Unions - join or not?

Sparky191 · 8 Mar 2006 at 09:25

Have you ever worked in a company with unions or had experience with them? Personally I never had any dealings with them and I wouldn't have a high regard for them. The idea is fine, the practise less so. I have had friends who have had dealings and their experiences are mixed, but the majority negative.

Anyway I currently find myself working in a highly unionised place and theres likelyhood of industrial action shortly. I'm wondering if, in such an enviroment, would be it better to in or out of the union. I'm thinking that it might be a tad awkward if I'm not and most other are if theres action. Also what impact this might have in dealings with people in the future. I have no idea if I'll be in this place for a long time or not.

Not looking for a rant or soundbites. Just some musings on it.

Sparky191 · 8 Mar 2006 at 09:57

Good points.

Gilly said:
...Nothing like performance related pay, the awful staff are treated the same as the best staff.

I don't think that performance related pay/benefits and a union have to be mutally exclusive. In fact that might lead to a better enviroment all around. However you can't always be at your best, for a variety of reasons and its those times you need not to be shafted. They shoot race horses.

At the same time you don't want slackers to be protected.

Sparky191 · 8 Mar 2006 at 12:07

Gilly said:
If performance related pay and unions aren't mutually exclusive then it would cause them a LOT of work to take each individual person on a case by case basis. It would be time and cost prohibitive. Basically, it wouldn't work.

And then with the poor staff that don't deserve a payrise, what would happen? They'd complain to the Union hierarchy about their rep because they didn't get them a payrise!

In my mind Unions are like Communism. The perfect society, but never really works in a real world example.

I don't get you mate. If the union agrees performance metrics for everyone en masse then I don't see the problem. Why would you have to do it individually? Only in the case you have everyone doing a completely different job perhaps.

Sparky191 · 8 Mar 2006 at 12:09

Well it could be a sale targets, number of calls resolved, amount of work done, etc.

Sparky191 · 8 Mar 2006 at 12:25

Gilly said:
No, you weren't listening. They negotiated everyone a flat rate. Everyone in their building got 1.5%

We've crosswired mate. I'm not taking about YOUR specific case but the practise of performance related pay in general.

Sparky191 · 8 Mar 2006 at 12:28

I think were going along the route of is the union, and its reps, a good or bad. Ultimately its not the union model itself that really the issue but is it run in sensible way by people with common sense.