You can guarantee it yourself when you accept a position somewhere. But once again we have leftists in the media assuming that everybody is completely incompetent without the government intervening in every aspect of society. You can just see those so-called journalists over at the Washington Post looking at the "social democracies" like a starry-eyed school girl.
My girlfriend, who has a college degree, works for Delta as a flight attendant. After the North West merger, her colleagues collectively voted against a union because of perceived corruption and expectedly high union dues. In the year since the failed vote, there have been substantial adverse changes to vacation and sick leave rules, increased abuse of duty days by crew scheduling, and decreased medical benefits.
That's 20,000 people who thought they had guarantees on paid vacation who suddenly need to spend more of their own money to get a doctors note on holiday weekends. By the way, if you need a doctors note at 4am before going to work: You need to go to the ER... which is expensive. Meanwhile, they are being forced to work longer and longer hours for depreciating pay.
The ~9,000 people who knew to vote for collective bargaining power should not be punished by the ~11,000 short sighted ones. Furthermore, government exists to provide for the common welfare. That's its role. Those 20,000 people already pay their taxes, why should they also have to pay union dues to get basic protections for their working conditions and compensation?
This story happens over and over again in many industries.
These people aren't incompetent, yet you're suggesting that they'd have to be in order for someone to believe that they need government to protect them. In the common case, they are hardworking, educated, friendly people who are being screwed by people like you. Wether you and our elected officials are ignorant or malicious, I don't know. But what you are saying is bullshit.
Don't forget a few things. The merger meant new look at the books. If Delta was doing something inefficiently, now the merger forced them to reconsider. If things had continued as they did, you have no guarantee that your gf would have kept her job if Delta just went bankrupt instead.
Unions only benefit one group of people at the cost of another group which you usually fail to see.
The only way workers' salary/benefits go up when their real productivity goes up, which only goes up as capital accumulation goes up.
In most of the cases, unions actions either make non-union member suffer, or more experienced members benefit at the cost of less experienced members. Some people get fired, and the new union numbers suggest that overall wages went up.
Not only that, many times the hours are cut for some workers, so they have to pick extra jobs in other industries so the wages are depressed in other industries. Take for instance almost all struggling actors/actresses work as a bartender or waiting jobs in NY/LA, because of heavy unionization they just don't have enough work to work full time as an actor. So they suppress wages of waiting industry.
Nepotism is very heavily promoted in unionized industries, because if wages are artificially pushed up, then the industry entrants, cannot be chosen for a job based on how cheap they come, so other factors can be considered(like relationships with existing union members, etc). In hollywood, this is precisely the whole conspiracy about people of one specific religion/ethnic group control everything. Or this is why you have to sleep with someone to get your big break.
LOL. No, if productivity goes up the most likely outcome is that some executives will put all new money in their own bonuses and salaries. This is the country where CEOs earn >350x the common worker.
Whoa! This is a very dangerous mindset - "if election doesn't go as per my wish, majority must be stupid".
Now, there is another union establishment effort occurring. There is significant evidence that the popular opinion has swayed dramatically in favor of a union. I'm not saying that the majority is stupid, I'm saying that they decided they didn't want to pay union dues and assumed that things would stay the way they are. They didn't understand that the threat of a union was one of the few things eliminating their need for a union. That's ignorance of business realities, not stupidity in general.
My mindset isn't "the majority must be stupid". My mindset is "post-election events have proven the majority to be shortsighted."
Real life doesn't quite work that way. Many people develop skill tracks that do not easily (or at all) adapt to another skill track. When one (or a few) players monopolize the demand for said skill track, there are frequently few choices.
We, as software engineers, are fortunate in that we live in an age where people are practically bashing down our doors to give us jobs in a wide array of subfields. Not everyone is as fortunate, and indeed, it is impossible to create a population where this is the case for everyone.
It is extremely easy for us to say, to another programmer, "man that sucks, you should get a new job", the reality fo the vast majority of the population is much, much harder.
She could go to a totally different industry, but she'd be starting her career over again at the bottom.
She loves flying & traveling, so she'd probably want to go to another airline. However, Delta (one of the largest airlines) accepts a only few thousand new flight attendants per year out of many tens of thousands of applicants. Smaller airlines would be even more difficult to get a job at. All the airlines are also seniority based, so she's have to start her career over again at the bottom. Experience at other airlines wouldn't contribute one iota to her standing in a new airline.
College put her (and everybody else) in substantial debt, so she can't start a business or do anything really risky like that.
This is a story you have all heard over and over again...
If you're a well paid engineer, it might be hard for you to understand: Educated, hard working people, are constantly screwed by the system and consistently ignored by people who don't understand their plight.
That's probably something that's dictated by the union contract, just as it is with school teachers and other unionized workers. If it was up to the airline, they'd probably promote based on how well people did their jobs rather than seniority. So in this way, the unions are decreasing the ability of employees to look for jobs elsewhere.
How does an airline know how well people do their jobs?
There are thousands of flight attendants based in NYC alone. It's not uncommon for the flight leader to never lead a particular team member a second time. How are you going to have peer reviews?
The best they can do is find bad people via complaints and the best people via complement cards. Finding the best people by process of elimination isn't really a good strategy. And complement cards are only really provided by frequent flyers and in first class, which is predominantly staffed by more senior crew members.
But this generalizes too: What does it mean to be the best factory workers? For some employers, the definition would be "doesn't get sick and/or complain".
The best flight attendants are only twice as helpful and friendly as the pretty good flight attendants. Should they get paid double for something so subjective as "friendly and helpful?" Meanwhile, the best engineers are (some say) 10X (or even 100X) more productive. Yet they only make what 3X to 6X the pay on average, but only if they know how to negotiate... oh and by the way, they work in the field with the lowest supply and highest demand. Unlike effectively unskilled labor that most of the world has no choice but to do.
Just because this is the way that flight crews are scheduled today doesn't mean that it's the only way it can be done. Why can't the schedule be arranged so that the same crew and leader stay together (as much as possible) on subsequent flights? Of course, there's no reason for the airlines to try any new approaches as long as unions won't budge on seniority.
> Why can't the schedule be arranged so that the same crew and leader stay together (as much as possible)
Because...
1) Flights get delayed or canceled
2) Crew member get sick or stuck elsewhere around the world
3) Planes are of varying size with varying size crews
4) Destinations change seasonally
5) Holidays and events alter flight schedules
6) People quit
7) People move and transfer bases
Never mind that flexibility to travel is the #1 job perk that they have to offer as career bait. Flight attendants trade flights, full trips, and destinations all the time. They are in that line of work so that they can go to interesting locations, if only for a short while. You could half their pay and they would still complain much more loudly if you halved their destination flexibility.
What do you think would happen if the > 90% of workers in low mobility jobs just magically got high mobility jobs? There would be no one left doing the sorts of critical jobs that make civilized life possible for us pampered engineers.
I don't think so. If a job is critical for a functional society, "market" will ensure that it will be done. Right now, lots of critical fields have low paying jobs because there is high supply of labor.
Because if high supply of labor means low paying jobs, then you're suggesting that if everybody suddenly became skilled enough to get a high paying job, then those jobs would become low paying jobs due to labor surplus.
Either side of the hypothetical makes it clear that it is absurd to think that everybody can magically be more mobile via shear force of will.
She loves flying & traveling, so she'd probably want to go to another airline.
So why didn't your girlfriend research the industry she was going into? Just because she loves flying and traveling doesn't mean she had to make a career out of being a flight attendant.
And it's not like she was a the top of her "career" anyway as a flight attendant, so what's the big deal.
Your sense of entitlement is disturbing, but pretty common.
Your willingness to parrot the party line (specifically the word "entitlement") is disturbing, but pretty common.
I have a friend who is a fantastic programmer at a telecom in Texas. He was a contract employee before they decided to bring him on full time. They invented a position specifically for him in order to pay him what he wanted. What they would not budge on? Vacation time. One week, non-negotiable. Of course, now he's worked there for several years, and he's earned a couple more weeks.
Are you even capable of understanding that people have differences of opinions regarding the role of unions, government, etc.?
Seriously though, ad hominems aren't cool. Can we keep things at least slightly civil?
The very motive of capitalism is to make as much profit in any way possible. The only thing holding it back is law, which is made by government. The problem is the government which should be run by the people but more often than not is run by lobbyists who are owned by the corporations looking to push for more capitalism.
The answer is not less laws, it's less lobbyists.
Morals aside, that seems like a bit of a stretch.
If the US were some magical recipe for innovation and entrepreneurship, then I would expect Silicon Valleys to pop up in every major metropolitan area. Certainly, if you think that the world is big enough to support more than one if only the laws changed, then it's not much of a stretch to think that the US could too.
Perhaps New York would be a good choice. It's on the coast, at a similar latitude. It has a large, educated and diverse population. It's got access to oodles of financial capital (probably more than the Bay Area). It has the same federal laws and (I presume) similar state and municipal laws.
Why aren't tech giants popping up in New York just as much as the Bay Area?
Edit to clarify my point:
This leads to one of two conclusions: either the US is not so exceptional and Silicon Valley is an historical accident, or the world is not big enough for more than one. In either case it doesn't make sense to accuse the rest of the world of dropping the torch of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Seattle (just the city) recently mandated 3-days sick leave for all employees in businesses in the city. The sky has not fallen yet and it remains to be seen if there is less flu because the cooks and waiters aren't coughing in your $30 tech worker lunch.
The 'Europe' you are talking about is characterised by much lower levels of violence/crime and poverty than the United States. One could argue that these are more important metrics.
But in either case, the argument deserves more than the jingoistic rebuttal you offered.
Of course, in practice, richer workers are able to negotiate for both paid vacation and paid holidays. It’s poorer workers who can’t take any time off. This table shows how it actually works out across the economy.
So when McDonald's offers you a job, you can't ask them about vacation time?
Some people don't have the luxury of choosing which job they take. Sometimes there's only one.
The question is, what should happen to that group of people?
Everyone on this site can guarantee it because we are highly skilled workers or entrepreneurs and most of us make a very decent living. In fact, the higher I've climbed the more vacation I have received.
There are many in this country cannot guarantee it.