Union vs. Non-union

[Kiska Nirpaw]

I haven't seen this crop up in here, apologies if it already is here.

Simply put... are you pro or anti union? And why?

Personally, I've dealt with working for a union. That lasted...oh all of a weekend... before I got my snoot-full of the utter crap that was a union. Communism is alive and well, at least at unionized grocery stories it seems. I should have run for the hills at the "terms and conditions" stage of the interview, but I needed a job and tried my best to tough it out. Here's my experience:

Upon the hiring in process, they had said they needed people to work receiving/stock. Once interviewed, I was told I'd be at the register, which is NOT what I wanted, but hey, beggars =/= choosers, so whatever. Next I was told...at MOST...I'd be getting 12-15 hours a week, but bank more on 9 hours average. Yeah, ok, that'll pay the bills. And my wages? "Minimum, no more, that's all the union will allow for new people." Um...I thought the union was here to HELP not stick it to their slaves workers. (What is minimum wage in Michigan, you ask? At the time, $7.50/hr... which isn't bad until you consider......) Oh yeah, and by the way, you owe $90 in union dues every paycheck. So right there, kiss at least 1/2 my earnings (pretax) goodbye. (Assuming 9 hours, I'd only make $135 a paycheck, making my take-home pay less than $45 every two weeks.)

But it got better! Raises were not based on merit. They were based on how many hours one worked. So a grunt like me working 9 hours a week would see a raise far after someone sitting on their duff for 30 hours a week, doing a job like hanging clothes or sitting at a counter waiting for someone to ask them to unlock the video game case. Doesn't matter how HARD you work, just for how long. With my first raise being at the 500-hours-worked mark, it'd be awhile. So the person at the next register over who picked their nose all shift would get the raise first due to seniority (hours, like raises, were given not by merit, but by time spent there) before me busting my hump.

The icing on the cake? I already had plans set by my family for a vacation (paid up and all) for my birthday, which was a month and a half after my start date. I told them when I applied this was already booked. They said "Well, you're new. You can't ask for time off. The best we can give you is schedule something for early-Saturday so you can be done by about 2pm and work the rest of the night."
Me: "So, say I have a doctor's appointment...?" Them: "Try and trade shifts with someone, you can't ask for a day off until you've had at least 90 working days in."   
Them: "Oh and Christmas eve is mandatory to work until at least 9pm, though we have to set up for the day-after Christmas sale, so probably more like 11pm. Christmas is the only day we are closed." That's fine, I see my family after Christmas for Russian Orthodox Christmas...that's in January...I can get time off to see them, right? "No, you can't have any weekends off for at least a year. Maybe you can get someone to switch, but you better be prepared to work Saturday night." Um, that's when the festivities happen...and it's 2 hours away.  "Too bad".

Needless to say, I walked out.

Sorry for the tl;dr.... the short version is, a certain known grocery chain tried to make me less "valued employee" and more "indentured slave".

And that is why I'll never work for or support a union.

[furtopia02]

I'm not a fan of unions either. While some benefit from it, I believe it to hurt things overall (mostly people who are not working there). Organized strikes, lobbying for high wages and more benefits is good if you are truly being treated unfairly.. doing it just because you have the power to is not. Unions have, in the past, driven up costs to companies to the point of making overseas labor more appealing, and in most cases the MOST appealing option. It's already a huge difference in pay in most instances (US to say, most south east Asian countries for unskilled labor).. when that difference is greatly increased the chances of losing those jobs overseas is also increased. While it is not the sole reason that much of our jobs are being shipped overseas it is a large contributing factor.

I also highly disagree with any company (union or not) that chooses to promote in pay or rank based almost solely on time spent, and pay not based on difficulty of job. I've never worked under a Union ... but I've worked for the US Navy. Doing a much more difficult job with many more hours, extreme technical difficulty, and zero appreciate of it by anyone else who didn't understand what I did and making HALF the pay of someone the same rank as me at the time that did nothing but paint every day (something I ALSO did as an extra task and STILL accomplished more than them) but had the luxury of having a family.. that really sucked to say the least. You see.. I wasn't an E5 yet (which is MOSTLY TIME based.. you have to have been there a set amount of time before you can attempt a test, then if you possibly do well enough on the test (top 2% of my rating at the time) then you MIGHT advance if you have enough points in recommendations from superiors who think you are great.. E5 is the rank you have to be at if you are SINGLE before you receive money for housing. Obviously.. if you are single you don't need a home and can just sleep at work. Makes perfect sense. *sarcasm* I did eventually get E5 (for my last year of service) and had my very OWN apartment without having to scrape for money and share it with others. I had it for about 8 months, of that I was home for 5 months of that time (in port), the rest was spent deployed during that short time of having it. I knew it wasn't for me. I wanted to work in a regular civilian job with normal pay. I think if an employer like McDonald's paid $12 and hour to married people and $8 to single people then there would be a huge outcry of unfairness. Being married doesn't make you special. That's your choice. Being single isn't always a choice.  Does anyone know if unions try this stunt?

I want to be responsible for my own pay choices. If I am happy making $12 /hour somewhere I don't want to be forced into a strike by a union for 3 months with no pay because a majority vote says we should have $15 /hour (that we may not get). If I don't like my pay I can try to go somewhere else. That may not always be an option but that's just life. I can't just beg hard enough or make a scene out of it and always get my way (most of us learn this as toddlers by throwing temper tantrums and crying for something and getting punished for our behavior instead of rewarded). Even if they do get their way there is always the first thing I talked about. The employer may look to other options, so rather than continuing to pay everyone $15 an hour after the strike is over he may look into paying someone else in another country $2 an hour (or much, much lower; look up wages for overseas clothing production, particularly those who produce for Wal-Mart and Disney - it may turn your stomach). That in turn doesn't just hurt the people that may be losing their jobs now but also the country as a whole since it increases our import to export ratio.

While I don't want to work for a union, some individual companies like Wal-Mart who are very anti-union disgust me. I wont go into great detail with that as its probably best for another topic but that's not healthy either.

Unions may benefit someone but they can (and have) also be/been abused. In the end abuse of such power ends up hurting workers who may lose those jobs or push a company under, and the economy and all of us within it in the long run.  That stuff from Pakistan sure is cheap though...

[Narei Mooncatt]

I hear stories like Kiska's all the time. Personally I wont ever work for a national union either, like Teamsters. I can speak for myself with an employeer just fine. No need to pay someone from to make my decisions for me (which I may not like anyway). I'm not going to say they are the sole reason for jobs being shipped over seas, but they are one big reason. Look at all the car makers now. Pretty much the only ones surviving and making them in the U.S. are non-union factories. Too often you have someone come in that knows little about the place and tries to offer the workers the world to join the union, but they all tend to price said worker right out of a job. And when times are tough, when the company needs to cut back on pay, the union tries to dig its feet into the ground.

Unions also affect non-union workers as well, even if they don't agree to the union's terms. The one at my dad's workplace got rules passed about seniority raises and promotions as seems to be normal union fair. My dad never signed on to the union, but he's still held under those same rules. Only his union is pretty much powerless any more. It's a smaller one and they tried to strike once. The company outlasted them and so many workers started going hungry that they voted to no longer strike for anything.

I admit union's have served a great purpose in the past in getting some fair labor standards in place, but they're no longer needed IMHO. Now if my company had an in-house only union (I.e. not a national based Teamsters, et al type) that was formed and ran only by people within our company, then I may consider it depending on terms. I'd still be sketchy on it, but at least it's people that actually know about my job that would be "representing" me.

On the flip side, if I owned a company and a union tried to invade, I'd flat out tell them no if I could. Only I seem to recall some law or something requiring me to deal with them if they come in. If that's the case, I'd just say the heck with it and close up shop/move. I wouldn't let a union bully me around. I know a lot of people don't like Walmart, but I have to admit I love their anti-union policies and tactics. If one tries to get in to a store, it's all hands on deck to dissuade workers from signing up and I think they have shut down a store to stop one coming in years ago.

[Sigurd Volsung]

Have any of you heard of a 40 hour work week? Paid time off? Holiday pay? Over time? I can go on here. If you have thank the Delta Unions you twits! If it wasn't for us everyone in this country would be screwed. If you want to see what unions in other countries have been able to do look at Western Europe where many countries have six weeks mandatory vacation, paid maternity and paternity leave. Now they have unions that work. Yes I'm pro union I've worked for two of them and you won't see me enter a Walmart, Barnes and Nobles, Sam's Club, because they're union busters who act illegally. Companies like Costco on the other paw pay about twice what their competitor Sam's Club pays, actually has health insurance, gets there employees paid holidays and time off, and time and a half on holidays shich includes every Sunday.  Companies don't have time to sit down and negotiate wages with each and everyone of it's employees so everyone gets screwed. If you make a mistake, even a small one, on a non-union job and your boss doesn't like you for whatever reason your out on your ear, with a union job you have someone to help you out.Wither you've been doing with the worest

Unions in the whole Delta world or your twits for not loving Unions I am and will be a union man until the day I die. Because of them I get really good pay, 15 days paid vacation which in a few years will go up to twenty, 14 days sick time, great health insurance, I'm on a seniority list which means if lay offs come I'm not totally screwed since I'm half way up the ladder, and 11 paid holidays. Show me a non union job with those kinds on benefits.

[Narei Mooncatt]

That's something else I've noticed about too many union loyalists. They seem to be pretty negative about everything. This isn't just you Sigurd, but I work in an industry with a lot of unionized companies and pretty much any time I hear them sitting at a diner or driver lounge, etc, they have a gripe about this that or the other. I don't know why that is, but it's something I've picked up on. Now to take one of your examples, Cosco. I've delivered to their warehouses before and other unionized companies. They are some of the most in-efficient places to load/unload at. Where they may take you 8 hours to work your truck, a non-union place usually got me out of there in under 2.

Personally, I don't care if you call me a twit or not, but no need for name calling here either way. I think things speak for themselves when one person prefers raises, vacation, layoff lists, etc based on merit and someone else prefers it based on seniority.

[Kiska Nirpaw]

Have any of you heard of a 40 hour work week? Paid time off? Holiday pay? Over time? I can go on here. If you have thank the Delta Unions you twits! If it wasn't for us everyone in this country would be screwed. If you want to see what unions in other countries have been able to do look at Western Europe where many countries have six weeks mandatory vacation, paid maternity and paternity leave. Now they have unions that work. Yes I'm pro union I've worked for two of them and you won't see me enter a Walmart, Barnes and Nobles, Sam's Club, because they're union busters who act illegally. Companies like Costco on the other paw pay about twice what their competitor Sam's Club pays, actually has health insurance, gets there employees paid holidays and time off, and time and a half on holidays shich includes every Sunday.  Companies don't have time to sit down and negotiate wages with each and everyone of it's employees so everyone gets screwed. If you make a mistake, even a small one, on a non-union job and your boss doesn't like you for whatever reason your out on your ear, with a union job you have someone to help you out.Wither you've been doing with the worest

I gotta say, I'd have gotten absolutely NONE of those at the union job I was interviewed for, excepting paid time off, once I'd paid my dues to the company. They told me flat-out that I wasn't allowed overtime, whatsoever. 40 hours? Pfft, not til I had at LEAST a year of seniority under my belt, and even then it was debatable. Sundays were mandatory workings, as were holidays (excepting Christmas, the ONLY day they closed.) If you are interested in where this was, it was Meijer. I don't know if it's just them, or if other grocer unions do this (I've heard horror stories about an Ohio-based chain called Giant Eagle), but I told them quite quickly where they could put the job offer.

I worked 6 years at Radio Shack, and I must say, if I had a problem (and I did... the boss at my first job made some rather careless comments about me "faking" a funeral to get out of work to other coworkers while I was off burying my grandmother), I could go to district and complain and things would get done. And if they didn't? They I go to regional, then corporate. There was still a protocol if someone was getting fired, unless they no-call, no-show'd more than 3 days in a row. Otherwise, there would have to be a paper trail. Trust me, my first boss didn't like me much, but there was nothing he could do without me breaking rules. It took more major offenses to get fired without warning or reprimand. Stealing, for example. Not a "minor" error.  And I got great benefits working there: I had a decent wage for being right out of high school ($1.50 over Ohio's minimum wage at the time plus commission), after 90 days there, I got medical benefits, after 6 months I was eligible for paid time off (started with a week, went to 2 weeks after being there three years, and three had I hit the 10 year mark), and had damn-near 40 hours and holiday pay from the word "go". They still frowned on overtime unless you were a MIT or manager, but it still wasn't bad. And we had Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter off, with shorter hours on Christmas Eve, New Years Eve and Day, 4th of July, Memorial Day, and Labor Day. Since it was partially commission-based pay, you EARNED your raise. The only way your base pay changed was your title. Part-timers, full-timers, MIT/assistant manager. Managers were salaried. So instead of pay raises based on merit, you earned your keep based on merit. If you wanted to slack off, you'd see less pay than a go-getter that sat and answered a few questions for a customer.

I'll agree that Wal-Mart is nicknamed the "Evil Empire" for a good reason. But there has to be a happy medium between what they do and what I went through with that union.

Also, I don't think name calling is necessary. I don't hate people who are pro-union, I just don't want to personally work in a union ever again. They have done some good, some evil, and in the end, my only experience with one was terrible, and not one I care to repeat.

[Foxxhoria]

It's all a battle between people who want better for themselves.

[Sigurd Volsung]

I am sorry, you are of course right I was wrong to call people twits.

That being said though it still angers me that people constantly forget that organized labor helped shape the rights for all workers not just in the US but the rights of people all over the world. Have some unions screwed up royally I'm sure they have, but many haven't. With out unions there would be no such thing as minimum wage, there would be no such thing as holiday pay or time and a half, or workmen's compensation for injury while on the job. I must disagree though with the idea of merit pay as it is all to often completely subjective and as I said before a person can get royally screwed if their boss, especially a middle manager doesn't like them. Where I work there is something close to merit pay which has to do more with qualifications based on classifications for boiler operation then anything else, the rest is step pay based on time served.

As far as Wal-Mart goes not to long ago they were brought to court on charges of 100,000 worker rights violations! The total fin they received was about $7 per violation when they could have been nailed for $1000 per violation. Had they been nailed for the maximum as they should have been in my opinion, it would have been a Delta big warning to every company to straighten out it's act. With out a history of unions being involved in the history of US history most of those violations would have never existed which included not allowing workers to use the bathroom at anytime they were working even if it meant they had to soil themselves. I would like for people to keep that in mind before they bash Trade Unions

[furtopia02]

Yes, anyone who resorts to petty name-calling right off the bat like that doesn't belong here IMO and by the debate forum rules. I'd respond with more but I am on my phone for just a few minutes.

[Alexandre]

Yes, it was against the debate forum rules, as it says here:

Members who “purposely” instigate baiting of other members to reply, flaming, bashing, name calling, etc. or who do not maintain a civil response will have their Furry Debate Club membership quickly revoked.

That being said, let's stop dwelling on that and get back to the topic, 'kay?

[Furlong]

Unions are a complicated subject for me.  On the one hand, I can see the good that they would do in certain jobs, such as public safety, skilled labor, etc.  It does help prevent companies from treating the workers unfairly. 

On the other hand, today unions seem only about justifying their own existence.  While the ability for collective bargaining is a good thing, and allows for increased wages and/or salaries for workers, union membership should always be optional.

Where I live, the Correctional Officer's union has had a major beef with the Sheriff over the firing of some officers several years ago regarding postings on a message board.  The included racial epithets, as well as a photoshopped image of a sniper-scope over a picture of the Sheriff.  (I live in Essex County, MA, if this sounds familiar to anyone else).  As such rules were announced, including a complete ban on any union member doing anything for the Sheriff outside of their official duties.

I also question the need for unions in an age with workplace safety and employment laws. As Kiska said, most, of not all companies, have many levels you can go through to complain about unfair treatment.  You can go to your boss, the store manager, District manager, regional manager, and, if necessary, corporate.  You can also contact your state's relevant agency regarding this.  In Mass, at least, I know that companies really try to avoid dealing with MCAD complaints. 

There was also a case over the summer some Shaws warehouse workers were on strike.  While I understood their position, it seemed to me that they were hurting the majority of the non-union members who worked in the store.  One time, one of them actually tried to prevent me from going into the store.




TL,DR version..
Unions were good then, and are more hindrance then help now. 

[Serra Belvoule]

Unions can be taken both ways, like many things. It can be very helpful to avoid a worker being abused, providing safety and etc. It can as easily be turned into a way to coax a business to be afraid of their laborers.
I am aware of at least one union that abuses this power as such, and a few more that are there only to get money.
I think it's again just a matter of taking too much power into someone's hands.

[Drake Blackpaw]

There was a time when unions played an important role in making the workplace better and safe for people in America.  However, my limited experience with unions today haven't been positive.  I worked one job where their was a union that I could join, it was for the Federal Government.  Joining was not mandatory and I was not a member of the union.  The only thing I saw the union do was step in for some employees to stop them from being disciplined of fired when they really deserved to be fired.  The person who slept at their desk, the person who kicked his wife in the head in the hallway of the office (yes, this really happened), and someone who just didn't do any work at all.

I'm sure there were some productive employees who were union members, but I know that all of the least productive employees were and used the union as a shield if any one questioned them about their work. 

I'm currently in a profession that really doesn't have a union, but I have pretty good benefits and good pay.  I get 20 days of vacation a year and another 5 days sick leave, partial matching of my 401k contributions, profit sharing and decent healthcare benefits.  So you don't need to be in a union to have a decent benefits or decent workplace.

[Mooshi]

They both have their pros and cons - neither being the best solution for everyone. It boils down to management (or mis-management). While some unions can geniunely help out employees, others just cost extra cash, hold up production if there is a strike and makes outsourcing overseas look attractive.

I think a better alternative is something more balanced. Say you are sick, and I mean emergency room sick not a cold. You should have time off to see a doctor without fear of losing your job. Family emergencies should also always come first. I'd be damned if an employer told me no if my mum was in the hospital. I'd raise hell and quit ASAP! A balance of individual freedoms and protections seems ideal to me.

You earn your rank, not have it handed to you for being eye candy. (x number of hours deals) Hard working fresh starters get treated like crap while the ones who been there awhile can stand around picking their nose and still get a higher pay. That isn't right.

[Sigurd Volsung]

I will say this again as nice as merit pay sounds in many cases it simply doesn't work as their is no way to objectively figure out who is worth more.

Let me make an example of myself. I am a custodial engineer and while that sounds the same as a janitor it is different. Now in Minnesota St. Paul and Minneapolis school districts have janitors in Anoka-Hennepin School District they have custodians who get paid more than janitors because we have a far larger range of responsibilities, so we have more pay, but for the purpose of the example we can ignore that for the time being. Now I started back in 2001 and in 8 years hit the top pay step on the ladder, are there people who are more enthusiastic about the job and try harder than me, yes, but since there is no way for a younger employee to prove this the step ladder stays in effect. However there is a caveat if an employee wants to become a shift lead they can apply for the position and may or may not get it depending on what the Supervisor of the building, which ever one the bid is for, thinks of that person. There often objective qualifications that need to be met, namely having the proper class boilers license, but other than that it doesn't matter how good you are at your job, or what if the supervisor wants someone else for whatever reason you don't get the position. So the only way to have an even relatively fair way to determine pay level is by seniority.

Now let's take another example of teachers, the merit system is BEYOND stupid! Let me explain my reasoning on this one. Now politicians who are not, and never had been teachers want to give bonuses based on student test scores this leaves many teachers out in the cold. Lets take an example say a teacher one year teaches advanced placement classes in which the kids are highly motivated to do well, however for what ever reason such as budget cuts and transitions of classes they are teaching normal classes in which they have students who are not as motivated. Now the first year the highly motivated students score high on the standardized test, which are another joke but that doesn't matter for this subject, the second year the students who are less motivated don't do as well on test don't score as highly as the students the first year. (I'm sorry this is getting so convoluted). Now by the government reasoning since the scores of the teachers students dropped they teacher must not be doing a good job and therefore should not get a merit based raise, they refuse to take into account the outside factors such as the group dynamics of the students the teacher is working with.

I really don't want to keep going on even though I can keep going for a very long while. I will leave it at the idea that merit based pay doesn't work because there is no objective way to score merit.

[Narei Mooncatt]

I really don't want to keep going on even though I can keep going for a very long while. I will leave it at the idea that merit based pay doesn't work because there is no objective way to score merit.

Taking you at your arguement, the flip side is that going by seniority does away with the incentive to do better. I guess it just comes down to picking your poison on how to calculate wages. You are right that merit pay can sometimes be subjective, which is one of the reasons most large companies have specific policies regarding how to determine that. It helps prevent favoritism, and also makes it easier to decide when dealing with hundereds or thousands of employees.  I do agree with standardized raises to keep up with cost of living increases and you can only get experience to do better by learning over time hands on, but I think they should be reasonable amounts unless the worker has done something extra like continuing education classes.

[Kiska Nirpaw]

Now let's take another example of teachers, the merit system is BEYOND stupid! Let me explain my reasoning on this one. Now politicians who are not, and never had been teachers want to give bonuses based on student test scores this leaves many teachers out in the cold. Lets take an example say a teacher one year teaches advanced placement classes in which the kids are highly motivated to do well, however for what ever reason such as budget cuts and transitions of classes they are teaching normal classes in which they have students who are not as motivated. Now the first year the highly motivated students score high on the standardized test, which are another joke but that doesn't matter for this subject, the second year the students who are less motivated don't do as well on test don't score as highly as the students the first year. (I'm sorry this is getting so convoluted). Now by the government reasoning since the scores of the teachers students dropped they teacher must not be doing a good job and therefore should not get a merit based raise, they refuse to take into account the outside factors such as the group dynamics of the students the teacher is working with.

This would be one case where perhaps seniority outweighs merit. I'm not saying it should be concrete one way or the other, because there are cases where one is better than the other.

For example, I'll use my first job at Kmart for this one. Unless you were coming in as a manager or shift lead or a specialty department, most everyone started off at a base of $6.00 (this was 10 years ago). EVERYONE who stayed to the 90-day mark and wasn't a complete slack-off screw-up got a $0.50 pay raise. After that, during your yearly review, you had a chance at up to another $.50 per year raise. This was based on stuff such as:
-Were you on time constantly?
-Did you call off constantly?
-Were you abusing break/lunch time?
-(for Cashiers) How fast was your rings-per-minute? What was your service plan selling percentage? How often was your cash draw over/under?
-Were there any reports of going above and beyond for a customer?
-Was your work area kept clean and organized?
And so on. Sure, there was a bit of room for favoritism, but it was mostly based on not breaking the rules and solid numbers. This ensured that raises were given fairly, whereas the rival company I went to work for years later would have made me struggle at minimum wage while the cashier two aisles over texted her bff during her entire shift just because she got the job 4 months earlier than I did.


Mooshi, yes, I agree with the family emergencies thing! Now, here is one time when I'll say that a union might have helped. I took a job with a company that has stores at the airport. This job, counting my training, lasted maybe a week, and I only stuck it out that long because I NEEDED the money. I was told that if I should get sick (like flu sick or something) and had to miss a day of work, I needed a Dr's note for every day I'd be out or else it was a strike. And until they had Dr's note in hand, every day not there was a strike. Meaning it was almost certain that your first sick day was going to be a strike (because, hey, you were too sick to come in, so why would you go through all the hassle of security and  parking just to deliver a note?) Also, the note only validated you. Your parent/sibling/spouse/child is sick? Tough. That's a strke. You can't bring in a dr's note saying your child was sick and you had to stay home with it. Unless it was a death, it was a strike. And they wondered why they had such a high turnover rate.

[Mooshi]

Ugh, that's horrible. Especially the kids thing. While I don't have any (or want one in this point of my life), it's only natural for a parent wanting to stay by their child when sick.

Normal illnesses aren't anything to make a major fuss over unless the kid is really young, but what if they got into an accident? If I had a son or daughter and they broke a bone, got hit by a car or any other extreme accident, no force on Earth is going to stop me from being by their side!

Even if they aren't a blood relation, close friends and even your pet are equally important. If you had a pet that was really sick, you too would want to monitor them if they aren't at the vet.

All that not only lacks any morality, it's just pure ugly. People vote with their pocketbook and time. If a company is failing and treats their workers like trash, sometimes that translates to a decline in sales. Afterall, if the very heart of a company, the employee, is treated badly, what makes you think customer service is going to be better?

[Serra Belvoule]

But again, companies, as personal or impersonal as they might be, have no way of telling if you're actually having a medic need or not, or if your medic needs are being justified.
I mean, see it on the company's view, if a worker is using lots of breaks, whatever the reason it may be, you start to suspect something.

[Sigurd Volsung]

In the school district I work for if you call in sick for more than three days your supervisor can ask for a doctors note at his or her discretion. Also they can revoke a vacation day worth of pay (you still get the time off you just don't get paid for it) if they choose if you call in sick just before a day you have planned for vacation, again this is purely by discretion.

If there is away to objectively base merit increased pay then I'm all for it, but just because a person meets the merit requirement by attending a class doesn't mean that they have learned anything. I had a coworker who had taken the classes certifying him to do all sorts of electrical work around the school, he didn't know a Delta thing about what he was doing even though he had the certificate of completing the course work. As another example my bosses boss who is an utter jerk has taken several tests to certify him in boiler operation that he should not have LEGALLY been taking for because he came no where near the legal required time working with boilers. Some times a merit qualification can be faked by a supervisor as a favor for some sort of benefit. My point being that you can lead a horse to water and while it may get it's muzzle wet it may have not actually drunken anything, or that sometimes that pig in a bag someone sold you is really a cat.

Can merit pay work yes, but it needs to be carefully monitored and if an employer is smart they can use a Union to help monitor the employees, because one of the union's jobs is to make sure that members are being treated fairly. If someone is cheating the system then the union should, if they are doing their job, jump all over them.

[Narei Mooncatt]

And how often do you hear of the union worker not doing his job and should be repremanded but the company is being fought by said union because they want to protect the unfit worker? I hear it pretty often from people that have worked in union jobs.

Something else that really ticks me off about one union specifically (and I don't know which one it is by name) deals with Anthrocon. I know the con's hands are tied and this isn't directed at them, but there's some rule that if you are moving something around the convention space over a certain weight, you have to have a union guy do it for you. It never affected me because I didn't have to do any heavy lifting, but I don't think they should have the right to force someone that has zero affiliation with them to hire their services whether they like it or not. If I have a dolly and/or someone to help me move something, I don't feel like waiting around for someone else to come move it or risk them damaging it if it's something expensive and delicate. I.E. lighting equipment that I have dealt with.

[Kiska Nirpaw]

And how often do you hear of the union worker not doing his job and should be repremanded but the company is being fought by said union because they want to protect the unfit worker? I hear it pretty often from people that have worked in union jobs.

Something else that really ticks me off about one union specifically (and I don't know which one it is by name) deals with Anthrocon. I know the con's hands are tied and this isn't directed at them, but there's some rule that if you are moving something around the convention space over a certain weight, you have to have a union guy do it for you. It never affected me because I didn't have to do any heavy lifting, but I don't think they should have the right to force someone that has zero affiliation with them to hire their services whether they like it or not. If I have a dolly and/or someone to help me move something, I don't feel like waiting around for someone else to come move it or risk them damaging it if it's something expensive and delicate. I.E. lighting equipment that I have dealt with.

Even further ridiculous was in 2008, they had the video game room in the convention hall (just across from the ballroom). They were doing a DDR tournament and some of the songs were rather complicated. When someone went to move A CHAIR out of the way for fear of accidentally hitting it and falling over, they were scolded, saying that the union stated no one but them could move that. A chair. Nevermind that at every other con I've been to, people are scooting the chairs around left and right, especially in the game rooms. They weren't talking about dragging it into another room or destroying it or stealing it or anything.... just moving it a few feet to the left. Tell me that's not totally asinine.

[Narei Mooncatt]

I guess the bigger point of these rants from my POV and experiences is that it seems most union workers are given an assigned job. It spells out what their task is and how to perform it. No one else is allowed to help them or do it for them as in your case of moving a chair, and they will jump all over someone for stepping on their "turf". By the same token, they will also be the first to tell you "not in my job description" if someone else asks them to help out with something different. I don't know if all are like that, but I'm too much a nice guy to say no most of the time. Granted, I do have to say no to helping push a pallet out of the trailer and such for the not in my job description reason. Since I'm not a store employee (my company contracts to them) and it's not part of my job, I'm not covered by workers comp if one tips over and I get hurt. That's not the same as using as an excuse because I want to get away with being lazy.

[Sigurd Volsung]

I'm only really familiar with two unions one of which had very strict regulations about what it could to do which was the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the reason they were strict about the not in my job description was that yes they were on a job site that could be highly dangerous plus often times we were around stuff that belonged to other contractors who would have had a serious cow if we touched anything of theirs so it was mostly a case of respect for each others companies equipment, doesn't mean you wouldn't be polite and hold a door open for another company carrying something heavy you just couldn't provide real help such as handing one of them something.

My current union job covers pretty much doing anything I can around my building I can to help out the staff, students, and parents so there is nothing in the contract regarding the not my job description because we have a sort of jack-of-all-trades job.

How it is for other unions I don't know but with other trade unions I'm guessing they're rules and regs are similar to those of the IBEW

[Serra Belvoule]

A chair.

It's the same with the zero tolerance policies. Flexibility vs  homogeneity in rules. People just don't care enough to make the effort.