Quote:Okay, but the situation Kodiac describes where management decides to eliminate jobs and 'combine' old jobs together happens all the time in non unionized settings. Lets talk about a setting I am intimately familiar with, hospitals.


Nurses, Nursing Assistants, and Respiratory therapist all work together and have some overlapping job functions. Management gives us the old 'teamwork' and pitch in and some of us take it seriously and try to help. Well one day a nursing assistant calls in sick. So we are short, but all the nurses and the remaining tech pitch in and have an unbelievably busy day, but get most things done. Management says 'hey, they got it done without that tech, they don't really need them.' So they cut that job.


Now the remaining tech and RN's end up with more work and heavier loads every day. Suddenly what was a one time event becomes the new norm. Now the remaining RN's and the couple techs that are left are getting wore out trying to compensate continually for extra load they were not supposed to have. So more Nurses start calling in cause they are exhausted, callbells don't get answered cause people are stretched too thin. And then units start having crazy turnover due to continuously low staffing. Management starts having meetings telling everyone that 'you can't pass a room with a light on, you need to do more teamwork.'


But answering callbells, and grabbing stuff was the job of the tech they got rid of, so you tell them, and they say how they are 'working on it' and you just need to 'get through.' Now the nurses have to prioritize and decide whether getting somebody a drink is more important than giving antibiotics to a septic patient (easy choice of course, but you know what happens to patient satisfaction). The one remaining tech is doing vitals for the whole floor and can't answer any callbells. The secretary you had is also gone cause 'anyone can pick up a phone why would we pay someone for that,' but no one has time to answer phones anymore cause they have no support. RT only secondarily cover your floor anymore cause 'nurses can give breathing treatments too' so he needs to intubate an ICU pt he has on his other two floors, rather than giving a scheduled neb to your patient.


And suddenly your hospital has super low patient satisfaction, poor patient outcomes, and depending on the region (people in rural areas sue less) getting sued by angry family. Looks like teamwork didn't work too well with bad management. This is much more the norm than the abnormal in nonunion hospitals.


The argument that since employees might have some downtime if you have a designated person for non specialized jobs, so you shouldn't have anyone at all, is a fallacy. Non specialized jobs still need to be done, and if you have specialized people doing non specialized jobs then they aren't doing (haha) their job, that you are probably paying them more to do. That's bad management, and yet many corporations do it. Teamwork does not automatically lead to a good business if you have poor management. Even the jags last season showed us that.


I am not pro union, but it is easy to see why they exist.

Great post, HR86. Provides insight that everyone understands, even if they aren't in that field.


This comes back to why unions exist at all. Bad management. You could say that bad management is job security for unions.


Its easy to see how once you volunteer to do more, it seems like you keep getting asked to do more and more until you break. It shouldn't be that way. Each worker should have to give a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. If they don't pull their weight, they should be subject to the discipline process. If management isn't totally inept, it shouldn't be hard to provide the evidence needed to push discipline through, even in a union environment. People do get fired from union jobs.


I'll add that Lazy union workers do exist, just like lazy non-union workers who only have a job because their daddy golfs with the business owner on Sundays. A large majority of craft employees pull their weight, though.

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