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So can I ask those who are reading this and are against unions, why? I promise not to jump down your throat, flood you with data or generally be a dick. I just want to hear why.
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May 4, 2010 17:30
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I have 5 weeks vacation this year, we get 3 standard and up to 2 from the previous year can roll over. 'Sick days' are separate and we allegedly get up to 30 of them. Then 2 floating holidays. Regular US holidays as well. A day off if you are closing on a house. They're pretty flexible about letting us work from home through the VPN connection if we have some poo poo going on there that we need to take care of. However, we recently merged with another company, and next year are moving to a "payed time off" style thing, which just merges all of our days into one lump. This could be pretty lovely. Solkanar512 posted:So can I ask those who are reading this and are against unions, why? I promise not to jump down your throat, flood you with data or generally be a dick. I just want to hear why. I'm not against unions but having worked in one before -- Union dues, union administrators, union bosses, etc.
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May 4, 2010 17:31
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Solkanar512 posted:So can I ask those who are reading this and are against unions, why? I promise not to jump down your throat, flood you with data or generally be a dick. I just want to hear why. Hope you're prepared for anecdotes from cousins who knew a guy who...
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May 4, 2010 17:35
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FogHelmut posted:I'm not against unions but having worked in one before -- Union dues, union administrators, union bosses, etc. Pretty much this is what my family members have said. They weren't against unions, just how the unions tend to be run in the US. Unions are a great idea. Too bad people poo poo them up. Solkanar, are you coming from a US perspective?
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May 4, 2010 17:37
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I work at a place that's about 60/40 manufacturing/corporate. Engineering is obviously in the corporate side, but I work almost 100% in the manufacturing (unionized) areas. Obviously I went into the wrong line of work. I've been here for two years. I get zero paid vacation days, zero paid sick days, no insurance, and a 401k with no employer contribution. Meanwhile a guy starting on the floor, with absolutely zero education starts with three weeks paid vacation, ten paid sick days, making 15-20% more than I am, and a pension. I probably sound bitter, but I'm really just insanely jealous. It just makes me mad when they complain about getting "screwed" by the company. They also frequently go out of my way to make my job more difficult than it has to be, simply because I'm on "the other team".
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May 4, 2010 17:38
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Abbeh posted:Pretty much this is what my family members have said. They weren't against unions, just how the unions tend to be run in the US. Unions are a great idea. Too bad people poo poo them up. See, I wouldn't mind paying a few percent out of my paycheck to make sure I would have (at the very least) a lawyer on my side if poo poo hits the fan. As far as people making GBS threads up unions, I think this thread has shown that any large group of people can suck. And yes, I was born and am currently living in the greater Seattle area. Sock The Great posted:Meanwhile a guy starting on the floor, with absolutely zero education starts with three weeks paid vacation, ten paid sick days, making 15-20% more than I am, and a pension. What is stopping you from having an engineering union? I'm pretty sure Boeing has this situation at their Everett plant.
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May 4, 2010 17:49
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Isn’t it funny how we US workers went from being arrogant about our jobs, benefits, and salaries to a content slave class within the span of 30 years? Heck, even the time between 2000 and 2010 show a huge dip in the work culture. I found myself accidently corporate. It all started as a summer job with a temp agency working in a call center providing technical support to staff at a company that employed ~50,000 people. They had just released a new access control product to bring themselves into full SOX compliance and needed the extra man power for the inevitable user backlash. My phone interview which landed me the job was hilarious. When asked if I had issues working in an inbound call center, I said “I suppose I could hold my nose and do it. Let’s be honest, no one really wants to take inbound calls.” I guess the hiring manager was either desperate or honest because I got the job starting the following Monday. After working at the call center while wrapping up a degree in Spanish, I finally got ambitious and started working on ways to make more money. I applied for a Systems Analyst position elsewhere in the company, and at the recommendation of some former coworkers I got that job too despite lacking the real analyst skills to be useful. Of course I learned on the job and grew in technical prowess, but I was amazed that they would bring me on. I had read a book on SQL the day before the interview, so I know a few of the technical questions though I lacked experience in applying them. That group was strange. I worked with a great team on production support with a great supervisor who was downtrodden by management. I almost never interfaced with my manager, but our director would micromanage us. I quickly learned that if I could keep the ticket queue cleaned up, he would leave me alone and think that I could set the world on fire. We went from a backlog of ~500 tickets to clearing out the queue daily. The business loved the increased level of service our team now provided, but management wasn’t about to pay me for the service I provided. On top of all this, I was on call. Our app was rigged to send alerts whenever certain jobs would be delayed. It was so bad that having the phone on meant I wasn’t going to be able to sleep. After a while, I just would leave the phone off. Whatever needed to be run could be run in the morning, and darned if I was going let this crappy analyst job consume my life. I never got any flak about ignoring pages.  I finally tire of working like a dog for piddling salary, so I apply for some other internal analyst positions. I land an interview with another department where someone who wanted to recruit me worked. The interview goes well, and somehow responding to “What concerns do you have about working here?” with “I feel like a fraud that does not know as much as people think I know and wait each and every day to be discovered for the huckster that I am.” was a great answer that got everyone else in the room to laugh, nod, and say “I know what you mean!” They took this humility. I meant it when I said I felt like a loser lost in a sea of technical data. I accept the position and alert my director (again, micromanager), who immediately blows out of his office and demands a meeting with me. He starts wailing over how he had such great plans for me, to start leadership training, advanced technical classes, and oh so much more. He also indicates he “had been working on getting a raise through” (total BS) that would bring me up 25%. That give me pause. I talk to the other manager who offered me a position and mention the salary increase; he is bound by policy on lateral transitions to only offer 5% more. After much agonizing, I decide that I would take the new job since the total number of hours worked (forty ONLY, two WFH days, comp time) would lead to me getting paid more per hour at the new job despite the enhanced salary at the old job. Sounds good right? Except the director went ahead and put my mega-raise through, gives me a new laptop, and starts providing me the compensation and tools I deserve. I am till leaving, but this now meant I could be hired at my new mega-salary doing the new job. The day before I leave to report to my new job, my new manager, my old director, and myself are called into a meeting. There, mournfully, my new manager reports that the old director reduced my salary back to its previous levels, so they, as a matter of HR policy, would only be able to give me my old, crappy salary +5%. I can feel the rage causing my face to flush, and my jaw and arms tightening. My new manager asks that if I still want his offer despite this new development. I lock eyes onto my director, and through gritted teeth say “I would love to continue with our plans to take that new position with you.” I leave the building before I do something stupid that could get me fired. So I start my new position, my wife notices I am not nearly as exhausted and irritable, and I am learning tons about new technologies. After a month in the new position, my new director and manager get me into their office and indicate that now that I left the old job, they are drowning in tickets, and the business, having grown accustomed to prompt service, is now incensed. I revel a bit in the schadenfraude, doubly so since they hired two new senior analysts to replace me, and they were still drowning. The downside is that my old director and my new director both report to the same VP, who is all about helping everyone succeed regardless their job placement. So now my new director and manager suggest that in the spirit of interdepartmental cooperation, I take two weeks off of my normal job duties to work at my old job, just to get them up to speed. I counter propose that after the two week period (which would not be enough, they are in the hole 1000 tickets at this point) I make myself available as a contingent resource to that team after hours, as long as I get to charge them for time and a half for the hours worked. All parties agree, and I go to work learning a new job while sustaining my old one. Months pass, I have a detailed log of hours, and my manager indicates he is done being a lifeline for the other team. I give my log to my new and old directors and patiently wait for that sweet, sweet overtime check. It never comes. Months pass, and I gently hound my new director for status updates. After a while, he pulls me into his office and tells me that my old director is stonewalling my request for OT. Despite agreeing to it beforehand, he argues that since I am salaried, they have no obligation to pay me for my extra time spent working on their projects. My new director argues back to the VP that I was working in good faith, after hours, on duties wholly unrelated to my position as to help the VP’s entire stack. Again, both the VP and my old director drone on that I am not entitled to OT since I am salaried. The situation was comical in its malevolence. My new director finally tells my VP that this is completely wrong, and that he would be writing me a personal check from his Christmas bonus to cover my OT work. The VP, for some reason, forbids the director from spending his own money to make things right. The VP and the old director finally offer some vacation hours to me, to which I respond “When I can pay my mortgage in vacation hours I will take them as compensation. In the mean time, I expect cash money.” Two re-orgs happen. I give up since now the new director and VP are no longer over me. My current manager tried to make it right though by fighting for an unusually large raise after my annual review which brought me up to the level that I would have been at the start of that job had my old director not interfered. Months later he got me an equity increase “in response to [my] consistent excellent performance” equal to the amount I would have gotten had my old director and VP not shafted me on OT work. Granted it will be another full year before I see the full payout, but at least there are a few good apples in the spoiled barrel. Since then, we have had a purging of IT staff, a mass hiring of high-level management from a company that shut-down operations, and it looks like new hires are being overwhelmingly brought in from that company, effectively killing our career mobility within this company. Whelp, since there is nothing to climb toward, and since leaving my team would put me in the thick of all the corporate BS listed throughout this thread, I will just stay put, fight for every pay increase possible, and eventually jump ship to a different company when the opportunity arrives. I got my tuition paid on a graduate degree in business management while I was here, though most of what I learned was BS. But we all knew that anyway.
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May 4, 2010 17:50
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ARGH gently caress YOU LUNCH COMMENTERS. Stop staring at my loving food with furrowed brows and asking "what's that?" It is two vegetarian hot dogs on whole wheat bread with brown mustard, some hummus and some fresh raw broccoli. WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE? I like it, it's nutritious and filling, and I find it tasty. Plus I eat the same thing EVERY DAY; stop being so confused and surprised! Shut the gently caress up and go eat your Lean Cuisine!
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May 4, 2010 17:52
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Solkanar512 posted:So can I ask those who are reading this and are against unions, why? I promise not to jump down your throat, flood you with data or generally be a dick. I just want to hear why. Terms: - Hospital chain agrees that it is not allowed to discriminate in hiring or advancement based on race or sex. (which was already the law, so this technically meant nothing at all to the bargain because they had to do it anyway) - ... that's it. And as a complete coincidence, all of the hospital employees representing the union at the bargaining table got an additional 5 weeks of vacation that year and a bonus. I hope the bonus was paid in silver pieces.
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May 4, 2010 17:57
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Solkanar512 posted:So can I ask those who are reading this and are against unions, why? I promise not to jump down your throat, flood you with data or generally be a dick. I just want to hear why. I know this isn't a well thought out position and is based mostly on impressions and emotions but I look to the transit system for examples of why I'm against unions. (The reality is I'm against bloated ineffective unions, not unions in general.) The transit union supports bus and subway drivers who make over $100,000 annually while grinding new hires ($30,000) into the dirt with lovely routes and schedules. They insist on asking the city for more financial support every year, get it, then raise fares anyway. They keep cutting routes and hours of service to economize, I have an idea, cut some of your crazily expensive, unskilled labor force first, or better yet fire the loving union heads and senior managers and their near half a million dollar paychecks. As I said I know these people deserve a fair wage for a days work but what they get and get away with is maddening. Thanked you for your contribution. Much like my summer job at a union place, all the deductions none of the benefits. \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ Indolent Bastard fucked around with this message at 18:15 on May 4, 2010 |
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May 4, 2010 18:02
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I was working as a bagger at a grocery store, and it was mandatory to join the union for the store. It was part time, and the Union dues up front were over 1 months salary for me, so I got $0 paychecks for the first month I worked there. I never found out what they did for me at my minimum wage job. edit: This is in response to the guy asking about Unions, this was over 10 years ago. To contribute: Well, I can't actually. I have a non-disparagement agreement signed as part of my severance from working for Microsoft.
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May 4, 2010 18:13
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Turnquiet posted:Months pass, and I gently hound my new director for status updates. After a while, he pulls me into his office and tells me that my old director is stonewalling my request for OT. Despite agreeing to it beforehand, he argues that since I am salaried, they have no obligation to pay me for my extra time spent working on their projects. My new director argues back to the VP that I was working in good faith, after hours, on duties wholly unrelated to my position as to help the VP’s entire stack. Again, both the VP and my old director drone on that I am not entitled to OT since I am salaried. The situation was comical in its malevolence.
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May 4, 2010 18:17
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Well, I ended up keeping my job, but I got reassigned to a really, really lovely division of the company. I'm assigned to the division whose job is to figure out new ways to squeeze money out of drugs that we've already made. "Lifecycle Management" division. Basically, a department to figure out how many ways we can release a boner drug under different names while not actually adding anything new to it. At least before this I was working on novel compounds. Now I get to deal with even MORE people in suits! WOO. 
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May 4, 2010 18:24
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I am OK posted:I never realised the US was that bad. When are you guys gonna get off your arses and loving revolt, because seriously. It wasn't all that long ago (ok, 80 years) when the government set national guard troops on striking miners. But in truth, everyone just tells themselves this is the best way, and if we work hard, we can do it. You see it on a lot of forums where someone mentions raising taxes that people will complain about this tax increase, even if they won't actually be affected by it. Their reasoning is they'll hit it big soon, and the extra tax burden at that level is too much, and they'll have to decline the 250k/year salary and stick with the 30k/year.
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May 4, 2010 18:26
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The Rokstar posted:This is bullshit and you can sue for this. Just FYI. Ah yes, the other lesson to be learned here is "always, always, always get it in writing." Edit, I have some communiques from my "good guy" director along with a log of hours worked with dates attached. I sent copies to my personal address. That may be proof of someone somewhere owing my something, but I do not know if it is proof enough of an explicit agreement to pay me OT. Even if it were enough, I have a feeling I would be dismissed for something somehow if I brought it to suit, doubly so given our at-will employment laws. 
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May 4, 2010 18:31
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dunkman posted:I was working as a bagger at a grocery store, and it was mandatory to join the union for the store. It was part time, and the Union dues up front were over 1 months salary for me, so I got $0 paychecks for the first month I worked there. That's a very strange union policy. When i was part of a union it took 10% of its union fees per paycheque on weekly paycheque. So it was only like $10-15 per cheque.
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May 4, 2010 18:36
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Today at lunch we were watching the news about that failed bomber in NYC and my boss said "to think he got the greatest gift of all: citizenship in this fine country, and he squandered it"
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May 4, 2010 18:45
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Robot Hobo posted:And as a complete coincidence, all of the hospital employees representing the union at the bargaining table got an additional 5 weeks of vacation that year and a bonus. I hope the bonus was paid in silver pieces. See this sort of thing blows my mind. This isn't in any way blaming the victim, but was there no way to become a union rep? What were the union meetings like after this? This sort of thing should be considered an unfair labor practice.
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May 4, 2010 18:53
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CitizenKain posted:It wasn't all that long ago (ok, 80 years) when the government set national guard troops on striking miners. Goes to show you how nobody in this loving country understands how our tax rates work. No, if your salary changes from $249,999 to $250,000 you do not suddenly start paying 50% of your income in tax. Why don't Americans understand this 
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May 4, 2010 19:04
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TheOneAndOnlyT posted:Goes to show you how nobody in this loving country understands how our tax rates work. No, if your salary changes from $249,999 to $250,000 you do not suddenly start paying 50% of your income in tax. Why don't Americans understand this Republicans actively lie about this.
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May 4, 2010 19:06
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Gandhi posted:Remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, always. I think the same thing goes for companies that treat their employees like poo poo.
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May 4, 2010 19:43
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Turnquiet posted:I got my tuition paid on a graduate degree in business management while I was here, though most of what I learned was BS. But we all knew that anyway. This is exactly what I'm doing now. Fellow corporate drones, raises are not coming anytime soon for most of us. If your company subsidizes school tuition, go back to school while those programs are still available because I have a feeling employers are going to start cutting those programs out of budget.
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May 4, 2010 20:00
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Too late. They've already cut ours down to a max reimburse of $8,000 a year, and you have to pay for it in advance. They then reimburse if you maintain a 3.3 GPA or higher while continuing full-time employment with them. If you had to take a loan for that $8,000, you are not entitled to any interest repayment by them. Additionally, they only approve three specific programs, not a single one of which costs that little. The kicker - they changed this two years ago and made it apply to people who were currently in programs as well. Yes - retroactively. Every single person I know who was in the program had to drop out, because they could no longer afford to continue it after the change. (Coincidentally, every single one of them got laid off too.)
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May 4, 2010 20:15
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Turnquiet posted:Ah yes, the other lesson to be learned here is "always, always, always get it in writing."
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May 4, 2010 20:19
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The Rokstar posted:It doesn't matter, unless you're working in a very narrow range of occupations salary doesn't automatically prevent someone from getting overtime and it doesn't matter whether they agreed to pay it to you or not. It's a common misconception. However, I'm not an employment attorney so don't take what I'm saying as gospel or anything. I'm just saying it may not be a bad idea to look one up and ask him/her. At what point do you take your employer to court and accept the risks of at-will employment? I've been dicked out of bonuses and overtime before. They could drop me like it was nothing. I just don't work overtime anymore.
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May 4, 2010 20:20
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Maker Of Shoes posted:At what point do you take your employer to court and accept the risks of at-will employment?  Okay, I am modifying my advice from "look up an employment attorney right now" to "look up an employment attorney as soon as you leave this job (if you leave it)." e: Actually the more I think about it, I'm not sure it'd be a good idea to sue at all since any other employers in the same field and area aren't going to hire you after that because chances are they'll all dick you over the exact same way. FREE MARKET OORAH 
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May 4, 2010 20:23
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I just watched "Up in The Air". That sums up my 9 year career, and also cements the reason why I dont want to do it anymore. Regardless of the work you do, you're always going to get hosed by some money saving situation.
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May 4, 2010 20:24
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Frag Viper posted:I just watched "Up in The Air". Yep, that is why I can't recommend municipality work enough. It's a whole other world when the business you work for does not have to worry about making a profit. It's great.
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May 4, 2010 20:31
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Solkanar512 posted:I know this is a little long, but it should make clear to non-US goons exactly what US workers face, and the effects of those policies. This is from South Africa's Basic Conditions of Employment Act Regarding leave: 3.2.1 Employees are entitled to 21 consecutive days’ annual leave or by agreement, one day for every 17 days worked or one hour for every 17 hours worked. 3.3.1 An employee is entitled to six weeks’ paid sick leave in a period of 36 months. 3.4.1 A pregnant employee is entitled to four consecutive months’ maternity leave. 3.5.1 Full time employees are entitled to three days paid family responsibility leave per year. Regarding work hours: 2.8.1 An employee who occasionally works on a Sunday must receive double pay. 2.10.1 Employees must be paid their ordinary pay for any public holiday that falls on a working day. 2.10.2 Work on a public holiday is by agreement and paid at double the rate. PS. We have nine public holidays. Also, if a public holiday falls on a Sunday it's automatically bumped to Monday... I don't often get the opportunity, but when given one I'll always be  about living in a third world country...
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May 4, 2010 20:33
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The Rokstar posted:Oh, I missed the part where he was still working there. There are retaliatory termination laws, but good luck proving that since I believe the burden is on you in that situation My girlfriend got unjustly shitcanned from a job this past summer. She spoke with an attorney that works with her family quite a bit. She was told that not only is this difficult to prove, but if you sue a company and lose, the company could potentially seek damages from YOU for legal fees, dragging their name through the mud, etc. I have no idea how likely any of that is, but it stopped her from moving forward.
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May 4, 2010 20:33
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All of this is making me extremely happy I got out of big corporate environments before being poisoned by them. I spent a year as an intern at one huge place, half a year at a smallish (50-80) place, then a solid 7 months of work-dodging at another huge place before landing my current position in a tiny, tiny programming firm that is great. One of the weird things I noticed was how conditioned the people were at one of my internships to certain situations, like having an office versus a cubicle. I was about halfway through my 6 month internship at the smallish place, so most of the people there knew me, I was doing IT work and had visited pretty much everyone's desk at some point or another for various problems, password resets, whatever. I had it pretty good there because every little problem I fixed was a miracle sent from heaven to most of the users, and they loved me for it. The one problem I had there was that there was no permanent place to put me, and when they hired "real" employees, I was bumped from whatever desk I was occupying. They were in the process of expanding their offices and getting more space, but who cares about the intern kids comfort? I called 4 or 5 places "my" desk through those months, though I spent most of my time wandering around or in the server room messing with stuff, so it didn't really matter. One of these moves I had the good fortune of being placed in a decent sized office, with a door no less. Not much of a door, as it was clear glass, so anyone could see right in. Napping was out, but screwing around on the internet was super easy. The funniest thing though, was the sudden surge in respect I received. I was never treated badly, but put my rear end in an office and holy poo poo did these people change their attitudes. Every time someone walked past they asked if I got promoted, or if I needed anything, and just their general attitude was like they were talking to an executive. It's a shame I was too naive to really take advantage of it. Unfortunately they tossed me out of there about 2 weeks later, but I enjoyed being the executive intern for that brief period. My last stint as a true corporate drone was the worst. My responsibilities quite literally left me with ZERO work for 2 weeks out of every month. The actual work, when I had it, was running a series of scripts that parsed data and moved stuff around from tape media, nothing terribly fancy, just a lot of them. Basically I fired up a master script and watched logs until the thing crapped out, which it did at the same point every month, then I'd call the guy who was delaying me, he'd get his poo poo together, and I'd start my script over from that point and all was well. After that, I'd have 2 solid weeks of nothing to do, so I started coming in at 10 or 11 and leaving at 2 or 3. Most of those weeks I was there maybe 15-20 hours tops, and I filled that time reading books, taking smoke breaks, and exploring the huge complex. The first month or more that I was there I actually had no computer. For a job entirely based on running scripts from a computer, this was problematic. I think I read 4 books that month just sitting at my desk - it was pretty nice and not a bad way to make money, but it got old fast. About a week before I left for good, I was lightly reprimanded for having my timesheets signed by someone who wasn't really my supervisor (because I could never loving find my god drat supervisor, always in a meeting or not showing up because it was Friday), so I'm pretty sure they were catching on to my trimmed hours, but I didn't care cause I was outta there. A couple of the old hands there took me out to lunch that day too, and basically both told me it was a drat good move getting out of that position since it was a dead end job where I'd learn nothing. From a purely "I want to feel pride in my work and actually EARN my paycheck" standpoint, that job was awful. I was just a cog that could have easily been replaced by a cron job set at 2 week intervals. GentlemansSleepover fucked around with this message at 20:48 on May 4, 2010 |
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May 4, 2010 20:42
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Macintyre posted:Yep, that is why I can't recommend municipality work enough.
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May 4, 2010 20:44
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Actuary X posted:I don't work for the government, but for a company that is in government receivership (i.e., bankrupt) so it's pretty similar. Which is why I can post from work. I've done the work for big government before (Federal, State) and the life was much like most large corporations. Soon as I switched to much smaller local government things got so much better.
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May 4, 2010 20:53
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dunkman posted:I was working as a bagger at a grocery store, and it was mandatory to join the union for the store. It was part time, and the Union dues up front were over 1 months salary for me, so I got $0 paychecks for the first month I worked there. I had many friends that worked for both Kroger and Meijer and that minimum wage Union poo poo infested both places. They paid fairly large portions of their paycheck and, for the life of them, could never figure out what this stupid Union actually did. Buddy of mine was accused of stealing cassette tapes from Meijer years ago and the Union not only provided zero assistance but basically agreed with management that my friend was guilty and should be fired. The Union that runs these retail operations is usually the United Food and Commercial Workers.
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May 4, 2010 22:04
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Burning Beard posted:I had many friends that worked for both Kroger and Meijer and that minimum wage Union poo poo infested both places. They paid fairly large portions of their paycheck and, for the life of them, could never figure out what this stupid Union actually did. Buddy of mine was accused of stealing cassette tapes from Meijer years ago and the Union not only provided zero assistance but basically agreed with management that my friend was guilty and should be fired. Before I left Meijer (I was a service coordinator, basically assistant manager, worked my way up from a cart pusher. Only one of me on each shift, but I was still UFCW union) at the end of two years I had come to the conclusion that the UFCW basically owned Meijer. There was rampant cronyism and corporate worship among the 20+ year lifers who got paid well and had good benefits because they were under the old contract, but would actively agree with Meijer whenever they wanted to cut healthcare or raises because it didn't affect them. Worst of all, all the union delegates were lifers. In fact, because they were under a different contact, it probably increased the likelihood of them keeping what they had. That union's complete unwillingness to not bend over and take it up the rear end from Meijer actually caused inequality among workers in the same goddamn union
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May 4, 2010 22:16
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I took a $1000/month loss when I went to work for the government. A small price to pay for looking forward to going to work in the mornings instead of dreading it. Sure, some days are better than others, but overall it's far nicer to do a project well rather than have to rush it out the door so you can bill the client. Reading about pursuing happiness reminded me of this video from CBS. It talks a bit about how people work and live in Denmark and ends with a Harvard professor explaining why The American Way won't always make people as happy as they expect. (ABC did a similar story)
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May 4, 2010 22:38
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TheBoyBlunder posted:It doesn't look like it. I searched for a "Moonshine" and got "MoonShine" in return. This person has made two posts since 2006, neither of them live. Maybe it's this Moonshine.
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May 4, 2010 23:09
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Solkanar512 posted:So can I ask those who are reading this and are against unions, why? I promise not to jump down your throat, flood you with data or generally be a dick. I just want to hear why. Most of the population has been spoonfed the right wing propaganda line that unions exist only to keep lazy, unproductive workers in cushy, overpaid jobs. Plus collective bargaining is SOCIALISM  and that leads off into this weird wormhole of right-wing strawmen conflating collective bargaining -> socialism -> the evils of the Cold War era USSR -> only As someone who doesn't have a shrine to Glenn Beck in their home, I like the idea of a union in theory, but in practice my reaction to unions is lukewarm at best. Thanks to at-will employment, a lovely economy, and a largely non-unionized work force, I fully believe that the vast majorities of attempts to unionize would be met by mass terminations. Plenty of folk out there willing to work non-union, and everybody who isn't upper management is a replaceable cog anyway, amirite? Even if we clear that hurdle, we still have the corruption issue to deal with. While I don't think that union reps are somehow magically more corrupt than anyone else in the system, I don't think they're magically less corrupt either. So, given that the zeitgeist of current business culture in the US is 'gently caress you, got mine', I don't see any compelling reason to believe that my union reps wouldn't sell me down the river for personal gain just like my managers do, and I have to risk my job and pay union dues to get the rep, what's the drat point?
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May 4, 2010 23:13
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You guys are confusing unions with reasonable labor laws. Unions get you collective agreements, your elected officials are in charge of getting you reasonable minimum standards with respect to vacation days.
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May 4, 2010 23:42
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Spike McAwesome posted:My girlfriend got unjustly shitcanned from a job this past summer. She spoke with an attorney that works with her family quite a bit. She was told that not only is this difficult to prove, but if you sue a company and lose, the company could potentially seek damages from YOU for legal fees, dragging their name through the mud, etc. I have no idea how likely any of that is, but it stopped her from moving forward. Unless you live in a country other than the US, they can't seek damages from you for legal fees. The American rule is that you do not pay for attorney's fees if you're the plaintiff and lose.
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May 5, 2010 00:07
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