Bingo on the last half. For your first question....No. Have you not watched Office Space recently? Hard work that only results from a fear that, any day now, you could be fired....is not honest, hard work. It's fear-based. And generally, it tends to happen to people with a short supply of talent/resources, who would really have a tough time landing a similar job for a similar wage. Unfortunately, that statement applies to a large amount of Americans (myself included?), but that's another topic.
What leads people at Union jobs to work harder and "do the right thing" is when the Company shows an interest in its employees other than simply being capital equipment in human form. When you've got a company that stops paying for coffee, doesn't replace the broken microwave, takes away the water cooler, etc...but yet you look around and still see waste literally everywhere...where's the incentive to bust it out? Why should I be sweating bullets for what amounts to a $0 bonus for me, and who knows how much for management?
The same can be said for Teachers, Police Officers, Firefighters, and other Union employees that are far from "fat and lazy". If it were up to individual Teachers to negotiate their own salaries.....holy fuck. Talk about abuse. What would be the incentive to pay ANY teacher anywhere CLOSE to what they're worth? All the negotiators would have to do is repeatedly throw the "But don't you do it for the children?" line in their face over and over, until they finally caved. Washington would have an entire state of Teachers living in 1bd apartments with little/no job security. Is that really who you want teaching your children? People living paycheck to paycheck with no security whatsoever?
Didn't think so. You may not feel the same way about the people to build your roads, or ship your packages, or save you from burning buildings, but maybe you should. If you work "in business"--finance, accounting, stock market, etc.--then of course you don't need a Union. But for the rest of us, its a great option to have out there.
What leads people at Union jobs to work harder and "do the right thing" is when the Company shows an interest in its employees other than simply being capital equipment in human form. When you've got a company that stops paying for coffee, doesn't replace the broken microwave, takes away the water cooler, etc...but yet you look around and still see waste literally everywhere...where's the incentive to bust it out? Why should I be sweating bullets for what amounts to a $0 bonus for me, and who knows how much for management?
The same can be said for Teachers, Police Officers, Firefighters, and other Union employees that are far from "fat and lazy". If it were up to individual Teachers to negotiate their own salaries.....holy fuck. Talk about abuse. What would be the incentive to pay ANY teacher anywhere CLOSE to what they're worth? All the negotiators would have to do is repeatedly throw the "But don't you do it for the children?" line in their face over and over, until they finally caved. Washington would have an entire state of Teachers living in 1bd apartments with little/no job security. Is that really who you want teaching your children? People living paycheck to paycheck with no security whatsoever?
Didn't think so. You may not feel the same way about the people to build your roads, or ship your packages, or save you from burning buildings, but maybe you should. If you work "in business"--finance, accounting, stock market, etc.--then of course you don't need a Union. But for the rest of us, its a great option to have out there.
