GeekNights 20110224 - Unions

MrPeriod

Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss something that doesn't really exist in the tech world: Unions! Also the emptying of the big box stores (poor Media Play) and the reality of Anonymous press releases.

• Rym's Thing - Animal Beatbox
• Scott's Thing - Wolverine? Or Two Batmans?

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Cremlian

Oh boy, I wonder if this conversation will be as fun as the ones I had yesterday with a bunch of computer programmers.......

It's funny every conversation yesterday started with the person saying "Unions are bad or I don't like them" and ended with them completely backtracking on the issue.

(Guess it's the fact that I grew up in a Union household that allows me to argue this point effectively.)

Rym

I had yesterday with a bunch of computer programmers.

Computer programmers are collectively one of the least likely candidates for unionization in the world.

Matt

On the opinion that we need to throw more money at teachers: the average Wisconsin teacher makes $89,000 per year. I feel that is perfectly reasonable. Furthermore, I don't think this is a situation where throwing more money at the situation will solve things overnight.

I don't think this is a problem you can fix by throwing more money at it. I think education needs to be decentralized. Get the federal government out of it and let states and municipalities decide what is best for their local area. The education of our populace has become a political issue and that is dangerous. It needs to be wrested from the hands of partisan politicians.

Can someone explain the concept of tenure to me? I don't understand why it exists. I know a TON of teachers, and they all cite the fact that they will become unfireable as the #1 reason they went into teaching. It's causing people who are not fit for these jobs to sneak in.

Andrew

the average Wisconsin teacher makes $89,000 per year

Uhhh wtf? Definitely [citation needed].

Apreche

Can someone explain the concept of tenure to me? I don't understand why it exists. I know a TON of teachers, and they all cite the fact that they will become unfireable as the #1 reason they went into teaching. It's causing people who are not fit for these jobs to sneak in.

It exists because of tradition and history. There are no valid reasons for tenure to exist whatsoever.

Rym

There are no valid reasons for tenure to exist whatsoever.

Tenure could server, as an example, to protect experienced academics from censure should they pursue unpopular research.

TheWhaleShark

the average Wisconsin teacher makes $89,000 per year

Median is often a better representation of the situation than the mean in these cases. A handful of disproportionately higher salaries can skew the mean salary to look artificially higher.

EDIT: Aside from that, all the information I find places the "average" WI teacher salary anywhere from 46k to 51k. The median household income in WI is 51 and change thousand per year. So, no. Teachers really aren't overpaid.

Apreche

There are no valid reasons for tenure to exist whatsoever.

Tenure could server, as an example, to protect experienced academics from censure should they pursue unpopular research.

That's in a university setting. There is no purpose in elementary through high schools.

Also, academic research has so many other problems that are completely off topic.

Rochelle

Anonymous press releases.

That's a lot of crazy right there.

Apreche

That's a lot of crazy right there.

That's ALL the crazy.

Dragonmaster Lou

While unions sometimes can be corrupt or even abuse their negotiating power, overall it's better to have them than not have them. Granted, my dad was a union factory worker until his factory shut down and my mom was a teacher and member of the teachers' union, so this may influence my feelings a bit.

Rym

Granted, my dad was a union factory worker until his factory shut down and my mom was a teacher and member of the teachers' union, so this may influence my feelings a bit.

Ahh, but it also depends on where. If there weren't other factories with comparable pay for your father nearby, for example, then a union was most definitely necessary in that case.

Cremlian

On the topic of why when someone unionizes they usually force everyone into a Union. Think about if you didn't do that.

The company would try very hard to make people who didn't join the union get the same or better benefit and say "We don't need a union". You might think this is good because "hey you accomplished what you set out to do" but that would be probably for the short term and exist for however long it would take to take the Union out.

Also, Usually non-union people benefit from the work the Unions are doing at their shop. So a smart person gaming the system would stay out of the union while enjoying the benefits or join the Union once they get into trouble.

Both of these situations happens a lot so I can understand why people want their shop to be all union or none at all. (My dad was a teamster Union steward for 35 years)

I think the better way to do things is to have employee owned companies. Give every person a stake in the company and you'll get decent but not crazy benefits and good working conditions and hopefully motivation to make profits and innovation. These types of companies usually don't have the large income disparity between the workers and the executives.

Public Service Unions are even more important because they prevent the government employee's from being the wiping boys whenever someone wants to make a cut to the budget and at the same time they allow the government to pay a wage that just doesn't attract the lowest quality people. (which is definitely how conservatives would want this run)

Honestly, if Unions would just let some people who deserve to be fired, get fired it would solve most of the problems.

Starfox

let states and municipalities decide what is best for their local area.

Bad idea. See Texas board of Education, among others.

Apreche

We didn't even go into union-related organized crime or union politics.

I think the better way to do things is to have employee owned companies. Give every person a stake in the company and you'll get decent but not crazy benefits and good working conditions and hopefully motivation to make profits and innovation. These types of companies usually don't have the large income disparity between the workers and the executives.

Yeah, employee owned companies are better in many ways, but it's not like they don't have their own problems. They're vulnerable to investors coming and buying everyone's stake. It can be trouble to fire people who still own a piece. Sometimes you get some people owning a bigger piece than others. And if the company gets too big, the democratic decision making can result in stupid decisions that bring everything down. It's the stupid people voting problem.

Cremlian

Yeah, employee owned companies are better in many ways, but it's not like they don't have their own problems. They're vulnerable to investors coming and buying everyone's stake. It can be trouble to fire people who still own a piece. Sometimes you get some people owning a bigger piece than others. And if the company gets too big, the democratic decision making can result in stupid decisions that bring everything down. It's the stupid people voting problem.

I didn't say it was perfect, I just said it was better.

Cremlian

Oh a note about teachers talking about teacher unions would be taken more serious. I think there is a reason why teachers have a hard time getting on School boards....

HungryJoe

On the opinion that we need to throw more money at teachers: the average Wisconsin teacher makes $89,000 per year. I feel that is perfectly reasonable. Furthermore, I don't think this is a situation where throwing more money at the situation will solve things overnight.

Listen, this is not a question of teachers making too much money.

Before anyone says it, this is not a conspiracy theory. This isn't happening in a vacuum. This is a payoff to campaign contributors. This is the way things are being reported by reputable sources. The Wisconsin Gov took lots and lots of campaign money from super-rich people who have a specific policy to break unions.
Then, soon after elections, the republicans and the Gov slashed business taxes by millions, and are now using the budget shortfall as an excuse to break the union.

Dragonmaster Lou

Granted, my dad was a union factory worker until his factory shut down and my mom was a teacher and member of the teachers' union, so this may influence my feelings a bit.

Ahh, but it also depends on where. If there weren't other factories with comparable pay for your father nearby, for example, then a union was most definitely necessary in that case.

Well, my dad worked in a textile mill in an area that was once a textile hot spot but was in decline due to cheaper labor elsewhere in the country, let alone overseas. There were a few other mills, but not many, all were union shops to the best of my knowledge, and I'm not sure how many of them were independent of each other. They were probably union shops going way back to when the unions were first established as they were all textile mills of the sort that were notorious for child labor, dangerous working conditions, and all sorts of other abuses in the early days. By the time I was old enough to pay attention to what my dad did for a living, the textile mills in the area were in decline and they all pretty much shut down within a few years of each other. Outside of the textile mills, there really wasn't any other significant manufacturing in the area.

Jason

Your dad is Morgan Freeman.

HungryJoe

Oh wow, I didn't know he had a broom-handle Mauser in that movie. Now I have a reason to watch it.

IMHO, the broom-handle Mauser is the coolest looking sidearm ever made with the possible exception of the Walther PPK. Before anyone says it, I don't like the Luger so much.

Greg

Unions are the working man's only way to defend himself from evil capitalists. I don't like the way that many unions are run (a clause in the Boston Teacher's Union contract doesn't let schools spend donations on textbooks, but if they did then they could use money granted by the state to hire more teachers, which the BPS dearly needs; the second best teacher I've ever had was 27, and the worst teachers I've had ) but I still support them because they're fighting for a good cause. Also, if a group that gives you services goes on strike, the idea is that it will suck for you, thusly you complain, thusly whoever is in charge of paying those people will want to hire them back. If the Air Pilot's Union goes on strike 3 days before I'm going to fly to India (I don't actually have any plans to go to India, this is just hypothetical) then I'll be pissed because I want to see New Delhi, but pilots get paid shit, and they deserve better pay, so I'll wait until they can bargain for getting paid closer to what they deserve. Unions are no longer used to fight against monopolies on employment, they're now used to fight against terrible conditions. I support Wisconsin, because the unions said "okay, we understand that you're trying to balance the budget, but we want to be able to fight for these privileges again, when you have the money," but Walker turned it into a union busting thing, and so now I support the unions.

Luke Burrage

Oh wow, I didn't know he had a broom-handle Mauser in that movie. Now I have a reason to watch it.

No. No you don't. There is no reason big enough to bother watching that movie.

Cremlian

If the Governor would have dropped the getting rid of Collective Bargaining, this story would never have become national and it probably would have worked out painlessly.

Jason

Oh wow, I didn't know he had a broom-handle Mauser in that movie. Now I have a reason to watch it.

No. No you don't. There is no reason big enough to bother watching that movie.

I like that movie. That is what I have to say to you, sir.

There is a person who shoots a knife out of a gun. Need I say more?

Dragonmaster Lou

Oh wow, I didn't know he had a broom-handle Mauser in that movie. Now I have a reason to watch it.

No. No you don't. There is no reason big enough to bother watching that movie.

What movie is this?

Matt

The $89,000 figure is the cost for the state to pay for that teacher's payroll. $51,000 average direct pay and $38,000 benefits package (health plan, contributions to pension, etc.). I know this riles the teachers up like nothing else but this is also for 3/4ths of the year worth of work. I am speaking only of the large number of NJ teachers I know, but they have a health plan that is unimaginably good. They literally do not pay anything for their health insurance, they can go to almost any doctor they want, and there are virtually no copays. That is excessive.

Rym gave a very good reason for the tenure and I would support that for college professors and others actually doing research. Researchers need protection from political meddling. I don't think it's warranted for K-12 teachers though.

Simply put, you've got free health care, generous time off, a pension when almost no profession offers that anymore, and untouchable job security. Sounds to me like this would attract a lot of people who don't actually want to teach but are rather in it for the benefits.

On the topic of why when someone unionizes they usually force everyone into a Union. Think about if you didn't do that.

I don't understand how someone who wants to unionize is allowed to force somebody else into it. Sure they can try to persuade them or provide very convincing arguments, but how are they allowed to force someone else's hand? Mandatory union dues are outright theft. It also seems like a huge conflict of interest for politicians to receive huge contributions from the forced automatic payroll deduction of public sector employees. They now have a vested interest in keeping the government big & fat.

Matt

Oh wow, I didn't know he had a broom-handle Mauser in that movie. Now I have a reason to watch it.

No. No you don't. There is no reason big enough to bother watching that movie.

What movie is this?

I believe it is from Wanted, which I thought was a halfway decent summer action flick, but from what I understand I would have hated it if I had actually been a fan of the comic beforehand. I feel bad for fans when a movie comes along and shits all over something they love.

Omnutia

We should buy a Borders and turn it into a multi-floor petting zoo and re-homing centre with pet stuff shop.

Apreche

I believe it is from Wanted, which I thought was a halfway decent summer action flick, but from what I understand I would have hated it if I had actually been a fan of the comic beforehand. I feel bad for fans when a movie comes along and shits all over something they love.

I read the comic, and it's not good. If the movie pisses of fans of the comic, it's probably better.