cannot increase wages without loss of profits or increase in prices.

The union should fight for the wages, the profits and prices are someone elses problem (owners, customers).

Re: Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say

#114

Post by ajsnigrutin »

fallingknife wrote: post #89
cmh89 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Here in slovenia, many worker unions were against the lowering the taxes on paychecks (higher net with same gross pay), because their political parties were against those, even if the workers themselves would benefit from those. You can't lower taxes without some sort of tradeoff, which is usually a cut to services. I don't know the context here but it stands to reason that you are not giving the whole situation. >W…

They certainly can raise taxes without improving services, so why not the opposite?

Yep, we still have a """temporary""" increase of VAT in action (19->22%) from the 2008 financial crisis... and we got nothing new (neither new or better services) from this.

Re: Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say

#115

Post by splistud »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #30
nickpp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do point out my logical error. I see countless examples of competition keeping corporations in check. What is keeping Unions in check then?

Unions are kept in check by attrition of the companies they are associated with.

No post body was provided.

Re: Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say

#116

Post by Manuel_D »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #73
Macha wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the whole concept of employers recognizing a union or employees being required to join a union which is raised in US union discussions are kind of weird. Employers don't have to recognize a union in Europe, employees can still join and avail of legal support or group actions by those employees that did join. Similarly, if the majority of your workplace is in a union, you don't have to join, just don't be surpri…

Minority unions undermine the collective bargaining that underpins the very concept of a union. They make no sense to me, at all. The whole point of a union is having a large enough block of workers committed to act together that the company is forced to either negotiate or perish. This obviously works when you have all the workers unionized, as a company without employees can achieve nothing at all. As the union get…

Because unions often support policies that significant portions of the workforce do not like. If you're a teacher in America chances are your union dues are being used to oppose merit-based pay increases and retain seniority based pay. If you're a teacher who wants merit-based pay increases then you're being forced by the government to fund a group that is actively working against your own interests.

Multiple unions would let workers join the union alined with their interest.

Re: Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say

#117

Post by [deleted] »

fallingknife wrote: post #86
kodah wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can be kind of mixed from a union standpoint. It really just depends on the goals and outcomes of a particular union. Airline unions tend to be particularly bad when it comes to controlling internal dissent against the union, and regulating peoples pay and flying hours (especially around furloughs). Things may have changed since I heard this criticism, but I'd hate to have this happen in software. That said, we cou…

Why would I want standardization in pay? I would make less money. Why would I want standardized promotions? I don't want to be lead by people just because they have been around longer than me. Why would I want to tear down the leetcode interview process? It's much easier.than having to do demo projects.

[deleted]

Re: Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say

#118

Post by PathOfEclipse »

andrepd wrote: post #88
PathOfEclipse wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is especially true of teacher's unions, who have been openly hostile towards any meaningful way of measuring teacher performance, and have made it astronomically expensive to fire any teacher no matter how bad or incompetent. The world would be a much better place if teacher's unions didn't exist.

How do you measure teacher performance? Have you looked at the actual proposals? They're atrocious, as if education needed to be any more of a rat race of chasing idiotic """performance""" metrics.

If you read this book, there's a whole chapter dedicated to someone successfully coming up with a metric and validated it: https://www.amazon.com/Race-Bottom-Uncovering-Destroying-Edu...

The short answer is you measure student progress over time via standardized testing. Someone was able to obtain anonymized per-teacher data via FOIA request and verify that some teachers perform consistently and significantly better than others in terms of helping their students progress, and that this performance was stable across time and even when teachers moved to different schools. At one point, schools were required to provide this data until the law was successfully repealed at the behest of teacher's unions.

Teacher's unions pay mainly based on seniority, but this same data showed that, after about 5 years, teacher performance didn't really improve much. The unions also pay more for higher degrees, but there was no association found between higher degrees and teacher performance.

The book also discusses how different types of testing have been shown to be strong predictors of both future academic and professional success. You should not be so dismissive of objective numeric testing, whose results can be tracked and compared over time. No metric is perfect, but just about any metric beats that of the unions, who, in one area, had 99.8% of their teachers rated as "proficient". The union's metric is useless, and that is a feature for them, not a bug.

Re: Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say

#119

Post by j33zusjuice »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #15
danuker wrote: post #2

I believe unions are necessary in a world of humongous companies. That is because, in case of disagreements, an employee's prospect (losing 100% of their income) is a much worse negotiating position than a large company losing <1% of its workforce.

Many unions soon get corrupted and get in bed with the government (or atleast one side of it). Here in slovenia, many worker unions were against the lowering the taxes on paychecks (higher net with same gross pay), because their political parties were against those, even if the workers themselves would benefit from those. We also have some areas (eg. a government rail company), where you cannot even get a job, if you…

Problematically, it was made exceptionally difficult—-potentially illegal, depending on the circumstances—-to hold a representative position in a union, and also hold the sociopolitical ideologies that led to the creation of unions in the first place: i.e. communism/socialism/Marxism (Communist Control Act of 1954, and the Internal Control Act of 1950).

That isn’t to say it’s impossible for an ideologue to corrupt and seek out power for themselves (it happens often enough). It’s just to say that a capitalist is not driven to act by a deeply seeded belief. They’re only interested in winning the competition. You’re all but inviting corruption.

Re: Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say

#120

Post by j33zusjuice »

noelherrick wrote: post #18
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many unions soon get corrupted and get in bed with the government (or atleast one side of it). Here in slovenia, many worker unions were against the lowering the taxes on paychecks (higher net with same gross pay), because their political parties were against those, even if the workers themselves would benefit from those. We also have some areas (eg. a government rail company), where you cannot even get a job, if you…

Unions that are run like a business eventually become a business. Unions need to be democratically-controlled, where regular workers can propose new contract terms and vote on them, as well as voting to call a strike.

Right. It’s completely unsurprising that to see corruption in groups that were forced to elect leadership that holds views contrary to the foundations of unionization (i.e. they were all but required to elect capitalists because of the communist control act and the internal security act).
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