Never been in a union, and voted against it when they tried to unionize my job.
Unions always seem to try to reward average work and protect incompetence. By working to have everyone treated the same way, they seem to remove any reason to do above-average work. I see how it could be valuable to below-average workers, but not to me.
Also, the dues seemed high for what I'd get if I voted for it.
Submitted by boopiejones on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 9:47pm.
i have only been in a union once (bagger at safeway back in high school). i learned to hate unions at that time. lets see. i get paid $6.50 an hour but have a huge chunk taken out for union dues that i will never see the benefit from because i am in high school and am on my parent's medical/dental/etc. and i have no way of opting out? nice.
my view of unions is that they just needlessly increase the cost of the end product. at one point in history, unions had a place - such as in a coal mining "company town." but i see no need for unions today especially in jobs like, say, nursing. not trying to minimize that job in particular, but why should someone that changes bandages and bedpans make $90,000 a year? i guarantee you that i could find nurses that do just as good of a job for half as much or even less. and yes, i would feel totally comfortable having them perform the trickier nursing duties like starting an IV or administering medicine ordered by a doctor.
we should let market forces determine wages, not some overpaid union boss. if i run company A and pay $10/hour and give no benefits, and a competitor pays $8 but with full benefits, people can make the choice what is best for them. your spouse has a job with benefits? come work for me. no spouse with benefits? the $8 job is probably your best choice.
similarly, if someone is grossly underpaying their employees, market forces will force them to increase pay to an acceptable level. I can't retain good employees if i pay $10 but everyone else in the industry is paying $20. but if i am forced to pay $70 an hour to someone that screws in car antennas, i go BK. cough, chrysler, cough, ahem.
ok i'm done now, you may proceed with the discussion.
Union are why you have any benefits, 40 hour work week and weekends. They paved the way for what you take for granted in the private industries. Without unions people were used, abused and discarded. Companies profits far outweighed the compensations of their employees. If you were hurt on the job you were fired with no recourse. That is the reasons unions were formed. Once unions no longer exist you best believe companies will return to these tactics. Lets pray that you don't get what you wish for. Yes there are bad apples but that is not the norm. Bart looks good from the outside, inside its a different story.
Submitted by TreoBART on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 7:32am.
I agree. Unions are a check and balance system for xorporation just like those in government. And just like government, the power swings back and forth over time.
Submitted by former employee on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 10:39am.
I spent 24 years on the inside as a management employee. For that entire time I was in Rolling Stock and Shops (rail vehicle maintenance) at the shop level, in the shops, every working day.
Although I was not in a union, I can tell you why it is a good thing the people who actually do the work are in one.
BART's upper management has not historically been composed of a majority of people who worked their way up from the bottom on the inside. Rather it has been a prime example of the MBA degree paradigm that has materially affected managerial practice in this country for the last half century.
The way it works is this: You go to college, get an advanced degree, say a masters in public administration and voila, you are ready to run the water works, the sewage treatment plant or the transit system, no experience necessary. No need to know the details of any of those pesky little widgets and thingamabobs that make it all work, oh, hell no.
(Two exceptions to this at BART were GMs Frank Wilson and Tom Margro who had engineering degrees. And I'm not saying all BART's upper management has always been or is currently useless. I'm just trying to make a point about why unions aren't a bad thing for BART.)
What you end up with is an intellectual, policy wonk, politically correct elite running the place. Many of these people have never had dirt under their fingernails, turned a wrench or used a voltmeter or a soldering iron.
With that mindset in place, what follows is that all the workers are just interchangeable units for the bean counters to juggle, identical to the machinery in any factory production line.
People with advanced non-technical degrees who don't know how technical things work or what it takes to maintain and repair them often have little respect for those who do. It's all just so simple to them:
"Oh, we can just hire technicians and mechanics off the street any time we need them. Those people are a dime a dozen. Look at them lined up waiting to come to work here."
I'm here to tell you, once technically trained and experienced people come to work at BART and find out how complicated everything is and how long it actually takes to figure out how everything works, it's not so simple. There's a lot to know that you can't know if you've never worked on something like a BART car. And you don't figure it all out in a week or two.
Unless I missed something, the gripe about union workers is that they get paid too much in wages and benefits. Obviously, the converse without the union is a lower paid fewer benefits workforce. Lesser pay and benefits means fewer people stick around long enough to figure out how to do the job with skill and confidence.
Large corporations and banks have recently used the argument that they need to pay exorbitant salaries and bonuses to retain the type of elite management talent that has ultimately run some of those companies into the ground.
The argument that unions at BART promote the retention of a more experienced and talented workforce is actually more valid.
What could likely result without a union with an elite public management educated mindset running the place, is a revolving door of low paid, low skilled, disenfranchised workers. You want those people fixing your trains?
Submitted by boopiejones on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 3:34pm.
here is my problem with unions - they don't allow market forces to speak for themselves. as i said in my earlier post, if i run company A and don't provide a good enough pay/benefits package to retain the good employees, my company will ultimately fail.
many unions set wages and benefits artifically high and therefore take the market force out of the equation.
and i think your argument about managers thinking of workers as intergangeable units for the beancounters to juggle - once again, let market forces dictate that. if you don't respect your employees and pay them what is fair, they can leave and your company/transit authority/whatever will fail.
another problem is that unions typically don't allow the better employees to get paid more. in my experience, unions award employees for years of service rather than quality of service. to me, years in the industry is a crappy indicator of how good someone is. how quickly someone can fix a train is a much better indicator. if i can do twice the work as the next guy and with the same quality results, why shouldn't i be paid more? the best bart mechanic probably doesn't make much more than the worst one (putting years of service aside). why? unions. and the best bart mechanic probably can't leave bart and go to work for muni, caltrans, etc for a bunch more money. why? unions.
Submitted by former employee on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 7:25pm.
Boopie, all your points are valid for corporations and private industry.
Your basic common widget manufacturers can apply all of your market force theory in their dealings with customers as well as employees. If things go well, they can manage to remain non-union.
However, mismanagement generally results in mistreatment of the employees and the union shows up and organizes the place. This is only right because it allows the workers to invoke their right to apply their own market forces to their labor. It's the law and it's not going away. The reality of unions is that they counter bad management. It's not as if somebody woke up one day and said "Hey, let's all be lazy and grab more than our fair share and form a union."
The main difference between BART and competing widget factories is that a given widget manufacturer can fail and there will be others left to take up the slack.
BART is a public service, not a "company" and it is also a monopoly. You want to get to SF from most of the East Bay without driving a car, your only choice is BART. Competing market forces other than tolls, the price of gasoline and parking don't apply; there aren't any.
Your own end result if the compensation and employee respect isn't adequate is that the "company" fails. BART isn't a company, it isn't managed like one and it isn't going to be allowed to fail because tinkering with the application of "market forces" to the labor force couldn't keep good help.
My assessment of the way BART is managed, which is quite different than the way successful widget factories are managed, is key to understanding the role of the unions.
I've never known of anyone who started out as a BART train operator or BART mechanic who became a General Manager or Assistant GM at BART. This is because there has generally been a tendency to bring in outsiders at the top until Dorothy Dugger became GM and she started near the top when she arrived about ten years ago.
Over the years every time new management showed up, everything we were doing was stupid because it wasn't the way they did it back east where most of them were previously. Instead of taking the time to find out why it was different, it was immediately determined that we were stupid. You want to talk about a lack of respect, there you have it.
This is part of the problem: a continuing parade of elite industry outsiders brought into upper management or hired as consultants that wants to turn the place upside down and "fix" everything to do it the way somebody else does it including work rules, pay and benefits.
BART is managed as a bureaucratic political football rather than a widget factory as tends to be true of many public agencies. Find me a large public agency like BART that isn't unionized. See if you can. The same politically driven management style prevails at most public agencies which tends to result in a unionized work force.
A big part of BART's actual benefit from unions is it helps keep the highly politicized manner in which it is managed from turning into the failure that you referenced. Management can't effectively run the place into the ground while tinkering with labor related market forces as long as the unions provide a stable workforce.
Until BART is managed like a well run widget factory instead of a public agency it will have a unionized work force and for good reason, so it doesn’t fail from its style of management.
Submitted by gruntled on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 8:04pm.
I agree completely. Employees are rarely given the chance to move up. It isn't just at the top that outsiders are brought in, it is throughout the entire organization.
Managers never make decisions without bringing in hordes of consultants to tell them the obvious. There are projects that are YEARS behind schedule, being run by outside project managers. Rather than fire these people, their contracts are extended.
If you want to see how BART is *really* being run, try walking around the administrative building on a Friday afternoon when there isn't a manager or consultant to be found because they've all left early.
Submitted by BartleyBoy on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 12:01am.
I've worked Non-Union and Union. I'll take Union over Non-Union any day for the simple fact that you have rights granted you in your contract.
What you do is spelled out and you have an agreement. You wouldn't finance a house with out an agreement. Why would you do the most important other thing in your life without one? Many even have marriage agreements.
Even in California if you are in a non-union shop you have basically no rights at all. Very few. And if you bitch about anything your can be fired for just about any reason.
You can be fired because the boss simply does not like you or his kid needs a job and he wants yours. Any reason except discrimination and you better be prepared to prove that. It is not discrimination to not like someone or just want to give someone else their job. Usually getting fired is not about money or even the quality of work you do. Generally it's about not kissing the ass that feeds you.
Unions have a down side as well.
Union leaders have friends too that need jobs or want yours or expect a little something for protecting you. Some are corupt or assholes and want their butts kissed as well. You pay dues or fees, but, for me, its worth the price.
Never been in a union, and
Never been in a union, and voted against it when they tried to unionize my job.
Unions always seem to try to reward average work and protect incompetence. By working to have everyone treated the same way, they seem to remove any reason to do above-average work. I see how it could be valuable to below-average workers, but not to me.
Also, the dues seemed high for what I'd get if I voted for it.
i have only been in a union
i have only been in a union once (bagger at safeway back in high school). i learned to hate unions at that time. lets see. i get paid $6.50 an hour but have a huge chunk taken out for union dues that i will never see the benefit from because i am in high school and am on my parent's medical/dental/etc. and i have no way of opting out? nice.
my view of unions is that they just needlessly increase the cost of the end product. at one point in history, unions had a place - such as in a coal mining "company town." but i see no need for unions today especially in jobs like, say, nursing. not trying to minimize that job in particular, but why should someone that changes bandages and bedpans make $90,000 a year? i guarantee you that i could find nurses that do just as good of a job for half as much or even less. and yes, i would feel totally comfortable having them perform the trickier nursing duties like starting an IV or administering medicine ordered by a doctor.
we should let market forces determine wages, not some overpaid union boss. if i run company A and pay $10/hour and give no benefits, and a competitor pays $8 but with full benefits, people can make the choice what is best for them. your spouse has a job with benefits? come work for me. no spouse with benefits? the $8 job is probably your best choice.
similarly, if someone is grossly underpaying their employees, market forces will force them to increase pay to an acceptable level. I can't retain good employees if i pay $10 but everyone else in the industry is paying $20. but if i am forced to pay $70 an hour to someone that screws in car antennas, i go BK. cough, chrysler, cough, ahem.
ok i'm done now, you may proceed with the discussion.
Union are why you have any
Union are why you have any benefits, 40 hour work week and weekends. They paved the way for what you take for granted in the private industries. Without unions people were used, abused and discarded. Companies profits far outweighed the compensations of their employees. If you were hurt on the job you were fired with no recourse. That is the reasons unions were formed. Once unions no longer exist you best believe companies will return to these tactics. Lets pray that you don't get what you wish for. Yes there are bad apples but that is not the norm. Bart looks good from the outside, inside its a different story.
I agree. Unions are a check
I agree. Unions are a check and balance system for xorporation just like those in government. And just like government, the power swings back and forth over time.
I spent 24 years on the
I spent 24 years on the inside as a management employee. For that entire time I was in Rolling Stock and Shops (rail vehicle maintenance) at the shop level, in the shops, every working day.
Although I was not in a union, I can tell you why it is a good thing the people who actually do the work are in one.
BART's upper management has not historically been composed of a majority of people who worked their way up from the bottom on the inside. Rather it has been a prime example of the MBA degree paradigm that has materially affected managerial practice in this country for the last half century.
The way it works is this: You go to college, get an advanced degree, say a masters in public administration and voila, you are ready to run the water works, the sewage treatment plant or the transit system, no experience necessary. No need to know the details of any of those pesky little widgets and thingamabobs that make it all work, oh, hell no.
(Two exceptions to this at BART were GMs Frank Wilson and Tom Margro who had engineering degrees. And I'm not saying all BART's upper management has always been or is currently useless. I'm just trying to make a point about why unions aren't a bad thing for BART.)
What you end up with is an intellectual, policy wonk, politically correct elite running the place. Many of these people have never had dirt under their fingernails, turned a wrench or used a voltmeter or a soldering iron.
With that mindset in place, what follows is that all the workers are just interchangeable units for the bean counters to juggle, identical to the machinery in any factory production line.
People with advanced non-technical degrees who don't know how technical things work or what it takes to maintain and repair them often have little respect for those who do. It's all just so simple to them:
"Oh, we can just hire technicians and mechanics off the street any time we need them. Those people are a dime a dozen. Look at them lined up waiting to come to work here."
I'm here to tell you, once technically trained and experienced people come to work at BART and find out how complicated everything is and how long it actually takes to figure out how everything works, it's not so simple. There's a lot to know that you can't know if you've never worked on something like a BART car. And you don't figure it all out in a week or two.
Unless I missed something, the gripe about union workers is that they get paid too much in wages and benefits. Obviously, the converse without the union is a lower paid fewer benefits workforce. Lesser pay and benefits means fewer people stick around long enough to figure out how to do the job with skill and confidence.
Large corporations and banks have recently used the argument that they need to pay exorbitant salaries and bonuses to retain the type of elite management talent that has ultimately run some of those companies into the ground.
The argument that unions at BART promote the retention of a more experienced and talented workforce is actually more valid.
What could likely result without a union with an elite public management educated mindset running the place, is a revolving door of low paid, low skilled, disenfranchised workers. You want those people fixing your trains?
here is my problem with
here is my problem with unions - they don't allow market forces to speak for themselves. as i said in my earlier post, if i run company A and don't provide a good enough pay/benefits package to retain the good employees, my company will ultimately fail.
many unions set wages and benefits artifically high and therefore take the market force out of the equation.
and i think your argument about managers thinking of workers as intergangeable units for the beancounters to juggle - once again, let market forces dictate that. if you don't respect your employees and pay them what is fair, they can leave and your company/transit authority/whatever will fail.
another problem is that unions typically don't allow the better employees to get paid more. in my experience, unions award employees for years of service rather than quality of service. to me, years in the industry is a crappy indicator of how good someone is. how quickly someone can fix a train is a much better indicator. if i can do twice the work as the next guy and with the same quality results, why shouldn't i be paid more? the best bart mechanic probably doesn't make much more than the worst one (putting years of service aside). why? unions. and the best bart mechanic probably can't leave bart and go to work for muni, caltrans, etc for a bunch more money. why? unions.
Boopie, all your points are
Boopie, all your points are valid for corporations and private industry.
Your basic common widget manufacturers can apply all of your market force theory in their dealings with customers as well as employees. If things go well, they can manage to remain non-union.
However, mismanagement generally results in mistreatment of the employees and the union shows up and organizes the place. This is only right because it allows the workers to invoke their right to apply their own market forces to their labor. It's the law and it's not going away. The reality of unions is that they counter bad management. It's not as if somebody woke up one day and said "Hey, let's all be lazy and grab more than our fair share and form a union."
The main difference between BART and competing widget factories is that a given widget manufacturer can fail and there will be others left to take up the slack.
BART is a public service, not a "company" and it is also a monopoly. You want to get to SF from most of the East Bay without driving a car, your only choice is BART. Competing market forces other than tolls, the price of gasoline and parking don't apply; there aren't any.
Your own end result if the compensation and employee respect isn't adequate is that the "company" fails. BART isn't a company, it isn't managed like one and it isn't going to be allowed to fail because tinkering with the application of "market forces" to the labor force couldn't keep good help.
My assessment of the way BART is managed, which is quite different than the way successful widget factories are managed, is key to understanding the role of the unions.
I've never known of anyone who started out as a BART train operator or BART mechanic who became a General Manager or Assistant GM at BART. This is because there has generally been a tendency to bring in outsiders at the top until Dorothy Dugger became GM and she started near the top when she arrived about ten years ago.
Over the years every time new management showed up, everything we were doing was stupid because it wasn't the way they did it back east where most of them were previously. Instead of taking the time to find out why it was different, it was immediately determined that we were stupid. You want to talk about a lack of respect, there you have it.
This is part of the problem: a continuing parade of elite industry outsiders brought into upper management or hired as consultants that wants to turn the place upside down and "fix" everything to do it the way somebody else does it including work rules, pay and benefits.
BART is managed as a bureaucratic political football rather than a widget factory as tends to be true of many public agencies. Find me a large public agency like BART that isn't unionized. See if you can. The same politically driven management style prevails at most public agencies which tends to result in a unionized work force.
A big part of BART's actual benefit from unions is it helps keep the highly politicized manner in which it is managed from turning into the failure that you referenced. Management can't effectively run the place into the ground while tinkering with labor related market forces as long as the unions provide a stable workforce.
Until BART is managed like a well run widget factory instead of a public agency it will have a unionized work force and for good reason, so it doesn’t fail from its style of management.
Thank You. Maybe now they'll
Thank You. Maybe now they'll get it.
I agree completely. Employees
I agree completely. Employees are rarely given the chance to move up. It isn't just at the top that outsiders are brought in, it is throughout the entire organization.
Managers never make decisions without bringing in hordes of consultants to tell them the obvious. There are projects that are YEARS behind schedule, being run by outside project managers. Rather than fire these people, their contracts are extended.
If you want to see how BART is *really* being run, try walking around the administrative building on a Friday afternoon when there isn't a manager or consultant to be found because they've all left early.
Very well said!
I've worked Non-Union and
I've worked Non-Union and Union. I'll take Union over Non-Union any day for the simple fact that you have rights granted you in your contract.
What you do is spelled out and you have an agreement. You wouldn't finance a house with out an agreement. Why would you do the most important other thing in your life without one? Many even have marriage agreements.
Even in California if you are in a non-union shop you have basically no rights at all. Very few. And if you bitch about anything your can be fired for just about any reason.
You can be fired because the boss simply does not like you or his kid needs a job and he wants yours. Any reason except discrimination and you better be prepared to prove that. It is not discrimination to not like someone or just want to give someone else their job. Usually getting fired is not about money or even the quality of work you do. Generally it's about not kissing the ass that feeds you.
Unions have a down side as well.
Union leaders have friends too that need jobs or want yours or expect a little something for protecting you. Some are corupt or assholes and want their butts kissed as well. You pay dues or fees, but, for me, its worth the price.