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Teamsters Seek To Unionize More Tech Shuttle Bus Drivers In Silicon Valley
An anonymous reader writes with news about the effort to unionize shuttle drivers in Silicon Valley. "Shuttle bus drivers for five prominent tech companies will decide whether to unionize on Friday in a vote that has the potential to dramatically expand organized labor's territory in Silicon Valley and embolden others in the tech industry's burgeoning class of service workers to demand better working conditions. Drivers who ferry Yahoo, Apple, Genentech, eBay and Zynga workers -- all employed by contractor Compass Transportation -- will decide whether to join the Teamsters union in an election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board. Union leaders say they want to bring the drivers into the fold so they can negotiate better pay and benefits -- as well as relief from a split shift that has the drivers working morning and evening shifts with no pay in between. A contract the Teamsters struck over the weekend for Facebook's shuttle bus drivers, who work for Loop Transportation, offers a glimpse of what may be possible: paid sick and vacation time, full health care coverage and wages of up to $27.50 an hour."
As the article points out, this is not a big cost for the companies involved. Unionisation of the buses is not going to make the slightest bit of difference whatsoever to Google's desire to generate a self-driving vehicle. The market is enormous, so they have all the incentive in the world.
What is going to make a difference to these companies is some degree of collective action. We know that many SV companies have been involved in collection action in the past, with non-compete agreements to keep wages of high-skilled workers low. It is a good thing if the shoe is on the other foot for a while. The only real sad thing is that this is unlikely to spread to where it is really needed -- in the third world sweat shop supply chains.
They're the sort of union that if they don't get what they want they sometimes break equipment, throw bricks through windows with murder threats on them, and other fucking insane bullshit.
Were this a union group without that reputation then I'd give them the benefit of the doubt. But this is the teamsters. They've a reputation of being rough with people that don't give them what they want. And the reality is that no one has patience for that shit anymore.
Or the anonymity, for that matter -- approaching a Google Street View car from any direction, probably results in enough images being captured of you from enough angles to turn your vandalism attempt into a scene from the Matrix. If they haven't matured out of that old-school kind of approach even today, a little technology may not be sufficient to get them to change their ways fast enough.
1) Unions are collective bargaining. Collective bargaining forms the basis for an intelligent, social civilisastion.
saying "smash the unions!" is like shouting "GMO is evil!" - it's a nonsense blanket statement by an anti-science ideologue;
When I think of Unions I think of all the corrupt Unions that litter the USA. Standing unions are a corrupted version of collective bargaining.
Collective bargaining is good. I'm not a big fan of the standing unions we have today. If unions came into existance, fixed the problem and
then disbanding then I wouldn't have a problem with them.
I know, 37.5 might as well be 40, but a lot of places in the area consider 37.5 to be full-time. Just pointing out that the 40-hour week is starting to be scaled back.
If I had mod points, I'd have modded you up.
I grew up as the only conservative in a family of upper middle class liberals. It always infuriated me that poor people were constantly getting free stuff, and I bought in to the whole poor people are lazy mentality. Once I graduated, I found myself working in a company that employs a great deal of the bottom of society. (I started there myself thanks to the collapse in '01). I was lucky enough to have a good family watching out for me, and I didn't stay on the bottom long, but I've been there. As a result of my experiences, I have moved much farther left on the spectrum, but I will note a few things here that need to be said.
First, I find far more lazy people in the middle classes than on the bottom or the top. Those on the top work hard because they are driven (this is what gets them to the top). Those on the bottom work hard because they have to in order to survive. They often have no hope, and no future because we have built the system in this country to virtually guarantee their continued failure. Those in the middle have the breathing room to be lazy, and some of them are. Unions historically protect all of their employees equally, which is mostly taken advantage of by the lazy members (definitely not the majority of union members, but a noticeable minority). It is this enabling power of unions that pisses people off about them. Unions need to stop protecting lazy workers. This is critical to their continued support from the rest of society. Unions have to take steps to ensure that their lazy members are compensated equitably to the effort they put in. A stupid lazy union member should not get paid the same as a motivated intelligent union member when all other factors are equal. That trait of unions is pretty much the only real reason anyone is opposed to unions in the first place. All other reasons are essentially window dressing around the real issue.
We need to stop giving money to the poor. They don't need money. What they need is a systematic, comprehensive, plan for how to get them off the bottom. The single biggest factor keeping poor people poor, is the responsibility for children. As noted, often times, a parent finds themselves as the sole caregiver for children, and they are consequently trapped, as the responsibilities of childrearing often conflict with the responsibilities that employers would place upon employees (such as reliable attendance, and schedule flexibility). The simplest solution to the problem would be to do away with welfare and unemployment benefits entirely and replace them with guaranteed services for their dependents such as 50 hours of weekly daycare, Free medical services for dependents, Three daily meals for dependents. All of those services combined would be cheaper than welfare and would provide far more benefit to society. Individuals, when freed from many of the responsibilities of dependent care, would be far more able to work the kinds of schedules that employers want/need. Being only financially responsible for themselves would allow them to choose better paths for their own career advancement (including continuing education), that would otherwise be impossible to manage while being primary caregiver.
Mind you I am not proposing making these options available only to the poor, I am proposing that society provide that level of service for all its citizens as a way to level the playing field for all parties. In the end, it will only help the next generation, when they don't have to grow up seeing their parent(s) trapped in poverty with no hope of escape, and no obvious way that the children can avoid the same fate.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
I have a good friend whom I've known for years who is a Teamster. To be honest, I feel your ridiculous and long winded account of Teamsters is quite off the mark.
Perhaps if you saw and heard things from the other side you might change your opinion. But I doubt it. It appears you already know everything their is to know about what it's like to be a Teamster, and what they put up with. Thanks for that shower of wisdom.
Again, my knowledge about their job isn't first person, just coming from what my very good friend has told me for the last twenty years or so. I can tell you this though, your 1970's era opinions of unions being all powerful are about as anachronistic as holding up your lighter during Freebird at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert.
My friend has described in detail how they continue to "get fucked" everytime their new contracts come up. And yes, he tells me the details of thier contracts, what has changed, how it used to be, etc; He actually doesn't like telling me most of it, but I'm quite interested in how that process works, how they negotiate, etc;
The Teamsters don't get their cake and eat it to, as those with a Mussoliniesque political bent would have everyone believe.
Unioins, and especially the Teamsters are a pale shadow of their former selves.
Now to the real point.
Yes, we will have driverless vehicles in the not too distant future.
Yes, most if not all of the driving professions will disappear quite rapidly after that happens.
Yes, that will put even more people out of work, with no or little hope of a future profession now that their livelihood has disappeared.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range