[CraigJPerry]

>> It's entirely possible to have a non-union shop and still have highly skilled and fairly compensated employees

It’s really hard to do though due to the wrong incentives being in place. You’d need something like worker co-op’s to get the incentives aligned reliably in all cases, such that you don’t need unions.

[Alupis]

Not really. Plenty of businesses don't have unioned employees, and get along just fine. I'd wager there's more non-union employers than union employers in this country.

Unfortunately, unioned jobs where it's known to be difficult or impossible to fire poor performing employees, seems to attract exactly that type of employee, in my experience.

[perl4ever]

Everybody knows the cliched arguments about why job security leads to inefficiency, but have you ever thought that job security leads to efficiency in that people don't resist automation and labor saving innovation as much when it doesn't threaten them?

When someone figures out how to do your job better (or tries) at a private company, then you may need to pretend it's a great thing, everybody goes around pretending, but it's a mortal threat and there are tons of ways to passively sabotage a project.

But when someone figures out how to do your job better at a government agency, either the automation makes it easier for you, or you are (nearly always) guaranteed a transfer to another position. People generally accept that work is a bad thing in itself so if you want to eliminate it, they like you. Laziness has its merits.

I've had some first hand experience in both types of environments.

[CraigJPerry]

>> still have highly skilled and fairly compensated employees

>> get along just fine

Those are 2 different standards. The domain of highly skilled and fairly compensated is a subset of companies getting along just fine. Many workers are unable to fire their boss as it were, due to lack of alternatives. It’s hard to quit when there’s no alternative job and you’re tied to an area.

Like i suggested earlier, you can’t fix this while the information and power asymmetry exists. You can certainly hide it sufficiently in most cases to get along just fine though but that is under-rewarding the labour.

>> difficult or impossible to fire poor performing

Sure, but what’s the cost of that situation?

Sometimes the cost could be so dire it kills the business. That’s not to be sniffed at for sure. Sometimes though it just protects the worker who’s trying but their kid or SO got incapacitated or something equally horrible is happening to them and the last thing they need is fired.

It’s ok if the player with the lions share of the cash pays more than their fair share from time to time.

It’s not ok to protect the player with the lion’s share at all costs even to the detriment of the poorer players.

[Alupis]

> Sometimes though it just protects the worker who’s trying but their kid or SO got incapacitated or something equally horrible is happening to them and the last thing they need is fired.

OK, but private businesses in the US are not public jobs programs, and shouldn't have any obligation to keep paying unproductive employees.

That puts a financial strain on the organization, and can be toxic to a healthy work environment.

(For the record, I'm not railing against people in that position - I'm railing against people perfectly capable of working productively, but choose not to because there is no consequence. It would be analogous to government jobs where the worst that happens is you're transferred to a different department and become their problem instead.)

[CraigJPerry]

>> I'm railing against people perfectly capable of working productively

I get that and i’m in no mind to let them off but i’m not willing to hurt good actors just to be sure no bad actor ever scores a free lunch.

[Alupis]

Fair enough. There is a fine balancing act with heavy-Union shops.

My experience might be more sour than others... I've never personally seen a Union step up to help someone justly... it's always been to keep bad employees employed, and to sue management for various things, and demand higher wages even though the business can't afford them.

You end up spending a bunch of time worrying about what the union will think, instead of what the employee needs.

[Teever]

Unions and union-shops set the standard that non-union shops have to match. If they didn't people would just go across the street and work at the union shop with better benefits and breaks because of the nature of markets.

So in a sense employees at non-union shops are free loaders that reap the benefits of union shops without paying into the organizations that create them