• Supreme Court vs Public Union
    50 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Code3Response;49512220]Whats unethical is that people feel the need to not pay dues but still benefit from the union. It should be: you pay your dues, you get all the union benefits. You dont pay your dues (not join the union), you get no union benefits (including wages).[/QUOTE] Wages and benefits are paid by the company, not the union. If the company wants to pay non-union employees the same as union employees, then it has every right to do that.
[QUOTE=ilikecorn;49511104]Mostly because American unions don't seem to understand their position, and thus they end up causing more harm in the long run. Are they good in some situations? Yes. Are they extremely harmful in others? Fuck yea, they are. Yes, it's fine and dandy to argue that employees at "x" company deserve 50$ an hour to do "x" job, and deserve "x" days off, and deserve "x" amount of insurance, and it's great that they advocate for it, the problem is, they don't seem to understand the whole idea of "business exists to make profit". All of this is coming off of company "x's bottom line, and if the bottom line shrinks too small, then there's no point in making said product in the first place. So why would company "x" pay you 50$ an hour to do "x" job in America, when they can just outsource "x" job to a developing nation, and avoid all of the "deserves time off, and insurance, and xyz", and avoid dealing with a union in the first place, and all they have to do is worry about the price of fuel (which is cheap as fuck). Unions are also huge fans of keeping people around who aren't needed due to technological advances, simply because the more people there are working, the more people there are paying dues, and the more people there are [B]IN[/B] the union, which gives the union more power. Idealistically unions and businesses would work together, both respecting the fact that they each have a goal, but in the end that's simply not how it works.[/QUOTE] Unions don't exist to make sure that companies make a profit. They exist to make sure their members are represented in the work place and get a fair deal through collective bargaining and this isn't a bad thing. The word 'negotiations' implies compromise; neither party should get exactly what they want which is what makes it fair. A false dichotomy exists in the United States regarding unions and economic growth, that somehow having increased wages is going to destroy your competitiveness on the world stage. The United States was built off of innovation and as such you shouldn't be so attached to low EVA industries. Considering how much you guys harp on about free trade and enterprise you spend an awful lot of time and money protecting noncompetitive industries in the US.
[QUOTE=wizard`;49512263]Unions don't exist to make sure that companies make a profit. They exist to make sure their members are represented in the work place and get a fair deal through collective bargaining and this isn't a bad thing. The word 'negotiations' implies compromise; neither party should get exactly what they want which is what makes it fair. A false dichotomy exists in the United States regarding unions and economic growth, that somehow having increased wages is going to destroy your competitiveness on the world stage. The United States was built off of innovation and as such you shouldn't be so attached to low EVA industries. Considering how much you guys harp on about free trade and enterprise you spend an awful lot of time and money protecting noncompetitive industries in the US.[/QUOTE] The problem is that there are actual, real life, examples where businesses or parts of businesses have gone out of business because they made very extravagant union contracts, and couldn't change them later when times got rough. I worked on the management side of a union warehouse in the US auto industry for a summer, and they were currently in the planning stages of hiring a cross-dock to take a lot of the work away from the union employees who got paid $28/hour, not including full benefits for nothing more than driving forklifts. The unions also fought tooth and nail against letting the company hire new hires at a lower wage. This led to a massive downsizing of the union shop, with most of the jobs going to minimum wage workers at a generalized cross-dock.
[QUOTE=Code3Response;49512220]Whats unethical is that people feel the need to not pay dues but still benefit from the union. It should be: you pay your dues, you get all the union benefits. You dont pay your dues (not join the union), you get no union benefits (including wages).[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Octavius;49512242]So do you support not paying dues but still receiving.the benefits of the union's bargaining? Cause that's what this is all a out. This sort of freeloading off the unions is unethical, is it not? You're painting a false picture here. What you're describing is not how it works. The workers won't feel the need to pay because they still benefit even if they don't.[/QUOTE] The concept of 'freeloading' is often exaggerated. Yes, the union at my workplace does do the negotiations for our awards; how much we are paid. But every employee has to vote for new awards. For the award to come into effect, at least 85% of employees have to support it. If at least 15% of the workplace are non-members and none of them support the new award, the award isn't enacted. Therefore, the union still has to rely upon the support of non-members. I'd hardly call that freeloading. Sometimes people mention freeloading with regard to occupational health and safety, but OH&S is instead legislated for these days. Of course, the U.S. may run things a bit different.
[QUOTE=Octavius;49512242]So do you support not paying dues but still receiving.the benefits of the union's bargaining? Cause that's what this is all a out. This sort of freeloading off the unions is unethical, is it not? You're painting a false picture here. What you're describing is not how it works. The workers won't feel the need to pay because they still benefit even if they don't.[/QUOTE]Yes, absolutely. What is the purpose of the union? Does the union exist to benefit the workers or someone else? If they exist for the workers, they need to exist for all workers regardless of if they pay dues or have membership. Anything less is a failure of their purpose and perversion of it. They derive heavily from Marx, but have absolutely become a perversion of his ideas in to basically the exact opposite. They're leeches on the workers the same as any other, they offer support but only to those who will pay them, and try to take from those that have no involvement with them. They're a failure of their own existence. They're just the opposite side of the same coin the businesses exist on. Its about what they get from the workers, power and money, same as any business owner. If a union's response to not being paid is to cut off benefits to the workers, they don't actually care about the workers, just themselves.
[QUOTE=Doctor Zedacon;49511736]Regardless, it is unethical to charge workers, especially those unaffiliated with them. Again, the most they should ever be able to do is ask for contributions. Never demand dues.[/QUOTE] The Unions however provide these people with benefits.
[QUOTE=Rangergxi;49512319]The Unions however provide these people with benefits.[/QUOTE] This isn't how the world works though. I get benefits from Microsoft because of the incredible convenience that their products provide me in society, but I'm not forced to pay them. There are so many examples it would be impossible to list them all. Other people working to get you benefits doesn't mean you're forced to pay them afterwards unless you agreed on it beforehand. We have guys in our neighborhood that will repaint the address numbers on your curb and then come up to your door requesting payment. The great thing is that you aren't forced to pay because you didn't agree to the deal, even though you still got the benefit.
[QUOTE=sgman91;49512269]The problem is that there are actual, real life, examples where businesses or parts of businesses have gone out of business because they made very extravagant union contracts, and couldn't change them later when times got rough. I worked on the management side of a union warehouse in the US auto industry for a summer, and they were currently in the planning stages of hiring a cross-dock to take a lot of the work away from the union employees who got paid $28/hour, not including full benefits for nothing more than driving forklifts. The unions also fought tooth and nail against letting the company hire new hires at a lower wage. This led to a massive downsizing of the union shop, with most of the jobs going to minimum wage workers at a generalized cross-dock.[/QUOTE] While I cant say this has never happened (it almost certainly has) I did have a hard time finding tangible examples of this occurring in the US. If you know of any examples from memory I'd love to have a look at them. It does showcase perfectly how unions aren't supposed to operate though because besides bettering working conditions, increasing wages with productivity growth, and all the other good stuff that they do their primary mandate is to protect members jobs. If they drove a company to bankruptcy then they have failed spectacularly in that regard! It comes back to the point of negotiation. When a company is in hardship it should approach its workers (and therefore their union(s)) and come up with a [B]compromise[/B] to protect their jobs as it is in the best interest of all parties in the long-term. Whether this means salary sacrifice from all employees or some other solution, collecting bargaining (unions) prevents this situation from being used as a gun to everybody's head which is "work harder and more hours or you're fired" which is EXACTLY what happened in the US during the GFC. Going back to the point of salary sacrifice as a compromise to the employer; this doesn't mean you get nothing back, part of it being a compromise is that there is a plan and a timetable for higher wages or more paid leave or some other action to benefit all those that sacrificed. I hope that whether you accept my arguments or not you at least find them well-reasoned. I know its not an ideal world and in practice things are massively different to their definition. That being said I believe the US has a lot of room to grow when it comes to worker rights. As a side note in Australia these views are almost universally accepted. My personal stance is considered centre-right and I am a capitalist.
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[QUOTE=wizard`;49512465]While I cant say this has never happened (it almost certainly has) I did have a hard time finding tangible examples of this occurring in the US. If you know of any examples from memory I'd love to have a look at them. It does showcase perfectly how unions aren't supposed to operate though because besides bettering working conditions, increasing wages with productivity growth, and all the other good stuff that they do their primary mandate is to protect members jobs. If they drove a company to bankruptcy then they have failed spectacularly in that regard! It comes back to the point of negotiation. When a company is in hardship it should approach its workers (and therefore their union(s)) and come up with a [B]compromise[/B] to protect their jobs as it is in the best interest of all parties in the long-term. Whether this means salary sacrifice from all employees or some other solution, collecting bargaining (unions) prevents this situation from being used as a gun to everybody's head which is "work harder and more hours or you're fired" which is EXACTLY what happened in the US during the GFC. Going back to the point of salary sacrifice as a compromise to the employer; this doesn't mean you get nothing back, part of it being a compromise is that there is a plan and a timetable for higher wages or more paid leave or some other action to benefit all those that sacrificed. I hope that whether you accept my arguments or not you at least find them well-reasoned. I know its not an ideal world and in practice things are massively different to their definition. That being said I believe the US has a lot of room to grow when it comes to worker rights. As a side note in Australia these views are almost universally accepted. My personal stance is considered centre-right and I am a capitalist.[/QUOTE] That example I gave is from the US. I was personally involved working directly under the manager who made the decision to move to a cross-dock and sat in the conversations between management and the union. I won't name the company, but it's one of the big name auto-companies in the US. The amount of crap I saw from that union would have made me laugh if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. Here are some examples: - At one point there was a stack of plastic containers sitting on the loading dock. One of the floor supervisors very nicely asked a forklift driver who was waiting for the next truck delivery to drive them to the back of the warehouse where they were stored. This job would have literally taken 2 minutes, tops, and would require absolutely zero physical labor from the guy. His answer was that he wouldn't do it because it wasn't included in his union job descriptions at the loading dock, and the supervisor couldn't force him because he was right. So we had this stack of containers cluttering up the dock, getting in the way, and slowing up the process for at least 20 minutes because a guy wouldn't drive his forklift for 2 minutes, and the union contract allowed him to do it. (note that there's nothing in the contract that forbids him from doing it. He just doesn't have to) - Another example: when I got there the warehouse was one of the worst in the nation within the company. It had terrible delays, terrible efficiency across the board, etc. My manager was brought in to work with the union in order to fix these issues. If he wasn't successful, then it would be closed down and all the jobs would be moved to the next state where the warehouses would be consolidated. In order to protest the fixes some of the workers on the last shift (~10 of them) purposefully worked really slowly in order to get 2+ hours of overtime every day. Because of the way the union contract worked the management had to go through a 2+ week process in order to take them off the job/suspend them. Of course the absolutely horrible overtime hour ratio that happened because of this just made the warehouse look even worse to the company and was one of the biggest reasons the manager decided on the cross-dock solution. - One more: During the summer the warehouse hires temporary workers who do the same exact jobs as the permanent workers. They get paid ~$14/h while the regulars get paid $28/h. In warehousing you have something called "picking." It's where the guy goes up and down isles of product to "pick" whatever needs to go into the next truck. Every warehouse has a rate that the picking needs to get done at in order to get the truck out on time. If I remember right, our needed rate was around 250 items/hour for each person. The temp workers averaged about twice that, around 450 items/hour while the permanent workers averaged about 200 (with some doing as little as 120 items.) Why? Because they knew that management couldn't do anything about it without going through that same 2+ week long process.
[QUOTE=sgman91;49512328]This isn't how the world works though. I get benefits from Microsoft because of the incredible convenience that their products provide me in society, but I'm not forced to pay them. There are so many examples it would be impossible to list them all. Other people working to get you benefits doesn't mean you're forced to pay them afterwards unless you agreed on it beforehand. We have guys in our neighborhood that will repaint the address numbers on your curb and then come up to your door requesting payment. The great thing is that you aren't forced to pay because you didn't agree to the deal, even though you still got the benefit.[/QUOTE] This is the same for unions in Australia, and I suspect most of Europe too. Nobody forces you to be unionized, and you get a plethora of union fought benefits even if you aren't. You do get additional and specific benefits for being unionized though, such as these extracted from the AWU member benefits page: - Real wage increases. - Industry training. - Improved retirement savings. - Flexible working hours. - Retrenchment rights. - Better sick leave and holiday entitlements. - More access to extra benefits such as family friendly workplaces and paid paternity leave. - Consistent health and safety standards. - Unlimited industrial representation. - Union membership card entitling you to shopping discounts. - Free industrial advice. - Free Health and safety advice. - Free WorkCover advice. - Free legal advice. - Free financial advice. Considering the fact that union fees are 100% tax deductible here and in the US there is just about no good reasons against unionization.
[QUOTE=wizard`;49512590]Considering the fact that union fees are 100% tax deductible here and in the US there is just about no good reasons against unionization.[/QUOTE] That may be true, but it's not relevant to the point. If the union is necessary and great for it's members, then they shouldn't have any problem getting people to pay the dues. I have no issue with unions existing. I have issue with the government allowing them to basically work like a gangster style "protection" scheme in order to artificially exaggerate their power.
[QUOTE=sgman91;49512577]That example I gave is from the US. I was personally involved working directly under the manager who made the decision to move to a cross-dock and sat in the conversations between management and the union. I won't name the company, but it's one of the big name auto-companies in the US.[/QUOTE] I didn't mean an anecdote... I meant specific examples of an entire company going bankrupt (chapter 11 included) entirely or largely because of a union (whether it be wage pushes or whatever). The closest I could find in recent times was Twinkies but that appeared to be mostly because all parties were fucking morons who couldn't succeed in that most fundamental of all points: compromise. I know its easy to say that compromise should/could have been achieved in 20/20 but from all cases that I have personally seen and followed via the news and such things here in Australia it is the case. I have NEVER seen a company go bankrupt because of a union in Australia at least in my lifetime. This doesn't mean it hasn't even happened, I just haven't ever heard of it happening and would love to be corrected. [QUOTE=sgman91;49512577]The amount of crap I saw from that union would have made me laugh if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. Here are some examples:[/QUOTE] Unions don't exist to protect lazy workers. If these stories are true and this was in Australia the employer is 100% in their right to fire the employee so long as they can demonstrate they are under performing and have given the employee a chance (fixed-term) to improve. The AWU would laugh you out the door if you were an able-bodied worker trying to claim wrongful termination when you were pulling <50% the workload that you should have been able to without a [B]VERY[/B] good reason. I cant speak for the US as a whole but I doubt this is the norm, and if it is you have far greater societal/systematic problems than just unions... [editline]asd[/editline] [QUOTE=sgman91;49512606]That may be true, but it's not relevant to the point. If the union is necessary and great for it's members, then they shouldn't have any problem getting people to pay the dues. I have no issue with unions existing. I have issue with the government allowing them to basically work like a gangster style "protection" scheme in order to artificially exaggerate their power.[/QUOTE] I genuinely think this has to be something unique to the US. Unions and employers are VERY reasonable in Australia. They aren't out to fuck each other over in the slightest. In fact the government tends to fuck them both over more than each other. [editline]asd[/editline] The tax deduction is 100% relevant to the point because the thread is about non-union members having to pay union fees which if they understood their rights, they actually don't 'technically' have to pay anything. I personally don't agree with the argument that it should be automatically taken from your wage and sent to the union, I think its the employees choice, but in this instance there is no net change. I support the court in this case.
Unless tax deduction are different than the US, then they don't equal out. What you save on your deduction is always much less than the actual amount. They don't get directly subtracted from your owed taxes, they decrease the tax bracket and therefore allow you be taxed at a lower percentage for a small amount of your income.
[QUOTE=sgman91;49512705]Unless tax deduction are different than the US, then they don't equal out. What you save on your deduction is always much less than the actual amount. They don't get directly subtracted from your owed taxes, they decrease the tax bracket and therefore allow you be taxed at a lower percentage for a small amount of your income.[/QUOTE] It is different then. You fill out a tax return with the ATO and they will tell you if you owe or are owed money. It is called a tax return colloquially (which then became official) because most of the time it is a refund from the government but sometimes (especially in the case of non-franked shares and capital gains) you might actually owe the government. Tax brackets in australia look [url=https://www.ato.gov.au/rates/individual-income-tax-rates/]like this[/url] (note: this is a progressive tax system which means you only pay the higher tax rate on the income OVER the tax bracket). Tax is [I]typically[/I] taken from your wages before you even get them and are applied against your Australian Tax File Number where the ATO lets your employer know how much to take off based on where you fall. This is not the case for all Australians however and some people pay tax as a lump sum alongside their claim.
[quote]talk about tax deductions[/quote] If you pay tax at up to the marginal rate of 32.5% for example, and you paid $1,000 in union dues in the tax year, you will owe $325 less in tax. So the cost of being a union member is still $675. You don't save $1,000 in tax liabilities, you decrease your taxable income by $1,000.
[QUOTE=soulharvester;49510751]Then cut part of that too so membership is actually encouraged? I don't like the concept of being forced to pay a fee that you have no control over in order to work a certain profession that can be used to push agendas that aren't yours.[/QUOTE] And yet when we loosen those laws, you see businesses who threaten to layoff workers if they don't vote in the business's interests....
I remember at my last job we were not allowed to mount new monitors on arms/stands, or remove them from stands. We were also not allowed to physically move any computers from one area to another once we set them up. That was Facilities' job who are all union, If you did do any of these things they would literally charge your dept. a couple hundred bucks per instance. They also refused to use the same incident management system as everyone else in the company, making it impossible to see when/if they've gotten anything done (like install a FUCKING NETWORK DROP in a room thats been waiting for 5 weeks)
Every time I've ever worked a job where there was union members they almost universally sat around all day cracking dirty jokes and bitching when they actually had to work. Great example of that: I was working in 104F 100% humidity heat as a temp worker and I finally exploded into a ball of pure Nordic rage and called the union workers "useless fat fucks who can't even do their jobs right when they do manage to actually do something" and they got mad about that. They said I was dumb, it wasn't in their union contract, etc and I pointed out how they couldn't even work the [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLeRxQ-sbU4]ditch witch[/url] right without finger fucking the controls "like it was their retarded sister" and yeah I collected my last paycheck that day. I'd be mad as hell if I had to pay [I]their[/I] fucking union's dues, I don't even think I could have been a union member since I was a temp worker and all my fellow "temp workers" were from Mexico and Guatemala. [editline]12th January 2016[/editline] Even though I got a wicked black eye and a busted lip from that it was totally worth it.
[QUOTE=Rangergxi;49510657]Dicks. Like, Unions probably shouldn't be picking candidates and such but still.[/QUOTE] By that logic, should people not get weekends or the 40 hour work week unless they're part of a union?
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