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ValueOfUnions 5 - 12 Mar 2009 - Main.JamilaMcCoy
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| | Professor Moglen's comments about unions the other day got me thinking that I have a natural aversion to praise for unions. In particular I have a deep-seated aversion to the notion of seniority for seniority's sake rather than performance-based pay. There are numerous benefits to unions, perhaps most importantly a stronger negotiating position when discussing pay and benefits for employees. But on the flip side, it also seems to create hierarchies based on seniority that prevent younger/newer members from rising through the ranks based on "merit". I can understand and sympathize with the job security concerns that were the basis of Moglen's comments, but am I missing some other valuable benefits to the seniority system? In high school I spent 3 years working at a supermarket where the members were unionized. I liked the marginally better pay than the minimum wage that other stores paid, but I also remember a lot of jaded, unproductive older employees. Unions are human organizations too and are just as vulnerable to the selfish manipulation of those at the top as other organizations are.
This is not to say that I am opposed to unions, I just found it odd that even though I have shifted far far left of my originally super conservative upbringing I was still caught off guard by the rhapsody for unions. Are there any built-in corrections for older members who take advantage of their seniority? Don't most of the complaints about teachers' unions revolve around this issue? | | | My thoughts, limited by my limited experience, would be that unions can benefit their members when their members share common needs, particularly when the members have specialized skills that are hard to replace (it is axiomatic that the most successful unions in the US represent professional athletes and film actors). But when unions themselves become large diversified organizations, representing many types of workers who all do different things, they can behave like other large impersonal entities, and fail to serve their members.
This may be a good topic for merging and refactoring -- I have spoken to some students who say we are using the Wiki like a messageboard rather than a wiki, and I agree we should feel less ownership over our posts and encourage work on them by our peers. | |
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> | Hi Andrew,
Your varied experiences with unions are interesting and they reflect an ongoing struggles in the union movement. I do think that it would be great to refractor this page eventually. But right now I don't think that we have really explored the existing academic literature and current events enough to make a great informational page that reflects the current state, challenges, and arguments for and against unions. I linked to a few briefs from collective bargaining, labor law, and organizational behavior scholars, and newspaper articles. I think one of the best things that we can do using the wiki is that you can include images, and instant links to online authorities. The page takes on less of a message board quality when we utilize those aspects of the wiki to fully explore the subject we're writing about.
How about we aim for a mix of personal anecdotes, current events in the union sphere, and academic literature in creating the page?
Perhaps a bit more conversation, and we can produce something that explains:
1) personal experiences with unions
2) current state of collective bargaining in the US
a. Basics on how unions work (legal framework, core ideology, etc.)
-NLRA
-collective bargaining basics
b. Prominent unions and labor coalitions
-Change To Win
-Municipal Unions
-Specialized Skill Unions
3) Problems w/ unions
Refractoring and merging are great, but I think we need substance to edit and that we won't have that until we combine our opinions and experiences with other sources. Am I getting the gist of the purpose of the wiki or am I turning this into a research project?
--JamilaMcCoy March 12 09 |
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