More Unions

Subject: More Unions
From: Andrew Plato <intrepid_es -at- yahoo -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2001 11:16:30 -0800 (PST)

> It used to be that if an individual made a commitment to a company, the
> company returned the loyalty. I'm not saying protecting the jobs of
> boneheads and idiots, I'm talking about protecting the jobs of people
who
> work hard for your 40 hours a week.

With all this talk of protecting the employees from evil slave drivers,
who protects the employer? What about the lazy, complaining, below average
people who just suck up resources and don't do their job? If you fire
these people, they whine and complain and bring frivolous lawsuits against
the company. This costs the company even more money, further depressing
profits and resulting in more layoffs.

I am curious how many people on this board, especially those that are in
favor of unions, have actually run a business and employed people. How
many of you union organizers have had to ensure the financial success and
growth of a company? How many of you have had to balance between making
money and making employees happy?

Its very easy to sit in a comfortable chair and bark unionist propaganda
about how the evil management is taking away your livelihood, when your
risk is minimal. Some of us, like myself, have devoted our entire lives to
building companies. I've busted my ass over the years to make my employees
happy - including forgoing my own paycheck to pay their paychecks. And a
lot of managers are no different from me. They're working hard to make
their company profitable.

But we have to work with unionist types who adamantly refuse to accept the
bigger picture: you cannot survive without profit. They don't care about
the company and its profits, they just want a bigger slice of the pie in
exchange for the absolute bare minimum amount of work.

While people are allowed by law to organize, unions tend to only benefit
the union. The individual has to make do with whatever the union has
mandated. In high-tech, individuals with good skill sets have a much
greater bargaining power than a union of people.

Thus, unions encourage status quo and mediocrity. In exchange for
innovation, excellence, and creativity, unions demand security and
comfort. In some industries, this makes sense. There isn't a lot of
creativity or innovation required to work in a manufacturing job. But if
you're writing documentation for a complex database system, there is a
great deal of innovation and personal initiative required to do that job
successfully.

The other problem with unions is quite simply that business executives
neither trust nor want to work with unions. Therefore, if you run into a
company and proudly display your unionist tendencies, let's just say
you're not going to be making any friends in the executive offices. Hence,
when the time comes for promotion and its between Union Jack and
Independent Jill - guess who gets the promotion?

I know you might not like to hear that and it may inflame your sense of
right and wrong. But whether you want to accept reality or not, you do not
get ahead in this world by making enemies with the people who have the
money. Maybe you're comfortable with that. Maybe money isn't important to
you.

So, the question people need to ask themselves is - will a union help me?
Then maybe you should ask yourself - why do I need a union? What is
stopping me from negotiating on my own? What is stopping me from getting
what you want?

Now, get back to work, you!

Andrew Plato





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