No its not. This is a union fluff piece. The reality is these are contractors who will get dropped as soon as it makes sense. Thats why you hire these services as contractors. I think the real test here will be how long till the union pushes facebook too far and they are just dropped. I have never seen a union that could actually compete with non-union shops unless there was a legal force preventing the competition.
> The reality is these are contractors who will get dropped as soon as it makes sense. Thats why you hire these services as contractors. I think the real test here will be how long till the union pushes facebook too far and they are just dropped.
That overlooks the whole point of unions, which is to give people power over their work lives and prevent situations like the one you describe. Perhaps the union won't succeed, but they have far more negotiating power when they are organized than when they are not.
> I have never seen a union that could actually compete with non-union shops unless there was a legal force preventing the competition.
That's a powerful claim, but do you have evidence? Particular expertise?
Not OP, but one example would be the relocation of manufacturing in many sectors away from union strongholds in the northeast US to southern states, Mexico, and Asia. Carrier is a recent example that sticks out in my memory.
The problem with union negotiations is that members’ ability to earn isn’t related to the merits of the member’s ability. I don’t want to make the same exact wage as someone with the same seniority but perhaps less ambition. I am not an interchangeable widget.
Everyone is not equal in value despite being equal in seniority or experience.
A first year teacher might be amazing, but thanks to unions her wage is codified based on her position in the pecking order and not her merits.
That's the argument of a boss in version of the prisoners dilemma.
The reality is that you are a widget, you probably make less several people whom you consider a less able and "ambitious" than you, and your salary is only loosely associated with your value, if at all.
That's the class warfare paradigm that boils the world down to two monolithic blocs: employers and employees.
He is not a widget. A workforce is made up people with diverse and varying skills.
It's in the interest of society to incentivise individual skills development and promotion of people with more skill into positions of greater authority and responsibility, by allowing employers to base compensation and promotion offers on skills.
It's a market. I don't care about society, I care about delivering cash to my shareholders.
All business is about repeatable process. Domain experts build a process. The operations people execute. Lather, rinse, repeat.
People are nurtured/developed/promoted because it is cheaper to do that than to go back to the market. But, every single individual is expendable and replacable. There may be pain or cost associated with someone leaving, but a viable business will survive.
If you think you are essential to your employer, film a little video explaining why, post or save it somewhere and set a calendar entry to visit it again in 5 years. You'll have a good laugh in 5 years.
To paint a wall in an individual office on Market St, San Francisco, with whiteboard paint, is upwards of $10000 in labor, because of union regulations.
Unions are ripe to be used as instruments for abuse.
I was present when a facilities manager explained why we shouldn't use spray-cleaner to clean whiteboards, because it wore down the paint faster, and repainting it cost $10k, and that they had already paid to repaint them twice.
...and then the facilities manager threw up their hands, sighed, said "yeah, but what can you do..." flipped through a couple of emails on the old smart phone, then went and sat down and watched some crap on youtube for a few more hours, until oh... 4:35 PM, close enough, and clocked out for the day, with the wall still unpainted. C'est la vie.
My understanding is that per regulations only union labor is permitted to perform various tasks -- you can't just call any old contractor to install light fixtures.
This was a requirement having to do with the location, I am not sure about the specifics (if it was a city thing or if the building owner had entered into such an agreement) but I'd like to have a better understanding. On the face of it, it does seem absurd.
That is one thing unions specifically address..."work rules". What can, and cannot, be automated.
It does require the union to have the upper hand in the first place in order to get a company management to sign a union contract with restrictions like that.
However, for this particular story, it makes no sense, because the union only has leverage with their employer, not with the big name companies that have chosen their employer as the provider of the service. The big name companies would just switch to a new provider if they didn't like what was happening.
I say this as someone who grew up in a poor, rural community in a single parent household with 5 siblings, and was a construction worker being paid an hourly wage until around 25 years of age:
If the labor you are selling to somebody isn't priced high enough to pay your bills, you need to ask yourself:
1) Is someone else willing to pay me more for this labor?
2) If yes, go work for them. If no, then the market has spoken, and the price for your form of labor is too low and you should find a new skill or move to a location where your labor's price point is more in line with the cost of living.
3) Paying people more than their labor is worth means that the difference has to be taken from others.
4) The energy being wasted on bitching and complaining and picketing would be better spent finding a new trade. There is a shortage of people in this country that can fix physical things with their hands. There is a surplus of people who can spoon food onto plates, because ANYBODY can do it.
I have empathy and compassion for people scraping by, but I also know that handouts undermine people's self-confidence and pride. Paying these folks more than they are worth just hastens the automation of their jobs.
Your above statement shows that you do not have any empathy or compassion for those people, as you do not want to give them the opportunity to earn a living wage. And I find it very dishonest of you to refer to collective bargaining as a handout, or say that if they are able to negotiate something, that it is more than they are worth. If they are able to get that deal, does that not mean they are worth that much?
I always want to give people opportunity to earn a living wage. The best way to earn a living wage is to learn a skill that has a market value at or above the living wage.
Collective bargaining has a "tragedy of the commons" problem:
Each worker's wage is negotiated as part of a bulk package, therefore the worst performers get a higher wage than they otherwise would, and the best performers get a lower wage than they otherwise would.
Other side effects of collective bargaining:
The union has to have tight control over new workers, otherwise their bargaining position is undermined. All new workers are required to be part of the union, who now controls hiring. In every unionized entity I've ever seen, this leads to nepotistic hiring practices. This is why NYC's fire department remained dominated by Irish Americans for decades after the demographics of NYC had completely changed.
We live in an age where education has been made available enough to a large enough % of the population that the majority of the public has been able to acquire skills that allow them to earn above a living wage. The minute that % drops low enough, you will see unions getting their power back, along with a boost in public support.
Because if you don't work for someone you die and/or live a terrible life. Without the freedom to choose work, the labor market is not a free market, and the narrative you are trying to push does not apply.
That doesn't make non-rich people victims and rich people abusers when they choose to hire them and pay them their actual market wage. Life is hard for some people. It's not someone else's fault, and someone else shouldn't have their freedom of association and private property rights violated for it
Two points:
1. There is nothing in this discussion to suggest that employees do not have freedom to choose work; in fact, contracting by its very nature leaves individuals with more freedom to choose work elsewhere, even concurrently.
2. Without the freedom to choose employees as an employer, corporations cannot exist, or at least are substiantally less efficient, and in such case all of society is worse off. This is where aggressive unions can be bad for employees.
Again, the problem here is workers voluntarily entering into illegally mislabeled positions. Where do you get the idea that a cafeteria worker or a bus driver can't leave to work for another school? Also, these are extremely low skill positions, there's nothing stopping these people from getting other jobs, why you feel like these workers have "one choice" is beyond me.
I still don't understand what you're getting at. These people are free to work wherever they wish, and you've yet to demonstrate that there's something wrong with contracting in principle, when done legally.
People shouldn't be unionizing, they should be talking to lawyers.
Outsourcing companies are treating Workers like Employees and misclassifying them as "Contractors".
The Workers are told where to work, what time shifts to work, how to do their job, provided tools and equipment, and their pay is limited to minimum wage (or just marginally higher).
That's just straight up abusive and illegal. They are treated like Employees and therefore deserve the benefits of Employees; including healthcare and paid vacation.
So then I presume you will agree that there is nothing inherently abusive with contracting, and the problem stems from misclassification, and the behavior is already illegal, right?
If contractors willingly sign on for the micromanagement that you mention, and are free to quit at any time, why exactly is this a problem that needs solving? No one is forcing foreign nationals to work for American companies. Clearly this "abusive" relationship is favorable to both parties, otherwise the outsourced employees would leave.
When someone has freedom of association, and is made aware of working conditions prior to making major life changes to start a new job, or the job is explicitly billed as temporary contract work, who are you to decide on someone's behalf what is and is not abusive, so long as payment is made as agreed?
Outsourcing companies and independent contractors are different problems. A tech company's cafeteria workers, janitors, etc. are employees of the outsourcing company that the tech company contracts with.
