[phil21]

It’s not about just being a top worker though.

It’s about showing up ready to do an honest days work for an honest days pay. Not going above and beyond, but being reasonable about the fact that at the end of the day it’s work and things need to get done for everyone involved to put food on the table.

Instead it becomes a cat and mouse game of figuring out how to game the rules and scam as many hours as possible while doing either nothing, or as bad of a job as possible. The whole “not in my job description” thing makes a bit of sense when first implemented as a union rule, but devolves rapidly into nonsense like office workers being unable to plug in a monitor at their desk and sitting around idle for a few days until a union electrician can amble on around.

There is of course a balance here, and it seems the US is one extreme or the other outside of the trade specific unions. Other countries apparently have avoided much of this absurdity somehow.

The grocery store union I was forced to join as a teenager made sense on paper. Make sure employees were kept in safe working conditions, couldn’t be fired arbitrarily, had a reasonable pace of work anyone could keep up with. But it was more about protecting that group of guys who spent half their shift out back on smoke breaks, purposefully damaging cartons of goods while stocking since they didn’t like a particular manager, etc.

[bombcar]

If the unions were more really trade guilds and policed themselves people would have much higher respect for them, I feel.

And some unions practically are this, where the union negotiates rates and benefits, but the "customer" still gets to decide which particular people he hires (and so the "bad apples" never get any reliable business) - which I've seen in AV production, etc.

[Jcampuzano2]

I don't disagree and thats likely the opinion of the vast majority of people. Thats why i say that unions and collective bargaining are most likely to be a net benefit overall.

It just hurts competition among those who have an internal motivation to go above and beyond. They will feel they are being held back and either lose motivation or go somewhere where they feel a union isn't holding them back.

And the downside of that is companies losing their most hardworking/motivated people.

Edit: the above was written before the edit adding the cat and mouse game.

Added: I agree as well that when implemented wrong unions have pretty annoying affects on peoples motivation or work ethic. People who are qualified for things aren't allowed to do things outside of their explicit job description/contract. Etc. Some argue this is good, others argue it just wastes tons of time and hurts progress.

[AshleyGrant]

> The grocery store union I was forced to join as a teenager made sense on paper. Make sure employees were kept in safe working conditions, couldn’t be fired arbitrarily, had a reasonable pace of work anyone could keep up with. But it was more about protecting that group of guys who spent half their shift out back on smoke breaks, purposefully damaging cartons of goods while stocking since they didn’t like a particular manager, etc.

Why do we constantly denigrate these "free loaders" and exalt the capitalists who quite literally free load off of our labor extracting untold billions and trillions of dollars off the backs of average folks like you and me while we get relative pennies?

I worked in Big Tech for a while. For a normal person, I made good money. But the founders and top shareholders of these companies made literal billions off the labor of myself and my coworkers while contributing absolutely nothing on a day-to-day basis. I would have to work 100 lifetimes to earn what many of them take home in a year.

Frankly, if the system allows some normal folks to dick around and get paid the same as billionaires jetting off to spend time on their megayachts then more power to the folks taking a smoke break.

[tristor]

> Why do we constantly denigrate these "free loaders" and exalt the capitalists who quite literally free load off of our labor extracting untold billions and trillions of dollars off the backs of average folks like you and me while we get relative pennies?

We should do both, but when I agree to take a job at a given pay, I show up every single day capable, ready, and willing to work for the wage I agreed to. When other people don't pull their weight, it means I have to take on an unfair amount of work to make up the difference so that I can complete the things I've committed to in the workplace. The focus is on worker to worker relationships, because those are the most locally impactful relationships you have in the workplace. At the giant corporation I currently work for, I'm in the ladder fairly high up compared to most people as far as steps from the CEO, and yet I still only see the CEO on video calls with the whole company 4 times a year. The person in the office down the road from me that is blocking me from completely the thing I need to do to meet my own quarterly objective is far more tangible and legible to me than whether or not the CEO is a bum who spends all day golfing.

The fundamental difference is I take personal accountability for my own behavior and commitments, and that is one camp. The camp that doesn't see an issue with union free riders not pulling their weight are generally folks who only see accountability collectively, rather than personally, or maybe don't even take any accountability at all. Accountability is generally in short supply in our current society, so maybe its a novel thing, but I actually don't like doing a shitty job and if its due to somebody else screwing me over at work, I don't like that person a whole lot more than I don't like someone who I've hardly ever met and never talk to (CEO).

[AshleyGrant]

And I personally think that billionaires extracting untold wealth from those of us doing the actual work is a far greater societal problem than some normal folks who are lazy but are making 0.0001% of what the capitalist class is extracting from my efforts.

> The camp that doesn't see an issue with union free riders not pulling their weight are generally folks who only see accountability collectively, rather than personally, or maybe don't even take any accountability at all.

And while I don't like that the Union protects folks like this, I believe the work they do to protect hard working folks like me from being "managed-out" or even laid off so that the billionaires can make even more money next quarter is of great societal value. We as workers deserve to have security that as long as we are meeting reasonable productivity targets, we won't be kicked to the curb.

Having dealt with a manager deciding they didn't like me and doing everything in their power to manage me out (successfully), despite me meeting every goal given to me, management and the capitalists can take a long walk off a short pier for all I'm concerned.

[tristor]

> And I personally think that billionaires extracting untold wealth from those of us doing the actual work is a far greater societal problem than some normal folks who are lazy

There can be two problems (or more). We can care about two things at once (or more). The fact that we all hate bad coworkers who make our lives harder and fail to pull their wait doesn't mean we can't also hate billionaires. I'm just explaining why the former gets more heat than the latter. It's human nature to feel more intensity of a problem the closer it is to you, and we are so far removed from billionaires that while we all can and should be taking actions to steer society in a better direction, it does not have the tangible immediacy of having better quality coworkers.