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I'd say teaching is a better candidate for unionization because measurable outputs don't correspond to inputs in any real sense, not because it's low-status. When you can measure the outputs, and they have a strong connection to the skill of the employee, and especially if there's a high variance in utility between a highly-skilled and a low-skilled worker in the same position, unionization starts becoming less tempting.
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Apr 16, 2014 19:08
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Main Paineframe posted:When the outputs are measurable and vary considerably, that is in fact where unionization is most important, since the union can rely on those metrics to incorporate performance into payscales. Or the employer can do the same thing, since it's in their best interest to pay their top performers well in order to retain them.
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Apr 16, 2014 21:05
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Mirthless posted:Our #1 most common customer comment on surveys is "thank god somebody speaks english". When that's the only advantage we have over people who work for half (or less!) of what we do, how much longer can that gravy train possibly last? Possibly forever? Even if off-shored employees start speaking perfect English, people will realize that they still suck at their jobs. It's easier to say "they can't speak English," than "they suck at fixing problems because they're following a lovely script and don't know anything." but the latter is the main problem.
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Apr 17, 2014 02:34
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VitalSigns posted:But that's precisely one of the problems with "aptitude" testing. To the extent that the test measures general knowledge or even just test-taking ability that doesn't correlate with job performance, then it is unfairly boosting the prospects of a privileged applicant and holding back the oppressed candidate even if they would in reality be equally effective at the job. I know highly educated, extremely intelligent people who are lovely employees/co-workers, and guys with high school diplomas and nothing more that bust their rear end and do a great job. I agree with you; it should be obvious that formal education and general knowledge does not really indicate aptitude for any specific thing. An aptitude test, if employed at all, should be only a small part of the qualification process and test things that are directly relevant to the job only. Frankly, that benefits the employer as much as the employee.
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Apr 21, 2014 06:20
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ToxicSlurpee posted:One of the major problems with things like aptitude testing is that tests can be deliberately made culture-specific. One of the complaints about standardized testing in general is that they tend to favor one culture or another, especially in the case of "writing tests." America is a nation of over 300 million people with a poo poo load of different dialects, some of which are dramatically different than standard American English. America also has a poo poo load of people (I forget the number) that learned English as a second language and don't speak it all that well, which would harm their score on a standardized test. This does not make them bad workers or serve as an indicator of how much skill and knowledge they have but would serve to allow employers to discriminate against them. Absolutely. I think "aptitude tests" in terms of a standardized, multiple-choice affair are completely useless and actively harmful. On the other hand, in some industries, some level of testing (not necessarily standardized and preferably not multiple-choice) is a necessary part of the hiring process. Software developers, for example, will almost certainly be asked to solve a few simple puzzles during the interview, just to make sure they didn't slide through their education without learning basic concepts (sadly, it happens more often than you'd think). That's not a bad thing, especially because it gives some insight into how the candidate actually thinks, it's not completely standardized, and it's more forgiving than a MC test. If we're talking about the validity of aptitude tests, I think we have to clearly distinguish what we're talking about when we say they're bad/discriminatory.
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Apr 21, 2014 06:32
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Not to mention, there are different jobs in pretty much every company with different requirements as to "communication." If you're hiring someone to issue PR releases and handle social media, I'd recommend a native speaker of whatever language you're working with. If they are, for example, an accountant, the only important thing is that they are effective enough at communicating in the common office language to be able to perform their job duties and generally get along with their co-workers.
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Apr 21, 2014 07:17
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shrike82 posted:Nah, to give an example, my firm was recruiting for bilingual English/Japanese speakers to launch an office in Tokyo last year. I think the cultural difference in question is that the Americans were lying, not that North Americans have a vastly different outlook on what bilingualism is.
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Apr 21, 2014 07:19
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Jarmak posted:Holy poo poo dude, I mean ya there's issues with aptitude tests being skewed because of cultural familiarity, but you can't have a racial disparity in access to education and training and not have a racial disparity is job qualification. The only way one of those things doesn't de facto follow the other is if you argue that training/education have no impact on job qualification, which I think is a ridiculous position to take despite all the amusing anecdotes about your friend named William who's wicked smart. Training is different from education, and, yes, to the extent that education can be measured on a pre-employment standardized aptitude test, it's probably got very little to do with job qualification. What's the point of having diplomas and degrees if we don't trust them to mean anything? People go to school for years to get these qualifications, be it a high school diploma or a university degree, so maybe we should take them (possibly in combination with transcripts) as sufficient evidence of general education, and restrict pre-employment testing to more detailed things as I described earlier.
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Apr 21, 2014 18:07
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Jarmak posted:I was preemptively responding to a line of argument I thought you might take while referencing a post PT6A made in support of you. Sorry if that wasn't clear To make my argument on that subject perfectly clear, I'm not saying that training and education are not important, just that aptitude tests are bad ways of measuring it (for one thing) and it cannot and should not be assumed that more education (beyond what's actually necessary to perform the job) will mean a better employee.
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Apr 21, 2014 18:12
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