Tech Firms Oppose Union Organizing

cedarhillbilly passes along a piece from TheHill.com on the chilly reception that tech firms and lobbying groups are giving to a bill promoting union formation, which has a chance of passing in a more strongly Democratic congress and with a Democratic president. "Up to now, large tech groups have been on the sidelines in what is likely to be one of the roughest fights in Congress next year. A few, however, are preparing to weigh in. That makes other tech lobbyists nervous that, by doing so, the industry could sacrifice relatively good relationships with Democrats and, therefore, jeopardize some of their other legislative priorities."

Comments

heh

[stoolpigeon]

It's interesting that every single person in the article is against it except for a dnc congressman. The end of the article says he bemoans the lack of union growth. Why would he be concerned about union growth? Why would he be so concerned about union growth that he would try and take steps to lower the bar on organizing groups of people who probably don't even want it? Oh yeah - money. This is why I hate politics. This has nothing to do with serving people it is all about finding revenue streams to fund their next election. Maybe they can get the rest of the country to be like the state of Washington and force people into unions, fire the ones that wont join and rack up plenty of contributions that way.
 
I was a union member for a number of years. (UFCW) Fortunately it was in a right to work state and it was my choice. And fortunately it was possible to relatively private about joining or not joining. None of this harassment that can come in other environments. Unions are just like employers - they are good to keep in check against one another but I think it is a mistake to think they are purely for the employee. They quickly fall to Pournelle's Iron Law. This whole affair is a marked reminder of that fact.
 
I don't think the Republicans are any better for what it is worth - but I think at least the discussion on what this is all about out to be frank rather than draped in a bunch of spin. Being cautious about unions is not being anti employee.

Re:heh

[canUbeleiveIT]

I too was in the UFCW and came away from the experience with the opinion that bad employees need unions more than good employees. Good employees are so hard to come by at the wage level of UFCW members that employers are loathe to lose them for almost any reason.

Unions tend to put companies at a competitive disadvantage--auto industry, steel, etc. IMO, this isn't because they necessarily pay a higher wage, but also because it costs so much to have to keep a crappy employee. Higher admin costs, workplace morale, etc suffer. If you look into Trader Joe's, a non-union shop that pays the highest wages in the industry, you will see how well a company can do if they 1) pay a livable wage, 2) choose employees wisely, and 3) have a company culture that rewards effort and efficiency.

One of the most ridiculous things that I have ever seen was the UFCW paying people minimum wage to picket a non-union store that was paying a higher starting wage than the union store.

Re:heh

[stoolpigeon]

I had some run ins with store managers that had napoleon complexes and the union got my back. I could never have worked for the union though because they had to spend a lot of time trying to help people who deserved to get fired keep their jobs.
 
But it was a time and place when the employers really didn't care if they kept you or not and didn't want to give us decent insurance and the union helped that to happen - so I felt they provided more pros than cons. But it's easy for it to tip the other way.

Re:heh

[PopeRatzo]

Why would he be concerned about union growth?

bad employees need unions more than good employees

I'm guessing the people writing these comments are well under the age of 45. They were born and have lived in an age when corporate marketing has been the very air they breathe. It's no wonder that they think it's a bad thing that employees of a company should want to organize. It's also a very sad commentary on their ability to think beyond today and their own circumstances.

There was a time in this country when ownership ruled, management ruled to the extent that people were hurt and died on a regular basis on the job. The ones that didn't die, lived in absolute penury. If the ownership and top management of corporations, and wall street, have their way, these days will return.

We have learned by recent events that modern corporate ownership is so short sighted that they would destroy their own market, say, the middle class, in order to obtain short term profits. They would even destroy their chances to exist five years from now (without a bailout) to show profits this quarter.

There was a time, and I lived during it, when hiring people was a sign of corporate success. Today, a company's success is measured by how many people they can lay off, how many plants they can close. It doesn't take a genius (which means the above commenters have a chance here) to see that this is a recipe for a very bad situation.

Without organized labor, there would have been no middle class in the United States. There would have been craftsman and a mercantile class which would have occupied a similar position, but that's a very small number of people. Without unions, there would be no "two weeks vacation" or "Sundays off" or even all those little perks that people in the tech industry like to love. You do not have to work in a union company to enjoy the benefits that unions have won.

I'm sad that so many of the newly minted adult workers of today are ignorant of 20th century history of labor and why organized labor is so absolutely critical to the existence of a prosperous people.

There are places on earth you can go if you want to see what it's like to work in a place that has no tradition of collective bargaining. I would suggest that "stoolpigeon" and "canUbelieveIT" might benefit from seeing what it's like to work in these places.

Unions aren't the answer

[WCMI92]

What we need instead is a professional guild association, much as the legal and medical professions have. Unions are more appropriate for low skilled industrial professions.

Re:UAW

[Nursie]

Funny how Unions are also the reason that we have safe working conditions and a reasonable minimum wage in the UK.

I'm not denying that unionisation can bring downsides - strikes, unreasonable pay demands, political grandstanding etc - but without it we wouldn't have a lot of the benefits of collective bargaining that we have now.

I also find it odd that so many americans find the very idea (of workers gathering together to form a stronger position for bargaining with employers) somehow offensive. It seems in the US that the party with more power (the employer) should be allowed to tread all over the weaker individuals in society (employees) because every last one of you is going to be that guy next.

You aren't. You're turkeys voting for christmas. Just to bring a seasonal theme in :)

Management vs Labor

[Doc Ruby]

Of course the owners of the corporations are against their labor organizing. The purpose of a union is to spend more of the corporation's profits on labor, leaving less for the owners.

What's interesting is how often the union's improved terms for labor increases labor's productivity. Which means a larger total profit, so even a smaller share of it to the owners can be a larger total amount than before the union, when worse working conditions produced less profit for everyone.

Which shows that sometimes, the owners are not maximizing profit, but just maximizing their power.

Re:UAW

[the_womble]

I also find it odd that so many americans find the very idea (of workers gathering together to form a stronger position for bargaining with employers) somehow offensive.

Because:

Good for employees at a cost to employers ==
socialism == evil

Flawless reasoning!

Re:UAW

[Nursie]

"I don't find unions offensive, but I am arrogant enough to believe that tying myself to Jim-Bob is going to weaken my negotiating position, not strengthen it, so I don't like it when people start talking about unions as a panacea."

Oh, absolutely agreed, I'm not a member of a union myself, don't see the advantage to me personally. I just don't like it when people start saying they're useless/abusive/evil, as they've done good in the past and continue to help people. Usually people in low paid and less skilled jobs, who need help more than me and my software engineer buddies.

Re:As a forced union member...

[famebait]

I know a badly run company. Companies are evil.

The reason everyone is against it

[jorghis]

The reason people are so against it is that its primary purpose is to take away the secret ballot from workers considering joining a union.

Currently if union wants to move in it has to get a certain number of workers to sign a petition and then a secret ballot is held. If the union wins, bam the company is unionized.

What the unions want to do is just collect 50% of the signatures and skip the secret ballot step. This is called the "Card Check" provision, because the workers just sign cards and hand them to the union boss. Why? Because there are an awful lot of people who are willing to sign when the union boss is at their door leaning on them but when the secret ballot comes around the union routinely doesnt get anywhere near the number of votes the thought they had.

This is all about pushing unions into workplaces where the union cant win a secret ballot. The country tilted too far right in the past few years and now we are about to see what kind of legislation gets enacted when the left controls things and wants to push their own agenda on people whether they like it or not. Virtually every democrat supports this because it was made a litmus test on getting the big union campaign funds during the election.

Why I Am Pro-Union

[srobert]

As you can see from my four-digit ID, I've been hanging out on Slashdot for a long time. Whenever the union issue comes up here, I notice that there are an awful lot of negative comments against unions, more than there are favoring them. Since I'm firmly on the pro-union side, it's incumbent on me to chime in.
First, regarding the Employee Free Choice Act, there is a lot of misinformation about this that is being unchallenged by the mainstream media. One myth is that this act will eliminate the secret ballot for union organizing. That is NOT true. The employees will still be able to request that a secret ballot election be held. It will eliminate the employer's right to demand a secret ballot for the purpose of delaying union certification, and in the interim, intimidate employees to reject the union.
Now regarding the attitude generally displayed here toward organized labor, anecdotes prove nothing. Tired old tales about your uncle's friend's co-worker who showed up to work drunk, and caused your uncle's friend to lose his thumb, but couldn't be fired because of his union, may convince lots of people that unions are a bad thing, but they are largely apocryphal. Even where they are true in isolated cases, it is an indicator of incompetent management, not a necessary impact of the union. If you are managing a unionized work-force, and you are too lazy to even read their contract (which would tell you how to dismiss such an employee), then you are the problem, not the union.
Fair analysis of data (e.g. http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/datazone_rtw_index) indicates that unions have a positive impact upon the distribution of wealth, and general level of prosperity. Moreover, as unions decline in influence nationally, living standards decline both in the unionized and non-unionized sectors. Median real wages among those of you who live in so-called "right to work" states are lower than for those who live in states that don't interfere in the membership requirement that is written into union contracts. Yes, I'm sure that you may have read some report from the Heritage Foundation, or Cato Institute that said otherwise. But if you believe those sources of information, you may as well watch Fox news. If you must rely so heavily on anecdotes, talk to older members of your family, and ask them about whether or not there was ever such a thing as a "stay-at-home" mom. Ask them how could anyone afford to live that way.
I was raised in the '60s and '70s. When I was a kid, my father went to work in a factory every weekday. My mother did not work outside the home. This was typical among most of the families that I knew. Forty man-hours a week, for a family of four (six in our case), performed by a man without a college education, (in fact my dad didn't even have a high school diploma), was sufficient to maintain middle class living standards in typical American families at that time. We had health insurance, owned our homes, had leisure time, vacations, and typically, a full time mother. When my dad's company laid off workers temporarily during a lull, my father's seniority was honored. He felt bad for dismissed coworkers, but he didn't cut back spending, or miss any house payments. My father retired with a pension that kept him from falling into abject poverty for the rest of his days. That pension was bargained for by his union. It was not provided by his employer out of the goodness of their hearts.
As for myself, as a young man, I joined a trade union, served an apprenticeship and became a journeyman. But recognizing the direction of the political viability of unions, I decided to go to college part time later in life, and become an engineer. I paid my own way, and graduated nine years ago without the debt of a college loan. That was one of the benefits of a union wage. Today, though, working as a college educated professional, I barely approach the living standards that my family had in my childhood.