I wonder why unions seem to have such horrible effects in the US, while they are comparatively useful in Germany and Scandinavia? Perhaps the explanation for that will also encompass the British unions and Margaret Thatcher?
One interesting feature is that much of Scandinavia is both more socialist and more marketized than the US. For example, the Danish public-transit system is heavily state-funded, but operated by private contractors, not public-sector employees. The idea seems to be to maintain a high level of public services paid for by taxes, but to actually operate those services via market-based bidding.
The core of this is most certainly true. In North America there is an extremely adversarial atmosphere between unions and workplaces. This leads to the natural result that neither side ever wants to give an inch (the slippery slope principal), and will always try to take an inch, the game leading to the scenarios described.
There is no doubt that the union principal is sound for many professions where power is unbalanced, however the implementation is just completely broken here.
I think this is true in the US, unfortunately: the unions and upper management have very similar goals: get paid as much as possible while making as much work as possible someone else's responsibility.
Of course, this is a gross over-simplification and a generalization that is not fair to a lot of people. There are good unionized workers.
I'll give you an example: Las Vegas Convention Center. Doing some work at night setting up computers, etc. The crew that installs the carpets comes in. Their job is, quite literally, to roll out the carpeting. I watched as this unfolded. Every hour or so a supervisor would roll around on a little electric cart and would tell people that they had to take a break. The workers would lay down on the carpet and go to sleep. This ballet continued for hours. The work that could have been done in three hours too six, if not more. I asked one of them how much they made. She, very proudly replied: $45 per hour plus benefits and a pension plan. My jaw dropped.
Then there are the stories of the security guards making $150K a year to sit on a chair by a door. And the stories of the union worker refusing to lend a hand because the task is not in their union contract.
Anyhow, the issue, as I see it, is that unions have resulted in hordes of people that are devoid of any real drive to succeed and move forward in life. In unions there are few incentives to be better at what you do. In a lot of union contracts you just can't be fired. I mean, take the examples of (unionized) teachers sexually assaulting students. They don't get fired, they are transfered and "hidden" in another job. There was a recent case of a (unionized) teacher who was feeding his students cookies with semen on on top. That's beyond sick. And, as I understand it, the guy was not fired and will enjoy his 80% pension for the rest of his life.
Anyhow, I don't want to go off on that tangent, but I've just seen too many examples where unions are just destroying drive, innovation and competitiveness in this country. It's a damn shame.
If you thought you were underpaid, and you unionized to get a better rate, I bet your customers would bitch about it too and blame the union.
And at heart, your complaint is really that management did a poor job of negotiating a contract with the union.
You are, of course, absolutely correct at some level. I think that in the vast majority of cases it isn't union membership that is evil but rather the union bosses and negotiators that set out to suck the blood right out of the businesses they deal with.
It's no different than politics. The union bosses have a nice ride and want to keep it. If they keep providing for the membership they gain votes and stay in power. Damn the consequences. And, when you join unions with governments you have the perfect storm: sharks vs. weasels. The union negotiators are the sharks intent in obtaining as much as they can out of the government agency. The government folks want the votes from the union membership. So, they, effectively, pay them off to buy their votes by granting all kinds of insane things to the union sharks. How else would you have a librarian retire and be paid $250K a year for life?
These costs, be them in the private domain or government have to come from somewhere. In the case of conferences it makes everything more expensive for attendees.
Jeez, the Dean of the University Libraries in University Of Southern California pulls down $250,000, but you do know that isn't really a common thing?
Median salary for librarians is about $50,000, which isn't bad but not "retire on $250K for life".
As eli_gottlieb pointed out, many librarian positions are unpaid so the $50K figure may significantly overestimate the salary of a librarian if volunteer ones are not counted.
The WSJ published a sortable table of unemployment and salaries by degree late last year. Library Science graduates currently face an unemployment rate of 15% in the field (4th highest, out of 173 degrees) and salaries that rank in the bottom 5 amongst all degrees. http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/NILF1111/#term=
A person you or I would call a librarian can be classed anywhere from UCP V to UCP X, which covers a salary range of $40k to $110k.
When you bring a big event to a venue you are creating an immense amount of work. You're only there for a short time, you show up for a few days and then leave. They're there all the time. A janitor can make or break your conference. Can you imagine what 1500 people do to a venues' washrooms?
Before our events, we always go and introduce ourselves to the staff. We try to keep things friendly and it's always paid off for us. I hand out my business cards to every staff member from hotel clerks to cleaners to security guards. If they have any problems or questions, they have my personal cell number to call.
If we have pizza brought in for the volunteers, we always offer some to the shift workers there. We try to be pleasant and courteous to the staff ahead of time, you won't believe what a huge difference it makes.
On the 2nd day of our last event, one of the security guards bought me a screwdriver set out of his own money because he saw we needed one. Doesn't always happen but people can surprise you.
My job can be pretty stressful too, but I rarely have to deal with a washroom stall covered in filth from the most disturbing case of explosive diarrhea ever.
Likewise I'm not usually expected to escort out a distraught, screaming homeless person who is having a psychotic episode in the middle of a busy convention center.
Hakuna Matata.
Just assume someone has dealt with something like that or worse and it gets easier to be nice to them, even when they're behaving like right old pricks.
Without the unions, the managers would be running people ragged in the name of profit. So the natural counter-reaction is FU, I'll do as little as possible for the dough. Totally pathological, but in high school I had a couple of shitty minimum wage jobs that put me in that mindset.
For those interested in the dynamic, I strongly recommend the "This American Life" episode NUMMI:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/n...
It describes one of GM's worst plants switching over to a Toyota joint venture. Same people, but it went from this kind of bullshit (and worse!) to a place that everybody loved and worked hard at.
I could not agree more. Unionized workers make my life hell anytime I'm in Vegas or Philly -- With Philly being an order of magnitude worse.
The first time I worked in Philly was a rage-inducing experience. We were forced to pay an "A/V" guy $40 an hour to sit in a room all day and do absolutely nothing. I set everything that needed setup the night before the conference, but because we were filming in one of 'their' rooms, we were legally obligated to hire a local guy. And since there was nothing for him to do, that fucker would show up in the morning with his laptop, sit down in a corner, and play fucking games all day.
For the full 5 days of shooting, we only asked him to do one thing -- one -- and that was to bring us a handheld recorder we left in one of the rooms. Could he? "No, I technically can't because it's the end of the day".
Though, over the years I've learned that sending them to a corner all day is ultimately the best option. The are lazy, unreliable, and FAR too technically incompetent to perform the work asked of them.
We are often tasked with recording entire conferences. For really large events, in the area of 25-30 concurrent sessions per hour, it is generally expected that out of the hundreds of final sessions, one or two will be lost due to gear failures or non-compliant speakers. 2 out of 400 is not bad. However, using local union help? That number balloons to unreasonable. We've at times lost upwards of 30% of the sessions slated to be recorded. Which of course makes us look incapable of doing our job, which affects repeat business. It sucks.
It's infuriating as a small business to be forced to hire people that will only damage our business. It's completely anti-competitive.
The worker is likely part of the regular physical plant run by the venue and it is cheaper for the venue to have someone on staff to fix things. The electrician is on salary or steady wages.
Each $350 fee likely pays for most of the electrician's wages for that day, so if you have 20 rooms that need electrical drops, you are paying 10-20x the cost of the electrician and assistants.
You as an event organizer don't have a choice about whether you need electrical power for a room so you are a trapped consumer. And the venues take advantage of that.
This is made worse because of the economic distortion caused by Pharmaceutical or Medical conferences which are so flush with money that $350 for an electrical drop is inconsequential. There are conferences where they'll set off indoor fireworks and hire professional musicians to write songs for the event.
The venues get accustomed to event planners that write checks for every problem, so if you are running a conference for people like geeks or academics who may not be as lucrative, you pay through the nose.
OTOH, it is true that the union will aggressively police their job roles, which may have expanded over time to include things that are just silly, like moving a cart from A to B. Ideally those would be rolled back to sensible jobs that require workers, but obviously no one has an incentive to do that.
You need fiber spliced? Call the union hall and ask for that skill and they'll send you a worker that absolutely will be able to do that specific task. The benefit of outsourcing the vetting, training, and qualifications to the union hall was huge. (And better than any temp agency I've ever seen or heard about.)
In other professions, I have no doubt that silly shop floors rules (need an elevator operator to work the elevator) are terrible. I've heard the stories, many by union members that disagree.
My guess is those silly rules start as buyoffs / payola (quid pro quo during some negotation years ago) and became institutionalized.