RE: Unionizing?

["Mike Bradley" <mbradley -at- techpubs -dot- com>]

> I just read a story today about SAS. A company that is 
> privately held and consistently ranks as one of the most 
> desirable places to work....and they don't have any unions. 
> How do they do this? 
>
> They reward ingenuity, hard work, and creativity. They value 
> employees and the employees value their company. This results 
> in satisfied customers. 

I just heard a story on the radio about Southwest Airlines, the most
successful US airline AND the most unionized one. Relationships between
labor and management and the unions are exemplary. This results in
satisfied customers.


> Unions are all about adversarial relationships. The whole 
> basis of a union is the concept that "management" and 
> "workers" must fight and struggle to get what they want. 
> Maybe this was a cool idea in 1917 for a pack of goateed 
> commies, but back here in the real world, unions are archaic 
> and outdated. There are better ways to run a business, and 
> SAS is just one example that, apparently, is working. 
> 
> Why struggle and fight with management when you can both 
> agree that the best way to succeed is for everybody to work 
> toward a common goal. If a company is profitable and 
> succeeds, then the people who got it there should be rewarded. 

I agree. The need for a union is starkly highlighted when management
forgets this, as they did at Enron.


> > The most highly-unionized country may be Germany, which 
> also leads the 
> > world, technologically speaking, in numerous industries, including 
> > automobiles and environmental technologies. The industries 
> that fueled 
> > the Japanese miracle were fully unionized (and the present 
> failures of 
> > the Japanese economies have nothing to do with unionization). Cell 
> > phone technology is dominated by European companies, esp. 
> > Scandinavian.
> 
> The United States could drown all these countries in patents, 
> discoveries, new technologies, and investment. R&D spending 
> in the US exceeds all of Europe combined. Productivity in the 
> US far exceeds all other nations. Our GDP is well beyond all 
> these countries. And the Japanese miracle collapsed and died 
> decades ago due to the corruption and insidious government 
> subsidies to prop up failing businesses and financial markets. 

And the rich here are getting richer and the rest of us are falling
behind. 

This part of your argument started with your claim that we're
overwhelmingly technologically advanced compared to the rest of the
world. In selected industries, yes, but we've also lost our heavy
industries, we have no consumer electronics industry except for
computers, most of which are made overseas, our roads are full of
pot-holes, our public transit system is a joke, our overall quality of
life is somewhere in the middle teens instead of first. In other words,
it's a mixed bag and trumpeting us as number one in everything is just
plain wrong.

 
> Thanks to these lawsuits, many firms have strict rules 
> surrounding contractors. People can't work more and 6 months, 
> rates are capped, and some firms won't even deal directly 
> with contractors. Everybody has to go through an agency - 
> which has to take a bigger cut now thanks to increased 
> insurance requirements, paperwork, and tax risks. The net 
> result has been: lower pay for contractors, less 
> opportunities, people out of work, and a general mistrust of 
> independent contractors.  

Yes, I recall reading about a lawsuit like that. It was stupid. But the
problems contractors are having with clients result from tax policies
going back to the 1980s, not to silly lawsuits.

Legislatures can't raise taxes so they put pressure on tax agencies to
find new revenues through enforcement and reinterpretation of existing
law. One result is that the agencies keep wittling away at the ability
of clients to use contractors. The agencies suspect contractors of
misreporting their income and believe they can collect more taxes from
employees. I've talked with the client staff enforcing policies that
require temp writers to be employees, and the reason is never lawsuits;
it's always the client's fear of failing an employment tax audit. 

As for your data, I'll try to find time tonight to hunt up some numbers.
'Course, no union worker is ever going to make what Michael Dell makes.
But that's sort of the point, isn't it. By the way, I hope you don't
hold any Dell stock. You recall that article a month or two ago using
Dell as an example of how virtually all the increased value of tech
stocks pay for stock options for upper management?

Boy, is this getting off-topic.


= Mike



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