Unions

I have heard that story about Ford..

I work for harrah's Entertainment. Out of the 4 casino properties in atlantic city.. Bally's Park Place, Ceasers, Showboat, and Harrah's.. only one has their entertainment department non-union.. the one I work for, Harrahs.

Out of the 4 properties, we are the largest, have the most going on, and have the smallest department. 9 full time staff and 4 part time "casuals" who get hours every week. The other properties, have double the amount of employees..

What this leads up to.. the Unions protect my fellow Entertainment employees.. while our Director (who takes care of all 4 employees) constantly squeazes us to work leaner...

What really sucks.. we are the only property still make a ton of money in this bad market.. So don't tell me that unions no longer have a place

First off, excellent thread with a lot of respectful responses and genuine discussion, so, excellent job!

In my opinion, Unions are a giant 2-headed Hydra dragon. On the one hand you still have horror stories about employment (like Wal-Mart), and on the other you have equally horrible stories like the UAW.

Things like the UAW actually owning GM and Chrysler infuriate me, as the original union laws did not allow that (conflict of interest). Mandatory union membership is also the biggest scam this century. My wife is a school teacher. She does a damn good job (Teacher of the Year two years ago, Master's in GeoSciences, tons of clock-hours and additional training). She works longer than her contract states, has more kids than the the allotted maximum in every class (one class has kids standing because there aren't even enough desks), and yet she has to pay dues to a useless organization that frankly hasn't done squat for her or anyone else in her district. They haven't hired a new teacher in 4 years, have laid off dozens and had more retire or leave, and so everybody is overloaded.

Then again, I also work as a Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor and some of the injuries my clients have, and the situations that begat them, boggle the mind. There are industries that severely need real representation. Of course, I also have some bad apples that are cheating the system or otherwise dishonest about the accident as well.

It's just this big, double-edged sword. A proper union that is actually looking out for it's populace and is totally voluntary is a great thing. It helped create the middle-class in this country, provided for honest wages and safe work conditions, etc. But when they grow too big, have mandatory membership, and start looking out for their own interests they become monsters like the UAW with nothing but political agendas and multi-million dollar golf resorts.

well said Javelin.. and that is the truth.

Indeed. It's tough to find a balance. It seems to me that unions are still relevant at the very least because if they ceased to exist, the sort of imbalance that made them necessary originally would eventually return.

All negotiations are ongoing, and it seems that the vast majority of them have evolved to where all parties feel they must try to take everything to avoid being left with nothing. And at this point, they're probably nearly right. The fallout is that without regulation, any party may over-succeed and actually wind up with an truly unfair upper hand. And sometimes with regulation, the result is the same...

I think that this applies to many things besides unions/employers.

Well, I think...

Blueberry sounds good.

Actually, very interesting thread. Like so many things the answer is somewhere in the middle. I've been in a Union, and I'm currently a manager*. I can see both sides of this one. Sounds like a lot of us can.

*it was very interesting to be part of the contract negotiation. I have a relatively small department and the one thing I wanted was settled pretty quickly, so I got to spend most of the time just kind of experiencing the whole thing. It was actually really cool. But we have a really good shop with good relationships. I can see how it could be bad under different conditions.

Wow, who turned off the hate spigot today?

Asking if unions are good or bad is like asking if families are good or bad.

How exactly do you argue the point that families are bad? (curious)

Hi ransom,

It’s interesting that you used the term balance because we TRIZ practitioners consider terms like balance, negotiation, compromise, etc to be proof that a fundamental contradiction is present.

Without identifying and addressing the fundamental contradiction, hope for a mutually beneficial resolution is lost to an old school slugfest AKA – the evening news.

You guys can take this thread wherever you want but it would be interesting if some folks were to present their views within the context of my theory.

…from brilliant to epic fail, either way is fine.

Hi paanta,

I'm not making a case for or against unions, I'm just applying a favorite tool to see where it takes me.

I was once a UAW member, on the negotiating committee, and also a shop steward. I was anti union at the time, and still am, but thought it would be best for me if I at least had some control over the situation. I was fair to both sides. The union guys didn't like that, and neither did the company. No matter what I did, I couldn't win. They acted like little kids when they dealt with each other, and it left a bad taste in my mouth, so now I hate everybody.

The best thing about a union, IMO, is the threat of a union. A lot of companies pay well, and treat their employees well just to keep the unions out.

aircooled wrote: How exactly do you argue the point that families are bad? (curious)

I don't, just like I don't argue that unions are bad. :)

Should I go try to find some examples of families that do nothing but screw all their members up?

aircooled wrote: How exactly do you argue the point that families are bad? (curious)

The earth is overpopulated and if you are still making new people you are a bad person? Or the other angle that I can think of is that humans are animals, and animals want to procreate with as many different partners as possible to do their best to diversify the gene pool, and the current norm of monogamy is a bad thing, and each man and woman shouldn't be limited to one partner?

I dunno, thats my best guess

Growing up in a GM town I have had the opportunity to see all sides of the union/corporate mess. Adults on both sides act like spoiled 5 years olds. It makes me not want to deal with either group. I suggest reading Rivethead for an entertaining look at life on the assembly line.

mtn wrote: the current norm of monogamy is a bad thing, and each man and woman shouldn't be limited to one partner?

I'm onside with this.

mad_machine wrote: I have heard that story about Ford.. I work for harrah's Entertainment. Out of the 4 casino properties in atlantic city.. Bally's Park Place, Ceasers, Showboat, and Harrah's.. only one has their entertainment department non-union.. the one I work for, Harrahs. Out of the 4 properties, we are the largest, have the most going on, and have the smallest department. 9 full time staff and 4 part time "casuals" who get hours every week. The other properties, have double the amount of employees.. What this leads up to.. the Unions protect my fellow Entertainment employees.. while our Director (who takes care of all 4 employees) constantly squeazes us to work leaner... What really sucks.. we are the only property still make a ton of money in this bad market.. So don't tell me that unions no longer have a place

You are the only property making money because you're not supporting an inflated overpaid workforce.

Zomby woof wrote: I was once a UAW member, on the negotiating committee, and also a shop steward. I was anti union at the time, and still am, but thought it would be best for me if I at least had some control over the situation. I was fair to both sides. The union guys didn't like that, and neither did the company. No matter what I did, I couldn't win. They acted like little kids when they dealt with each other, and it left a bad taste in my mouth, so now I hate everybody. The best thing about a union, IMO, is the threat of a union. A lot of companies pay well, and treat their employees well just to keep the unions out.

Seeing negotiations all over the world, and especially the inflamatory way that the news likes to present things, I'm starting to thing that 9/10 people will act like kids to get their way, which is generally more money.

A few years ago, the local news found union members who were happy in telling the news that they would rather see the company go out of business before giving up anything.

Then again, I'm pretty convinced the UAW does not read anyone's annual reports.

So, we need someting that is incredibly disfunctional as a concept. Funny how that works out.

None of the private companies I worked for had unions, but I am in one now that I have a gov't job. One of the reasons that most gov't jobs have and to an extent need unions is because they tend to have a layer of stupid that private companies don't. You have a large group of people who have never held a real job, or had to be productive. They came to an agency because they had family here. Those relatives brought them up into middle managment. They eventually get a bit of power over a group of people and turn into little dictators. Without a union to reign them in and keep the workforce from setting their car on fire(most of the time at least) nothing would ever get done.

RX Reven' wrote: Hi ransom, It’s interesting that you used the term balance because we TRIZ practitioners consider terms like balance, negotiation, compromise, etc to be proof that a fundamental contradiction is present.

I feel like I must be misunderstanding something about the TRIZ approach; the clue I've got is the use of the word "contradiction" rather than "conflict". Or is it that in my head I'm over-emphasizing the connotation of paradox that I have for contradiction?

In any case, it seems to me that the horizontal aspects of your initial summary aren't the certainties that the vertical aspects are*. Moreover, it assumes that negotiations which improve conditions for one set of workers have no impact on the market value of labor, whether in the immediate field or not. And I can think of more than one way this could be applied: If a widget factory opens up, and the local workforce unionizes and improves their wages, this improves the local economy. This of course must be balanced against the possibility of widgetco deciding they would rather find a different community. The other way I can think of this applying is supply and demand for labor. If a given group is unionized and getting paid x% more than they were beforehand, this will affect to some extent the market rate for labor.

By this I just mean that the way you've stated the horizontal aspects seem a little one-sided to me. I do not mean to suggest that they are completely incorrect.

It does seem like tools like TRIZ are probably as sensitive as any to the quality of input and assumptions? (EDIT #2: This sounds way more like an assertion that your assumptions are bad than I meant it to. My questions stand, but my phraseology here sucks.)

(EDIT: maybe this will be an asterisk and not a bullet now)* I just picked out where I wasn't comfortable with saying this: Your vertical example talks about prevention, which is a reasonable assertion. Unions have helped to avoid exploitation by employers. It is not necessary for all employers to attempt exploitation for this to be true. However, your horizontal example suggests exploitation of non-union workers to be universal across union employees, and I don't think that is true, as laid out above.

I'm just a dumb, high school educated local yokel. I determined my view on unions fairly early in life. We often drove by a UAW plant that made construction equipment for CAT. It seemed like they were striking more often than they weren't. The union guys were always on the TV news complaining about how horribly the company treated them. I can't say how much truth there was to that or not. All I know is that they closed the perpetually striking plant and moved that production to Mexico. The (now unemployed) union workers continued to yammer on about how evil the company was. My feeble little brain said, "That didn't work out so well".

Aged adult that I now am, I've looked at a lot of industries that have labor unions deeply entrenched in them. Most all of them are failing industries, and the ones most frequently being outsourced. One exception is the railroads, of which I have more than a casual interest and know a few people who work for them. The constant in talking with these employees is that most of their days are spent finding ways to avoid actual work.

My conclusion is that, after much non-academic study, unions once served a useful purpose, but that period ended back around WW II. Today, they do just as much damage as government meddling in business and have done their part to kill manufacturing in this country.

So there's a little union hate for those of you who have been waiting.

Disclaimer: Never been in a union. Don't really have a desire to join one.

I agree with ddavidv, there was a time unions were truly necessary. But they turned into bloated entities creating havoc to justify their existence. He mentioned Caterpillar. CAT is a conservatively run company, they tend to their business very well. Their designs and manufacturing processes are second to none; world class equipment.

I worked for a CAT dealer in Columbia, SC in the '80's, right next door was the young upstart Komatsu place. CAT had (and still has) some of the best pay and benefits in the industry. Yet the unions went on strike every year like clockwork, even if the annual contract was merely renewed.

When CAT was on strike and we couldn't get equipment or parts, they were wide open for business. I know we lost at least 2 big equipment sales to the Komatsu dealer because of that. Those shortsighted unions were doing their best to strangle their livelihood. For that reason (at least in my area) CAT lost a lot of ground to the imports.

So unions don't give me the warm fuzzies. If it were only about giving labor a voice in business, I could see that. But instead unions turned into some grotesque leechlike monster which tries its best to kill its host.

mad_machine wrote: well said Javelin.. and that is the truth.

Pop told me about Gramp's experience with a union. Gramps worked for the local (small town) newspaper. Nearby (less smaller) town newspaper bought them out. With that came a union, the international printers union. It was great, at first. Better wage, less hours, and OMG! Vacation! Then came time for new contact negotiations. IPU presented their request, management came back with MORE than what union was asking for. Union backed up, demanded much more than mgmnt's offer. After a couple weeks of negotiation, union finally settled for less than they originally asked for.

Greedy dumbasses.

My father's branch of the bus company may be closing this year because of greedy union workers. What they never mention is that for 850 greedy bastards they have 341 supervisors that will find new homes in the company. You'd think with a supervisor for every three workers it would run damn near perfect.

It seems to me that a lot of unions are run by people that only want to have someone else provide for them. A few are truly there to help protect the workers. Even in those unions there to protect workers, there are workers that abuse both the employer AND the union.

I personally think that it's these few abusers are what poison unions.

Our wonderful governor wants to change the pension system for educators (teachers and staff). Fine, I can jive with that. He wants to average the pay over a teacher's career. That doesn't sound bad, until you realize that most teachers that are retiring have been at it 20 or more years, and started during a time when teachers were making well less than $10,000 a year. The current pension averages the top 5 years. No OT for teachers here, so you can't bump it up for 5 years.

He also has been doing things like trying to get rid of teacher's contracts all together. He wants to principals to be able to fire a teacher on the spot. Not good news at all. I have absolutely zero problem with everyone being on an annual contract in which you can be let go when you're up for renewal. I can get behind that.

I'm seriously trying not to flounder here. I'm not saying that unions are perfect, but I am saying that they're not all evil, either.

DILYSI Dave wrote:

mad_machine wrote: I have heard that story about Ford.. I work for harrah's Entertainment. Out of the 4 casino properties in atlantic city.. Bally's Park Place, Ceasers, Showboat, and Harrah's.. only one has their entertainment department non-union.. the one I work for, Harrahs. Out of the 4 properties, we are the largest, have the most going on, and have the smallest department. 9 full time staff and 4 part time "casuals" who get hours every week. The other properties, have double the amount of employees.. What this leads up to.. the Unions protect my fellow Entertainment employees.. while our Director (who takes care of all 4 employees) constantly squeazes us to work leaner... What really sucks.. we are the only property still make a ton of money in this bad market.. So don't tell me that unions no longer have a place

You are the only property making money because you're not supporting an inflated overpaid workforce.

Nope.. we make the same amount of money... just that we do not have the protection. As for making money.. the area of Harrahs where I actually work is the Cash Cow.."the Pool after dark" (look it up) the largest nightclub on the east coast.. it CAN and DOES bring in up to a quarter a million a night in the summer... yet they do not want to update the equipment that is failing from being in a humid and hot enviroment and sceam and yell every time I put in one more hour than they think is needed

Wally wrote: My father's branch of the bus company may be closing this year because of greedy union workers. What they never mention is that for 850 greedy bastards they have 341 supervisors that will find new homes in the company. You'd think with a supervisor for every three workers it would run damn near perfect.

LOLs. If every supervisor had 5 direct reports, that supervisor could spend a full work day every week working directly with each direct report. If that direct report's work couldn't be done perfectly with 48 man-hours per week dedicated to it, the direct report and the supervisor should be nut-punched with great vengeance and furious anger. i can't imagine how bad it would suck to work for a supervisor who only had 3 directs.