Niven posted:

Unions are kind of like the police, the vast majority are incredibly important and have the best intentions, then a small percentage go and ruin it for everyone. I worked for eight months in a CAW plant producing power generation turbines and the things I saw turned me against unions for years afterwards.

Workers literally asleep at their workstations, seniority fuckery leading to lazy entitled assholes sticking around while hard workers were laid off, the union threatening legal action after an employee was dismissed for repeatedly carrying tools out to his truck during lunch (with video evidence), etc. At one point a pipefitter and welder were laid off at the same time, when they started hiring again, the welder ended up being hired as a pipe fitter, and the pipe fitter as a welder. The pipe fitter was a terrible welder and vice versa, but due to union regulations they weren't allowed to swap into eachothers positions (even though they wanted to, there was a wage disparity of maybe $0.25-0.50/hr). Due to the same union rules the company had a hell of a time getting rid of what were now essentially useless employees and spent unreasonable amounts of time and money attempting to train them into eachtothers jobs.

Due to a downturn in the industry the plant was losing money and management looked to start consolidating some positions, for example worker A drove a forklift but was only in demand for 2-3 hours per day, so why not have him sweep floors or help out in other parts of the plant for the rest of his shift? Well apparently that's worth threatening to strike over! When they did strike they would force the engineering staff to walk single file through a gauntlet of abusive strikers and pepper them with food to attract seagulls, not to mention the threatening phone calls to managers families. The plant eventually closed and everyone lost their jobs, so success?

Edit: Another ranty example, I worked on an oil rig offshore where a piece of my equipment broke. On any other rig on earth I'd go grab the replacement cable out of the container, hook it up, run it through some cable trays to the rig floor and have everything up and running in 2-3 hours. Since this was one of the very rare unionized rigs this was unacceptable since I'd be stealing the instrumentation techs jobs! To get an instrumentation tech required a work order, the work order required drawings and a work scope, the drawings and work scope required meetings and a budget review on shore. The work I could have done in 2-3 hours took over two months.

Marketing!

ryonguy posted:

Yep that sure is the same dumb anecdotal bullshit everybody brings up that they have no evidence with which to back it up. Like, verbatim, the same bullshit every time just with changes in the type of job, or industry. You might as well post it with a link to foxnews.com at this point. Meanwhile companies literally force people to work 60-70 hour weeks often seven days a week, for half the rate of the same job from over twenty years ago, with laughable benefits, no pensions, and without any protection from management abuse.

ryonguy posted:

Yep that sure is the same dumb anecdotal bullshit everybody brings up that they have no evidence with which to back it up. Like, verbatim, the same bullshit every time just with changes in the type of job, or industry. You might as well post it with a link to foxnews.com at this point.

Radio Help posted:

What's bizarre to me is how the anti-union dialogue always centers around a union protecting bad workers or institutionalizing "inefficient" policies, never how unions generally exist to protect the safety and welfare of their workers.

Radio Help posted:

What's bizarre to me is how the anti-union dialogue always centers around a union protecting bad workers or institutionalizing "inefficient" policies, never how unions generally exist to protect the safety and welfare of their workers. I worked at a closed shot distribution center once and there was a guy that always bitched about how much faster we could be doing this thing or that. Yeah, ok, lets turn up the speed on those conveyor belts that are moving huge shipping pallets around. That'll be fun.


on topic: I got a call the other day from a company that was selling ad space in phone books. Man that guy has a lovely job selling the dumbest service that nobody will ever see.

Radio Help posted:

He also brings up the point that, generally speaking, retail stores have such a slim profit margin that when a union forces a company to pay its employees something above a slave wage, they can only ever really operate in the red.

Der Kyhe posted:

Because no-one every remembers the day when everything was OK and the system actually worked, but keep passing the stories of how hosed up everything was to their grandchildren. How many times you have actually heard a story about a restaurant which was affordable, the staff was nice and funny, everything was clean and the food tasted good?

Croccers posted:

Gawd I love it when I hear this
:Those drat employees eating up all of our profits. If only they'd just work for less money this wouldn't be a problem! It's entirely the employees sending this company down the toilet.

Cakefool posted:

Also millions of old people see those ads. Still dumb.

Radio Help posted:

gently caress 'em they'll be dead soon enough

Niven posted:

Unions are kind of like the police, the vast majority are incredibly important and have the best intentions, then a small percentage go and ruin it for everyone. I worked for eight months in a CAW plant producing power generation turbines and the things I saw turned me against unions for years afterwards.

Workers literally asleep at their workstations, seniority fuckery leading to lazy entitled assholes sticking around while hard workers were laid off, the union threatening legal action after an employee was dismissed for repeatedly carrying tools out to his truck during lunch (with video evidence), etc. At one point a pipefitter and welder were laid off at the same time, when they started hiring again, the welder ended up being hired as a pipe fitter, and the pipe fitter as a welder. The pipe fitter was a terrible welder and vice versa, but due to union regulations they weren't allowed to swap into eachothers positions (even though they wanted to, there was a wage disparity of maybe $0.25-0.50/hr). Due to the same union rules the company had a hell of a time getting rid of what were now essentially useless employees and spent unreasonable amounts of time and money attempting to train them into eachtothers jobs.

Due to a downturn in the industry the plant was losing money and management looked to start consolidating some positions, for example worker A drove a forklift but was only in demand for 2-3 hours per day, so why not have him sweep floors or help out in other parts of the plant for the rest of his shift? Well apparently that's worth threatening to strike over! When they did strike they would force the engineering staff to walk single file through a gauntlet of abusive strikers and pepper them with food to attract seagulls, not to mention the threatening phone calls to managers families. The plant eventually closed and everyone lost their jobs, so success?

Edit: Another ranty example, I worked on an oil rig offshore where a piece of my equipment broke. On any other rig on earth I'd go grab the replacement cable out of the container, hook it up, run it through some cable trays to the rig floor and have everything up and running in 2-3 hours. Since this was one of the very rare unionized rigs this was unacceptable since I'd be stealing the instrumentation techs jobs! To get an instrumentation tech required a work order, the work order required drawings and a work scope, the drawings and work scope required meetings and a budget review on shore. The work I could have done in 2-3 hours took over two months.

Marketing!

JacquelineDempsey posted:

On the subject of Yellow Pages: screw those guys. I used to work for a county-run performing arts theatre, and they listed us under "theaters" (eg Loews, AMC --- movie theaters) for years, and we never even paid them (and that poo poo's expensive, we're talking several hundreds of dollars last time I saw their going rate).

Len posted:

Walmart makes you watch a video all about how unions don't look out for employees just themselves and their wallets. It goes on to say if you ever even give your name to a union rep that person will go out and use your name for nefarious purposes.

Also if the wrong person hears you use that "u" word you'll get wrote up and maybe fired.

Edit: I tried to find the video on YouTube but no luck. I did find it as a download from mega.co.nz but I'm not downloading it.

GOTTA STAY FAI posted:

Goddamn, I love that video! I've been looking for a copy of it, too. The union organizer character in it is as sleazy as possible, with greasy hair, aviator sunglasses, and a pornstache. They show him skulking around the parking lot, leaning into employees' car windows to give them pamphlets and poo poo. It's amazing. "UNIONS ARE BAD FOR YOU AND US _{(mostly us)}!!!"

I remember years ago a goon posted a thread about planning on quitting Walmart and was looking for ideas of how to go out with a bang. He/the thread decided he should print up a bunch of fake "Walmart Union" pamphlets and put them in the bathrooms and on the tables in the breakroom before he left. They apparently took it very seriously and management had a bit of a freakout over it.

Len posted:

I don't know how true it is but the Walmart documentary said corporate has an anti-union crew that comes out to inspect the situation if they find poo poo like that.

Len posted:

I don't know how true it is but the Walmart documentary said corporate has an anti-union crew that comes out to inspect the situation if they find poo poo like that.

Avenging_Mikon posted:

They also protected him from being disciplined over a stupid reason: 40%of his sick days were Fridays and Mondays. Assuming a random distribution, that's what you'd expect.

Niven posted:

Unions are kind of like the police, the vast majority are incredibly important and have the best intentions, then a small percentage go and ruin it for everyone. I worked for eight months in a CAW plant producing power generation turbines and the things I saw turned me against unions for years afterwards.

Workers literally asleep at their workstations, seniority fuckery leading to lazy entitled assholes sticking around while hard workers were laid off, the union threatening legal action after an employee was dismissed for repeatedly carrying tools out to his truck during lunch (with video evidence), etc. At one point a pipefitter and welder were laid off at the same time, when they started hiring again, the welder ended up being hired as a pipe fitter, and the pipe fitter as a welder. The pipe fitter was a terrible welder and vice versa, but due to union regulations they weren't allowed to swap into eachothers positions (even though they wanted to, there was a wage disparity of maybe $0.25-0.50/hr). Due to the same union rules the company had a hell of a time getting rid of what were now essentially useless employees and spent unreasonable amounts of time and money attempting to train them into eachtothers jobs.

Due to a downturn in the industry the plant was losing money and management looked to start consolidating some positions, for example worker A drove a forklift but was only in demand for 2-3 hours per day, so why not have him sweep floors or help out in other parts of the plant for the rest of his shift? Well apparently that's worth threatening to strike over! When they did strike they would force the engineering staff to walk single file through a gauntlet of abusive strikers and pepper them with food to attract seagulls, not to mention the threatening phone calls to managers families. The plant eventually closed and everyone lost their jobs, so success?

Edit: Another ranty example, I worked on an oil rig offshore where a piece of my equipment broke. On any other rig on earth I'd go grab the replacement cable out of the container, hook it up, run it through some cable trays to the rig floor and have everything up and running in 2-3 hours. Since this was one of the very rare unionized rigs this was unacceptable since I'd be stealing the instrumentation techs jobs! To get an instrumentation tech required a work order, the work order required drawings and a work scope, the drawings and work scope required meetings and a budget review on shore. The work I could have done in 2-3 hours took over two months.

Marketing!

quote:

The owner of a web host tried to promote his anti-DDoS kit and highlight vulnerabilities by launching two brief DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks against the Hong Kong stock exchange, but he instead wound up convicted and sentenced to nine months in jail.

According to the South China Morning Post, 28-year-old Tse Man-lai, owner of local web hoster Pacswitch Globe Telecom, in October was found guilty of "highly reckless" cyberattacks on the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx) news site on two days in August last year.

He was sentenced on Friday.

Judge Kim Longley cited seven companies with a combined value of HK$1.5 trillion that were forced to suspend trading because of the attacks, including HSBC and Cathay Pacific Airways.

Tse claimed that he accessed the HKEx site in two brief spurts, the first lasting 390 seconds and the second lasting only 70 seconds.

In his defence, Tse said he was only on long enough to take photos and video footage documenting his attacks - a premise that the judge accepted.

Tse had sought to demonstrate that the exchange's news site was still vulnerable after having endured two other DDoS attacks from hundreds of computers outside of Hong Kong.

He claims to have invented a technique to prevent such attacks and planned to use the screen images and video of his attacks to market his defence method.

The South China Morning Post noted that a former lawmaker for the technology industry spoke up for Tse, saying that his work had "advanced IT" in Hong Kong.

Senior Inspector Raymond Cao Wai-ki, of the Commercial Crime Bureau technology crime division, told the Post that Tse's hacking didn't damage the site, but that the prison term would send a clear message that the Internet is "not a lawless territory".

Phlegmish posted:

This is literally a Dilbert cartoon from probably the nineties or something. It's amazing that real-life bosses/HR people could be that dumb.

Phlegmish posted:

This is literally a Dilbert cartoon from probably the nineties or something. It's amazing that real-life bosses/HR people could be that dumb.

Mouse Dresser posted:

My union, IATSE (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees), kept my former company from trying to do away with our over time pay. Worked on a touring show and we'd get a premium if we worked with less than 24 hours between loading the show out and loading it in in a new venue. The company wanted to end that, and IATSE stepped up and went all so I got no beef with them.

JacquelineDempsey posted:

Any rainy day, especially in the summer, I could expect this call:

me: "Touristtown County Arts Center, JD speaking. How can I help you?
"Yeah, what time y'all showing Batman?"
me: "Sorry, this isn't a movie theater. We do have a great jazz trio playing Friday, though!"
[silence, hangs up]

bunnielab posted:

I did some work with IA when I was younger but switched to management type worked before I ever joined up. Honestly IA is pretty reasonable most of the time but when a local is bad they suck harder then anything. The difference between, say, DC and Philly is insane. Even still I will take an IA crew any day over some hellish teamster, carpenter, decoman mix. The DC local is in the process of reinventing themselves and making it so people want to hire them even when they aren't forced too. It seems to be working, I sat in on one of their new training classes and it was refreshing to hear a strong emphases on professionalism.

Although 24h is pretty cushy amount of time between an out and in, 15-16h should be reasonable. My "favorite" turnaround was spending 6 hours sleeping in the back of a limo that was driving us between gigs. Why a limo? Cheaper than a bus.

quote:

I'm slowly working up to becoming a member of IATSE Local 15, to join up you gotta work a certain amount of hours per year in the field and work up their list before you can become a apprentice. Its a pretty good system, people who don't wanna join up with the union still get called for work but union members get called first. The pay difference between non union work in AV setup stuff and union work is pretty massive. One company I work for pays me 15 a hour, and the lowest paying job I've done through the union is 22 a hour (the highest was 42 a hour)

Wilford Cutlery posted:

Gabriel Pope posted:

The advertising invoices you see for hundreds of dollars are bogus directory publishers trying to scam you by implying that you're paying them for your local yellow page listing, when actually they only publish useless directories that don't get sent out to the general public (some don't bother printing any at all, since they're banking on people assuming they're responsible for the phone books the phone company sends out.) You probably get listed in your local yellow pages through your phone company.

Radio Help posted:

"The woman had to use the crapper. Turns out, so did I.

Buy Canadian."

bunnyofdoom posted:

It's a really stupid McDonald's ad campaign.

Another one has a guy dressed as a boat captain in Montreal saying "It's a place to keep warm" and another is two teens saying "We're just waiting for the bus" thereby screaming that nobody actually goes to mcdonalds for the food

Mouse Dresser posted:

Haha, we had a limo from the airport to the venue once. Didn't fit all of our luggage in the trunk, so we had a very cozy ride snuggled up with our suitcases.


The 24 hour mandate was because we had a 2 day rig & load in. My show was massive, played arenas.



Edit: DC local was all right, at least in my department. The worst locals I've ever dealt with were the lovely small town ones. My home local is a small town in Oregon, so I understand the weird pride they all get. But I've had the shittiest, most entitled fuckers when playing Bumblefuck Ohio or East Knobgobbler, Tennessee.


Do you get double points for going on the road? That may be an option. I got my membership fast-tracked because I got a job touring.

WickedHate posted:

What could the intended point possibly be aside from that? What were they thinking?

WickedHate posted:

What could the intended point possibly be aside from that? What were they thinking?

Henchman of Santa posted:

McDonald's does have really nice bathrooms.

mind the walrus posted:

That owns so loving much.