Texas is a right to work state and has been as long as I can remember. I consider myself left of center but I'm not a fan of labor unions, I like the idea, and I recognize the contributions of the labor movement to the quality of modern work life, but I think unions do a disservice to their members. The way you protect and empower workers is by creating a workforce that can compete on quality, expertise, experience, excellence and efficiency, not by writing make work rules into contracts. I've experienced too many stupid union rules to ever want to support one. (Examples - "if you need to make more than 10 copies, or copy more than 10 pages, you must submit your job to the union print shop, not use the entirely convenient copier in the hallway", "if a piece of test equipment needs to be moved from one test bench to another two feet away, you must submit the job to the union logistics service which will take 2 days to accomplish your 30 second task", "engineers may not use soldering irons, all rework tasks must be scheduled through the union electrical technician shop, even though you only need connect two wires together". And so on - these are actual rules in actual places I've worked. Unions are a good example of good ideas gone bad. To my mind hiring a union shop should mean that I'm getting the absolute best workforce money can buy, and then I won't mind paying a premium to get it. Too often work rules seem to protect union workers from competition by workers who can do a better job. It's the opposite of a meritocracy.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2012-12-14 01:48 pm (UTC)Unions are a good example of good ideas gone bad. To my mind hiring a union shop should mean that I'm getting the absolute best workforce money can buy, and then I won't mind paying a premium to get it. Too often work rules seem to protect union workers from competition by workers who can do a better job. It's the opposite of a meritocracy.