Tirytory

I think that's right...my experience is British...but as a nurse fighting against a government that constantly wants to undermine us and freeze our pay, how else can I fight it other than be in a union where at least we have a voice. Tbh striking is rarely an option, working to rule is generally not much use but at least a union can make a noise about it and try to negotiate. The only other option is for the government to impose whatever the hell it likes.... Unions also help to fight your cause in many ways... Unfair dismissal, working conditions, sickness reviews etc etc. That's where they earn their money too and their benefit to employees although nobody wants to be in a position where they have to use such services!

scrubbedexpat091

It's all good to say the members have the power but it's not really true, an individual member has virtually no power over the union just like an individual voter has no power over anything. When a majority of workers in the union are junior and don't care, it's hard to convince them to do anything which is the case in the kinds of jobs I would have (very few unionized jobs in the low end job spectrum). Teenagers and young adults in college don't care, they have no interest in bettering the work environment they are there to collect a pay check and then move on.

Or in the case of my recent jobs, you can't exactly unionize when there are 3 or 4 employees, not enough numbers wise to make a difference and the employer has the upper hand.

Unions only work when it's a large hard to replace workforce who have common goals and a lot of workplaces no longer meet that requirement.

Take the airline for example, there were 5,000 members, the union was based 3,000 miles away from my airport and the union meetings were 3,0000 miles away as well. The 5,000 members were spread over an entire country Hawaii to New York.

Because of how the laws are written as well, strikes are not permitted (this is in the US) at airlines until a mediator releases the work group and a 30 day cooling off period has ended, so employees had no bargaining power because of this.

Those at the top in unions generally are like politicians, they spout BS and don't care about the membership.

In hotels unions are rare now, most hotels are too small to unionzie, no union is interested in 5 or 10 employees.

Employees in low end jobs have no power to negotiate, they can be replaced too easily, same in retail and just about every other lower end job, the companies have the upper hand.

When you have so many in the workforce in need of work and not enough jobs to support everyone, well your not going to have any negotiating power, its a take it or leave it world.

Unions work for say teachers or nurses because they cannot be easily replaced so the employer has to negotiate and try to work out the issues.

A hotel can place an ad and have 100+ applicants within a few hours.

Also even in a large work group a company can still easily replace you, take Alaska airlines 10 years or so ago, their baggage workers were union and the company had no desire to deal with the union anymore, they lined up an outsourcing company, set a date to change over and lay off their baggage handlers and poof got rid of all their own employees overnight, nothing the employees could do, plenty of people willing to come and work for the outsourcing company.

Other airlines are still more or less refusing to deal with their unions in the low skilled work groups, United has basically told their union they either accept what's being offered or get laid off and completely outsourced, what is a work group and union to do in that sort of scenario?

I think professionals in unions don't comprehend at times how low paid workers in low end jobs have ZERO power union or not union, the companies have all the power, the employees have to take it or leave even in a large group say retail, the company can easily replace the employees so there is no real need for the company to give into the union so they play hardball which is why you end up in 2+ year strikes in the rare strikes involving these sorts of work groups, the company can manage on a skeleton management staff to operate while the union is on strike, eventually the strikers move into new low paid jobs, and as the strike goes onto 1 year, then 2 years the union gets desperate and poof the company gets what they wan't and all returns to normal, with no net gain for the employees.

Even in unionized skilled groups if the company want's to get rid of the union they still can, Northwest Airlines let their mechanics 10 or so years ago (before they merged with Delta) go on strike, being semi-skilled and skilled employee's they figured it would be a short strike, but it wasn't, the airline lined up an outsourcing company and management to do repairs, the airline continued on as if nothing happened, a couple years down the road, the union called off the strike because it was evident the airline didn't need those mechanics as there were plenty of out of work aircraft mechanics willing to work for the outsourcing company, so again no gain.

Unions just no longer work except in very skilled, very hard to replace work groups.

I know union or not, I have no say in my pay, working conditions and so on, I either accept what the employer offer's or I leave the job, there are no other options, the employer has all the power, the employee has none.



I think people not in the low end jobs just don't understand how the world works for us. We have no power as a work group, too many people willing to do the job, too many willing to cross picket lines to give us any power over the employer.

In some countries not even skilled labor have any upper hand, in the US there is apparently a surplus of nurses. My cousin is an RN and was working in an old folks home, a large one with a lot of nurses, negotiating started, and the company just pretty much stopped negotiating after 6 months, the nurses started to work to rule for a few months, and then one day they got locked out. The company hired an outsourcing company to provide the RN's needed, the company had no issues replacing the RN's overnight, so now my cousin is out of work and looking for a job as are all her former co-workers.

If a company has no intention to negotiate and has no issues replacing a work group, what is a worker to do?

BristolUK

So essentially, small, easy to replace workforce is exploited by the business.

To me that sounds like the wrong'un is the company not the union.

Dorothy

So, how many government employees have you seen? I for one am a government employee (Western Australia Dep't of Health) who is definitely overworked. In February this year our workforce was cut by 25% with no cut in service. Who do you think picks up that 25%?

Currently I start work at 6:45 am and usually leave for home at about 4:00 pm and regularly work through my lunch break. I take phone calls from consultants & registrars after hours and on weekends and at least twice a year work a weekend at home creating the consultant roster which covers about 30 consultants across two hospitals. This is a salaried position, so I get paid for a 37.5 hour week whether I work 37.5 or 50 hours per week - no overtime pay, but we do get time off in lieu . I get the standard 4 weeks leave (Australia wide public and private sector) and yes I do have paid sick leave, but if I take it I know I will have twice the work on my desk when I get back because the DoH stopped getting temps to cover us unless we will be away for >4 weeks. The other 2 secretaries are expected to pick up each others' work when someone is away.

While I admit I do get a fairly decent salary, I also live in one of the most expensive capital cities in the world and at the end of the pay period I'm pretty much out of money. Thankfully today was payday and now I can afford to pay my phone bill and buy groceries.

Please don't dismiss all government employees as lazy underworked and overpaid based on your experience of one person. I know people who work in the service industry (hey! kind of like you do) who are lazy and rude and do as little as humanly possible. That doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that everyone who works in that industry is lazy and underworked but overpaid.

ann m

I'm not sure I agree with that. Most employees in certain cases have no choice about whether or not they have to belong to the union, and must pay fees to the union, whether they agree or not. The members can't vote themselves out of belonging to a union.

The union leadership invariably just wants more membership to make them appear "stronger" but I don't necessarily see this happening. Unions may have been a good idea 50 years ago when working legislation was lacking or non-existent. Times have changed.

At my place of employment, a strong opinion (from union sector workers) is that the union holds them back, stalls career progression and doesn't really negotiate many enhancements for them. They enter negotiations every few years with the sole intent of going to arbitration. Their leadership plays politics all the time and I just don't see that much of it truly benefits the worker.

I was able to move into an exempted position where I work, and although other jobs have come up that I would have been very interested in, and suitable for, the fact that they were in the union put me off applying.

Having said all that, recently the Alberta provincial government invited all the unions into one room together to try and cajole them to get on board with all the proposed cuts that are likely coming their way (budget is tomorrow, stand by!). I thought that was either very brave or very stupid - 20 union leaders, strengthened by their brotherhood, will be in no mood to "play ball" with the provincial government if it means cuts!

scrubbedexpat091

The union companies were not small that I was part of, they were 30,000+ employees and various other union work groups, pilots, mechanics and flight crew, baggage handler were union, but customer service was not union, and nobody at HQ was.

I can't say the union did much for my work group if you had more then 2 years with the company, we were outnumbered by a good margin by employees who had less so the contract was very heavily tilted towards new hires and employees with less then 2 or 3 years. My work group had high turnover, and our hub city's had 90-95% turnover and made up around 75% of the work group, so we in the out stations had no power, we were vocal and made our views known to the union, but they really didn't care, we were not needed for the contracts to pass.

That is what put a bad taste in my mouth with unions, the fact 1 or 2 locations could decide everything for the rest of us and because of that we suffered.

I made more pre-union then after union, had more flexibility pre-union, more vacation time pre-union, and because I was in California our labor laws were actually tougher then most of the contract, I wish I had a copy still, so many paragraphs that said not applicable for California employees. It's almost as if the union folks dealing with the contract got a copy of California labor law and just copied it and changed a couple things.

Being an airline, we were unable to do any work action since the railway labor act tied our hands and any work action would have been illegal under federal laws.

I've said some unions benefit the employees, and that unions of the past did a lot for employees, but in today's world, the only unions that really benefit anyone are the professional unions like teachers and nurses, but those unions do very little if anything for the vast majority of workers.

scrubbedexpat091

Try living in one of the most expensive non-capital city's in the world on a private sector salary of 11 or 12 per hour, your lucky if you can even eat.

Canada isn't Australia and even in my small town most muni jobs start at 20+ per hour, Provincial jobs usually pay more as do federal jobs.

20/hr is not enough to really live in this town and have a good life, but it at least pays the bills and gives freedom, 11 or 12/hr means 3 weeks of salary just for rent for a single person.

I meet government workers on a regular basis, when I go into the office they are usually just sitting chatting with one another, not exactly appearing to work all that hard....

My ex-wife was a federal employee, she freely admitted she did nowhere near the amount of work she did in the same type of job in the private sector, and my dad is a government employee, he is down to 3 days a week now as he has so many banked vacay days he doesn't have to work 5 days a week until retirement in 2 years and then gets something like 80% of his last salary.

scrubbedexpat091

Other then certain states in the US, I don't think there are many other places were joining a union is voluntarily, if you wan't the job, you have to join the union only way to not join is to not take the job, and I did that once at a hotel.

The pay was lackluster, the dues were a little steep (120 per month on 11.75/hr) and benefits non-existent, luckily I could review the contract prior to accepting the job. I ended up at the time at a non-union hotel and made 13/hr so it worked out in my favor.

In the union jobs I have had moving up within the company was really complicated because of unions, if I went from my work group to another union work group, you lost your seniority, pay, vacation and so on and had to start at the bottom of the list for that work group including pay.

If you went to a non-union work group, you kept your seniority for vacation, but not for pay or benefits.

So if you had 7 years in group A and then moved to group B you lost those 7 years for everything and basically a new employee.

Dorothy

I don't think you realise that I actually did live in Lions Bay for a number of years. I know how expensive it is to live there.

So if it's so expensive to live in Squamish why don't you and your wife look at moving somewhere less expensive? Do you really need to be in a place that's isolated with few employment opportunities? Surely there are places in the lower mainland that are less costly with better job prospects.

Michael

Spanish air traffic controllers earn £800,000... but could be replaced by automatic systems | Daily Mail Online

The average basic salary is €200,000 (£176k), but most workers double or triple this by working overtime. Of 2,300 controllers, ten were paid between €810,000 (£725k) and €900,000 last year. A further 226 were paid between €450,000 and €540,000 and 701 were paid between €270,000 and €360,000.

I suspect corruption and nepotism is rampant since many people would kill to get 1 of those 2,300 jobs. That type of income would likely make even US brain surgeons wonder if they are in the wrong job.

scrubbedexpat091

There is nowhere in the Vancouver region that is any cheaper. Vancouver, Richmond, Coquitlam, New West, Poco, Maple Ridge etc are all basically the same cost of living as where we are now, it's not until Chilliwack that costs start to go down, but the jobs are no better there, and my wife would be isolated from her mom and friends and we would not save anything significant, 100 dollars or so for rent.

Leaving BC is not an option and moving to some small remote small town up north or the interior isn't going to solve anything.

The fact is a couple cannot live on our income and wages are stagnant across the board, the wages are actually a bit higher in Squamish vs Vancouver region, but still below what is needed to actually have needs met.

Squamish is less isolated and closer to and faster to get to Vancouver then it would be from Chilliwack. I wouldn't call Squamish isolated, its only 60km's to North vancouver and takes about 55 mins unless there is an accident.

Squamish is just expensive but the entire lower mainland is.

Rents in the wack seem to have gone up as well, not really any cheaper then our current rent, and the places are not nearly as nice either.

http://abbotsford.craigslist.ca/apa/4904237249.html

http://abbotsford.craigslist.ca/apa/4919276580.html

http://abbotsford.craigslist.ca/apa/4898718388.html

This one is actually pretty nice, a basement suite, but 50 more then we pay now.

http://abbotsford.craigslist.ca/apa/4948695386.html

We looked into rents in Kelowna as well, and from what we saw, not much cheaper and even more isolated, so makes no sense to move out there either.

scrubbedexpat091

Apparently in Canada ATC make up to 145,000 a year on the high end depending on experience with a 64,000 starting wage. Trainees make 35,000 a year apparently.

Not government employees here though, Nav Canada is a private not for profit company. The system was privatized back in 1996.

I want to be an air traffic controller. What will my salary be? - The Globe and Mail

Former Lancastrian

But these are also unionized employees and represented by PSAC. So what should an ATC make? Im pretty sure a Cuban or Russian ATC would love to make that kind of money. Who should decide who earns what should it be the employer or employee. Is the job reliant on the company making a profit or providing a service.
Can you tell me the last FEDERAL Govt Department or Agency that announced a profit or a loss? They provide a service to the public and in certain areas collect user fees to offset operating costs. Nip over to the Immigration side and read about CIC processing times. Is that because the workers are lazy and incompetent or that they lost over 1200 jobs in the last round of job cuts.
My job is unique there is no real comparable job in the private sector so its hard to compare my wage. I can't legally strike as Im a designated employee and Im pretty sure as twice before they have legislated us back to work as an essential service. I have now been without a contract since June 2014 but I still show up for work. They are offering us 0.5% raise per year and they want to get rid of our sick leave which was bargained for. Nice to see the MPs and Senators about to get a 2.3% raise or in simple terms 5 x times higher than the workers.
I have never been a pro union person or active member and basically the Govt decides what I get regardless of what the Union asks for. I have 2 x choices accept it and get on with life or quit and find another job. Im very happy where I am at the moment.

Tirytory

Seriously The Daily Mail? Where they take the top earner of one profession and extrapolate it to all of the profession...they certainly apply that rule to doctors and nurses..why should the above be any different?

scrubbedexpat091

I have no issue with ATC making what they make, not an easy job by any means.

In my world the employer and only the employer sets the wage, I have no control over what my wage is, I am told what I am going to make by whatever the company sets, usually 1-3 over min. wage since hotels and related don't generally pay min. wage to night auditors.

I can't recall ever being asked how much I'd like. In my union jobs the negotiating committee and company decided on pay.