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Comment by nerder92 | Hacker News Reader

As a EU citizen, it always surprise me how the popular retoric about unions is to associate it with lazyness. I think is just undermining of what union actually really are.

I personally found this as a first step toward a perception shift about tech from which we can all benefit.

Unions for instance can help fight this constant non extra paid "after-hours" working culture that force you to do all-nighters and all this kind of crazy shits just because the industry is seen as a bunch of nerds that are that passionate about programming that stay long hours just for the sake of love/passion for the job itself.

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My sister worked at a charter school. Because of previous labor violations teachers were not allowed to show up before class started (they could only be there for the official class hours). They also were not allowed to stay late after class.

My sister thought this was ridiculous, how was she supposed to setup her classroom and answer questions afterwards? Unfortunately her boss warned her that coming early and staying late was not allowed.

Once unions start adding work rules like this you'll see a push to disable after-hours emails, banning weekend work, etc. So while the trope of the lazy union worker is deeply flawed, there are some problems for workers who want to go above and beyond (and while most non-tech workers don't get extra compensation for unpaid overtime, tech workers who go above and beyond actually are rewarded with equity)

Would a potential solution to this be to negotiate with the Unions to raise pay but increase hours worked to include the before/after class setup times? I don't know the particulars, but these sort of disputes can often arise due to a perceived slight on pay increases or similar, which leads to things going a bit batty.

> Because of previous labor violations teachers were not allowed to show up before class started

So the school was expecting teachers to come in early to setup, not paying them for those hours and punishing those that didn't. This isn't a problem created by labor unions, it is a problem created by exploitative companies. And when the company decided how they would address the issue they decided that pre-class preparation wasn't worth paying for.

This seems like a punishment inflicted by management, not a concession negotiated by the union.

Europeans and union members are so lazy, with their 40 hour work weeks and paid time off and extra compensation for being on-call.

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