Activision - Raven Software Employees Vote to Form Union

Originally Posted by Irian
Same here, unions are a fact of life here (still, most employees aren't members), and I regularly ask myself why workers in the US take all this shit instead of fighting back. To me, it seems, people there have swallowed the corporate "unions are bad" propaganda hook, line and sinker. Sure there can be corruption, etc. - this can happen everywhere - but without unions, you have it automatically, with the corporations automatically winning and the employees automatically loosing. So, basically, you have the choice of making the corporations stronger by doing nothing or risk something to strengthen the workers. But to me, the US is a huge example in "bad decision making" anyway (not the only one, of course).

I'm a little confused by that. You say unions are a fact of life there, but most employees aren't members? Why not?

Originally Posted by JDR13
I'm a little confused by that. You say unions are a fact of life there, but most employees aren't members? Why not?

I suspect it's similar to the UK.

Heavy industry doesn't really exist like it used to 50 or more years ago. Most people no longer work in steel mills, coal mines, automobile manufacturers and the like, the hotbeds of Unionism.

When socialism first gained power in the early to mid 20th Century, they nationalised all these types of companies - the means of production and all that - and so Unionism was fully integrated with the governmental structure as follows:

Large-scale production generated Unions, which bloc voted for Socialism, which when in power nationalised many companies, including not only big companies but also healthcare, transport, post office, water, electricity and many more, all of which were then encouraged, quite vigorously, to have a Union.

As heavy industry has scaled back over the last 40 years, it has been replaced in the job market by mainly the service sector, tourism and financial services and the like, most of which are not dominated by nor have any great history of Unionism.

Which results in the governmental structures, such as rail, healthcare and education still being very heavily entrenched in Unionism, while wider society has drifted away from them.

For example, we'll regularly still get train strikes in the UK, but you'll never see the bank's workers go on strike. So Unionism is entrenched in almost all governmental involved areas of society, but is almost non-existent in the burger flipping type areas of society.

I'm not sure what the ratio of Union workers per employed position is nowadays, but I suspect it's a lot less than it used to be, but would probably be more than you think it is.

I'm part of a union, it works out to be about $30 a week. It's not an insignificant amount, but the union does do collective bargaining for salaries, and the salary difference between me and we do get paid $30,000+ more than some other places. Don't know how much of that is actually due to the unions bargaining, but I suspect it's more than what I pay. And of course the fees are voluntary.

Ultimately I think unions do have a lot of problems, but certain fields are prone to massive worker exploitation or just arbitrary vindictiveness so I consider them the lesser of two evils.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I'm a little confused by that. You say unions are a fact of life there, but most employees aren't members? Why not?

Because it costs money (typically like 1% of the monthly salary) and you don't have to be a member to benefit from most of the stuff the unions accomplish in negotiations.

For example, I work in the public sector (hospital), and I'm not a member of a union, but I still get the annual raise of approximately 2% to 3% that the unions negotiate with the employers because my pay is subject to the same general wage agreement that applies to all employees in the public sector regardless of union membership.

If you become a member of a union, you may have extra layoff protection and you are entitled to a variety of free counseling services related to things like laws, taxes, references, strike support or your retirement pension. This may be nice to have but it's far from mandatory (unless maybe you are a troublemaker employee who needs all the help they can get to stay employed ).

Originally Posted by Moriendor
If you become a member of a union, you may have extra layoff protection and you are entitled to a variety of free counseling services related to things like laws, taxes, references, strike support or your retirement pension. This may be nice to have but it's far from mandatory (unless maybe you are a troublemaker employee who needs all the help they can get to stay employed ).

Yeah, the general perception at my former job was that if you weren't a union member you weren't "protected". I'm sure the union people did as much as they could to promote that as being of the utmost importance.

Regardless of what the perception is, one thing is clear and that's that collective bargaining is way way stronger than individual bargaining. It's no wonder that every corporation does anything it can to kill any attempt to unionize. They know that the only way to overpower most of their employees is to divide and conquer them.

Other things brought by unions was the 5 day work-week and off weekends, in most cases. Also, an end to child labour. Again, you only need to look at the ferocious attitude most corporations have against their workers forming unions to see if they are significant or not.

Originally Posted by danutz_plusplus
Regardless of what the perception is, one thing is clear and that's that collective bargaining is way way stronger than individual bargaining.

True, but union contracts are usually a double-edged sword. There are always some people who settle for less because they think that's all they're worth. It screws the better employees who should be getting more.

I think most general workers who like them like them because of the pension options.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
I'd say good for them but unions nowadays are not a good idea. Sure it's harder to get fired but the union fees are ridiculous. One job I had was $50-$100 a week.

Yeah, so it's not that unions are not a godd idea, but unions demanding high fees are not a good idea.
In Germany the you normally have a monthly fee of 1% your gross salary. I think that's a fair amount.

Originally Posted by JDR13
True, but union contracts are usually a double-edged sword. There are always some people who settle for less because they think that's all they're worth. It screws the better employees who should be getting more.

This is an issue. I have a very high demand specialty where there aren't enough people with the training to meet the need. In most fields I could demand a higher salary for this, but the union prevents this. On the plus side they also prevent my employers from giving me excessive amounts of work to make up for the shortage of people. So as you say, double edged sword.