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hooah posted:This may not be a small question, but I don't really want to wade into D&D about it. If a given state is right-to-work (meaning non-union members don't have to pay dues), what's stopping the unions from just not providing any benefits to non-members? Of course the unions can't tell employers "don't pay non-members as much", but they can surely refuse to provide any services their members enjoy. Does this already happen? It's not really that simple. I've never been a union member (I live in Fl which is right-to-work), but as I understand it, while they may provide some discrete services to individual members as needed, the vast majority of what they do is working with state/federal lawmakers to ensure companies can't engage in abusive employer behavior, and ensure the sort of benefit you can expect to have in a 1st-world country. Things like guaranteeing X hours and Y benefits for full-time employees, close oversight of working conditions, etc. Those are all things that everyone benefits from, regardless of membership, and in right-to-work states that means that unions are doing the same work with less support from its beneficiaries, so their resources get stretched thin and it's harder for them to work. One of the biggest issues is job security. In most fully unionized companies/industries, employers have to provide a valid reason for terminating employees, while employees can quit whenever they want. Obviously this is completely unfair and imbalanced, so in the absence of union pressure (caused by, say, right-to-work policies) most companies revert to at-will employment, where either party can terminate the employment contract at any time for any or no reason (if one gives a reason it has to be a valid one, but you don't have to give one). Naturally, this is a much more fair arrangement and everyone benefits! Except as anyone with two brain cells to rub together can realize, companies have much more leverage in this situation; they can let a worker go because of declining business, desires to shrink the company for immediate financial gain, the phases of the moon, etc; they don't need any one employee, as they've got thousands waiting in line to take their place. The employee, otoh, generally really needs that job, it's real drat hard to find employment these days, most people have a lot of debt/bills to pay off, and if you've got a job you're gonna stay there until you've got something else lined up. The worker needs every cent they can get, but the company doesn't really give a gently caress and can ruin their life at any time. TL,DR: It's not so much that unions won't protect non-members, more that they can't. Right-to-work often leads to unions collapsing and typically at-will employment follows very soon after. Fender Anarchist fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Mar 30, 2016 |
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Enourmo posted:It's not really that simple. I've never been a union member (I live in Fl which is right-to-work), but as I understand it, while they may provide some discrete services to individual members as needed, the vast majority of what they do is working with state/federal lawmakers to ensure companies can't engage in abusive employer behavior, and ensure the sort of benefit you can expect to have in a 1st-world country. Things like guaranteeing X hours and Y benefits for full-time employees, close oversight of working conditions, etc. But... But... Job creators 
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Mar 30, 2016 21:25
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I'm just slightly conservative enough to actually agree with that, it is sort of ridiculous that employment contracts are only enforceable on one side. I've also been a freelance worker my entire working life, so the idea of not being able to leave a job whenever seems totally ridiculous to me as is not being able to fire people when you need to.
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Mar 30, 2016 21:45
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bongwizzard posted:I've also been a freelance worker my entire working life, so the idea of not being able to leave a job whenever seems totally ridiculous to me as is not being able to fire people when you need to. Except it's to prevent things like your boss firing you because you start dating the woman he likes. It's not meant to prevent bosses from firing lovely employees, it's to protect employees from lovely bosses, you're still allowed to leave in non-at-all countries, you just have to give warning so the company can replace you if you're vital. At-will is just there so the employee knows how tenuous their job is. I mean, congratulations that you're not in the situation, but you are not everyone, and not everyone has your relative luck.
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Mar 30, 2016 22:17
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LivesInGrey posted:I was too young to watch the OJ Simpson case when it took over everything 20 or so years ago and I don't have cable to watch whatever channel is airing the current mini-series on it. Is there a good true crime book on it that makes its bias relatively clear from the beginning? I mean, anything Ann Rule wrote is going to be written favoring the victim and most other books on controversial cases like the JonBenet Ramsay one make their opinion (the parents did it, etc) clear from the beginning and I'd hope anyone writing about the OJ case did something similar. Outrage is my favorite book on the subject. Bugliosi, famous for prosecuting Charles Manson, is very upfront about OJ's guilt and it's a fascinating book and true to the title, will outrage you that OJ got away with it. http://www.amazon.com/Outrage-Five-Reasons-Simpson-Murder/dp/0393330834
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Mar 30, 2016 22:28
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Tesseraction posted:Except it's to prevent things like your boss firing you because you start dating the woman he likes. It's not meant to prevent bosses from firing lovely employees, it's to protect employees from lovely bosses, you're still allowed to leave in non-at-all countries, you just have to give warning so the company can replace you if you're vital. At-will is just there so the employee knows how tenuous their job is. Yeah if someone's actually doing a lovely job, this should be provable, after all.
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Mar 30, 2016 23:23
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The incompetent employee that the well-meaning boss can't fire because of regulations has always struck me as being welfare queen levels of mythical.
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Mar 30, 2016 23:28
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HMS Boromir posted:The incompetent employee that the well-meaning boss can't fire because of regulations has always struck me as being welfare queen levels of mythical. I mean, I've been stuck with lovely coworkers on union gigs before, which is one if the reasons I went management as soon as I could. I am in favor of unions, generally. I do believe that unions should protect jobs through the power of collective action, but at the same time be prepared to have their bluff called if an employer decides it is cheaper to just replace everyone. I'm also a little commie enough to think the government should provide make-work jobs for anyone without the inclination, intellect, or training to do a job where they provide enough value to the employer to not need a union to them.
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Mar 30, 2016 23:34
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HMS Boromir posted:The incompetent employee that the well-meaning boss can't fire because of regulations has always struck me as being welfare queen levels of mythical. Have you worked much within the public sector?
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Mar 31, 2016 00:09
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I know a plenty of terrible people who can't seem to get fired even when there aren't any employee protections.
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Mar 31, 2016 00:18
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flowinprose posted:Have you worked much within the public sector? I have, and frankly when someone's actually a lovely employee it's not hard to get it documented.
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Mar 31, 2016 00:33
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Did we ever figure out BSE in America or are we going to solve the social security issue by just letting everybody get it?
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Mar 31, 2016 01:08
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fishmech posted:I have, and frankly when someone's actually a lovely employee it's not hard to get it documented. I had a supervisor who had to jump through a lot of hoops to get an employee fired. She would come to work and basically watch movies on her laptop all day. It took about six weeks to get her out.
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Mar 31, 2016 01:20
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dokmo posted:Aside from water, what's the cheapest thing (on a per pound basis) available for purchase in a large city? That depends on volume, but if you're talking about at least a truck, load screenings (crushed stone) is pretty drat cheap and really heavy.
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Mar 31, 2016 01:37
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fishmech posted:I have, and frankly when someone's actually a lovely employee it's not hard to get it documented. Documented? Sure that's easy. Gotta document it like 15 times to actually fire someone, though. Mister Kingdom posted:I had a supervisor who had to jump through a lot of hoops to get an employee fired. She would come to work and basically watch movies on her laptop all day. It took about six weeks to get her out. Basically this. We had a pharmacy technician who was no-call no-show for about 2 months... about a month or so into this, we discover (not from him, but from a secondary source) that he was in jail for failure to pay child support. They moved to implement the proper procedures for firing him, and he managed to weasel out of it by claiming alcohol dependence, went into alcohol rehab for ANOTHER 12 weeks, came out and still had his job. They stuck him on office duty poo poo because they could not fire him, and he ended up basically coming in and sitting at a desk and reading a newspaper for about a month before they were able to pawn him off to another department. This was 3 years ago and he still works here full time. On top of this, he was easily the worst employee we had to begin with. He did the absolute bare minimum to get his work done in order to avoid being fired.
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Mar 31, 2016 01:48
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Whoever moved that problem employee into a different department deserves to get fired as well. What a tool.
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Mar 31, 2016 01:51
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HMS Boromir posted:The incompetent employee that the well-meaning boss can't fire because of regulations has always struck me as being welfare queen levels of mythical. I have worked with people who literally fell asleep at their desks and they could not be fired. I don't recall exactly why, but it was probably some mix of "Manager doesn't give a gently caress" and "We need headcount so someone higher up makes more money"
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Mar 31, 2016 03:05
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What's the easiest way to convert a djvu file to a pdf? Google shows me some online conversion tools but some of the links look shady. Any suggestions?
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Mar 31, 2016 03:58
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HMS Boromir posted:The incompetent employee that the well-meaning boss can't fire because of regulations has always struck me as being welfare queen levels of mythical. I've worked at a couple of union shops, and at least 50% of the workforce anywhere I've worked/experienced has been "I'll do the bare minimum", with another 10 or 20% being the watch movies on the laptop all day types. I will say that it's pretty easy to get ahead if you're one of the remaing 20-30% who is actually doing 70 or 80% of the work, which worked out well for me, but to say that incompetence doesn't rise under union protections seems a little bunk to me.
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Mar 31, 2016 04:12
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photomikey posted:I've worked at a couple of union shops, and at least 50% of the workforce anywhere I've worked/experienced has been "I'll do the bare minimum", with another 10 or 20% being the watch movies on the laptop all day types. I will say that it's pretty easy to get ahead if you're one of the remaing 20-30% who is actually doing 70 or 80% of the work, which worked out well for me, but to say that incompetence doesn't rise under union protections seems a little bunk to me. In my experience (within federal employment), the shittiest employees frequently end up being promoted because they have more seniority. The reason for this as far as I can tell is that the people who were actually good at their jobs eventually get disgusted with working with incompetent coworkers and move on to another job elsewhere. The lovely employees end up never leaving because they have backed themselves into a corner where they wouldn't be able to get another job, but they also can't be fired. Eventually they end up having the most seniority and therefore are the most "qualified" to take higher level positions. It's an endless cycle where the current managers are the previous lovely employees who then hire and promote future lovely employees.
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Mar 31, 2016 04:35
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Question 1: I have a Kindle Keyboard with a worn-out USB port. It still charges fine, but I can't get my computer to recognise it as a media device any more so I can't copy files onto it. Mostly I just email files to it, which works fine, but I have a particularly large document I want to transfer that's too big to attach to an email (Gmail says I have to upload it to Google Drive and send a link, which won't work, Calibre just fails to send it, and my ISP email address says the attachment is too large). Is there another way to get it on there? Question 2: My Windows 10 computer suddenly has something called "DLNA Server" listed under "Network locations" in "This PC". Its icon is a penguin and it seems to contain only empty folders. What is this? HMS Boromir posted:The incompetent employee that the well-meaning boss can't fire because of regulations has always struck me as being welfare queen levels of mythical.
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Mar 31, 2016 04:50
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Tiggum posted:Question 2: My Windows 10 computer suddenly has something called "DLNA Server" listed under "Network locations" in "This PC". Its icon is a penguin and it seems to contain only empty folders. What is this? DLNA is basically a media server, for example Plex. A penguin could be some Linux server app or something.
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Mar 31, 2016 05:00
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What is the deal with wiki-how illustrations? Is it just like, one guy? Is there a style-guide that says that illustrations must be pastel?
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Mar 31, 2016 06:24
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I successfully used this guide to create some deep style images a week ago. Unfortunately it's gotten popular and the GPU instances in the region where the AMI is hosted, Frankfurt, are now 10x the price of other regions. I tried to follow the instructions to copy the AMI to a cheaper region but when I try it says "You do not have permission to access the storage of this ami". It seems really weird that I can run an instance of it on EC2 and see all the files in it but can't copy it. Is there some way to copy it that I'm missing? I have no idea what I'm doing or even what an AMI is so please explain it to me like I'm five. Also, is there some thread in the Caverns of COBOL or SH/SC that might be able to help? I don't know enough to know what thread this would fit in. edit: I found an inferior AMI in a cheaper region that Works but I remain curious about a solution. Gobbeldygook fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Mar 31, 2016 |
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Mar 31, 2016 06:50
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There was a quote I saw in an article sometime in the past few months. It was from around the advent of the first newspapers, and about how they were going to ruin society in some way or another; can anyone refer me to that quote, or a better thread to ask about it? EDIT: If it helps, I think the article was a response to something about how Twitter/cell phones/texting is ruining society. Ham Equity fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Mar 31, 2016 |
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Mar 31, 2016 06:52
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Enourmo posted:It's not really that simple. I've never been a union member (I live in Fl which is right-to-work), but as I understand it, while they may provide some discrete services to individual members as needed, the vast majority of what they do is working with state/federal lawmakers to ensure companies can't engage in abusive employer behavior, and ensure the sort of benefit you can expect to have in a 1st-world country. Things like guaranteeing X hours and Y benefits for full-time employees, close oversight of working conditions, etc. Here's my particular horror story dealing with union. And this was in a right to work state, the union fought against contract workers, then made a deal with the company to collaborate to gently caress over contractors. It was a basic contract to hire. Sort of a temp, but if you're good at your job for 6 months then you become a full time employee. That's how it normally works. In this case, the contract workers were treated like poo poo, with ever changing schedules, no sick days or vacation days allowed, and forced to work holidays. Because the union had set in stone the ratio of contractors to employees, about the only time someone could graduate from contractor to an employee was when someone retired. And that didn't happen too often. Some of my co-workers had spent years 5 years doing their jobs well in the vain hope of actually becoming an actual employee. There was a union rep in the office. And her general attitude was that she didn't care about corporate excesses if you weren't a union member. And ignored the issue that it was practically impossible to become a union member. So yeah gently caress unions. They don't do poo poo for actual poo poo upon workers. They're the ultimate embodiment of "gently caress you got mine". So why would I voluntarily give them a dime? thrakkorzog fucked around with this message at 10:29 on Mar 31, 2016 |
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Mar 31, 2016 08:37
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Thanatosian posted:There was a quote I saw in an article sometime in the past few months. It was from around the advent of the first newspapers, and about how they were going to ruin society in some way or another; can anyone refer me to that quote, or a better thread to ask about it? This might be a harder search than you think. This argument goes all the way back to Socrates who insisted learning to read (writing being a recent innovation) would kill people's ability to think. I have heard some version of this (currently focusing on attention span and Twitter, or the death of the monoculture) , but whatever, at every step e-mail, cell phones, IRC, chat rooms, BBS, etc of the modern things. But this has been a non-stop issue for older folks for the history of mankind. Comic Book Code is a less current but still still modern moral panic. Radio, television, education and property rights for women, freeing the slaves, separating voting rights from holding land. Pick and issue and you can find a conservative (even though many don't realize they are yet) who 'recognizes' the death of _______ society.
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Mar 31, 2016 11:04
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EVERYTHING I SAY ABOUT JAPAN OR LIVING IN JAPAN IS COMPLETELY WRONG, BUT YOU BETTER BELIEVE I'LL 
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thrakkorzog posted:So yeah gently caress unions. They don't do poo poo for actual poo poo upon workers. They're the ultimate embodiment of "gently caress you got mine". So why would I voluntarily give them a dime? Isn't this more an argument against right-to-work states and their curtailing of the unions? I mean, yeah, that union is loving over non-members, but it looks more like the ratio is set in stone because that's the highest ratio they could get from the bosses and by setting it in stone prevents the bosses lowering the number of full-time employees with in-work benefits. I mean to provide a counter-example, we (the UK) only have poo poo like statutory sick pay and paid vacation because unions fought for it in the early 1900s (and onwards). Please remember that trade unions in the United States are some of the weakest in the developed world. Not as bad as South Korea, but pretty bad.
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Mar 31, 2016 11:20
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Where did the stereotype of police officers like donuts come from?
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Mar 31, 2016 11:24
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Tesseraction posted:Isn't this more an argument against right-to-work states and their curtailing of the unions? I mean, yeah, that union is loving over non-members, but it looks more like the ratio is set in stone because that's the highest ratio they could get from the bosses and by setting it in stone prevents the bosses lowering the number of full-time employees with in-work benefits. Not really, I had worked at a number of non-union shops before that, and I had 2 weeks of vacation plus sick leave. The startups that were trying to exploit my skills were much better places to work than union shops.
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Mar 31, 2016 11:49
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thrakkorzog posted:Not really, I had worked at a number of non-union shops before that, and I had 2 weeks of vacation plus sick leave. The startups that were trying to exploit my skills were much better places to work than union shops. Two weeks of paid vacation a year is a joke. I get five weeks + a whole bunch of bank holidays and can barely tolerate my 30h/week thanks to that.
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Mar 31, 2016 11:59
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Ras Het posted:Two weeks of paid vacation a year is a joke. I get five weeks + a whole bunch of bank holidays and can barely tolerate my 30h/week thanks to that. Yeah, in Britain it's 25 working days, bank holidays, sick leave up to like, 3 months with (some level of) pay. I mean congrats on your 10 working days, I guess.
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Mar 31, 2016 12:02
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gradenko_2000 posted:Where did the stereotype of police officers like donuts come from? Long shifts, working all night, usually the only places open were Dunkin Donuts since they have a bunch of 24/7 branches. Cops would go in, get coffee, grab a donut.
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Mar 31, 2016 12:21
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Tesseraction posted:Yeah, in Britain it's 25 working days, bank holidays, sick leave up to like, 3 months with (some level of) pay. Sickpay can depend on your contract in hourly paid jobs: had a member of staff who was having operations for 3 months and she didn't earn a penny as she wasn't quite eligible for SSP due to the hours she was contracted for, even though she worked five days a week.
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Mar 31, 2016 13:49
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Ras Het posted:Two weeks of paid vacation a year is a joke. I get five weeks + a whole bunch of bank holidays and can barely tolerate my 30h/week thanks to that. Americans really have the capitalism Stockholm syndrome hard.
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Mar 31, 2016 13:54
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I'm a union member in one job as a part time worker and a nonunion member in a second, non unionized job. Union job had a recent case where the managers wanted to implement a uniform (that employees pay for of course). An employee posted in social media something to the effect of "I'll wear a uniform when the CEO does." And was immediately taken upstairs and told to recant her post. The union guns came out and the company apologized and there were no consequences, and no uniform. Meanwhile, in non union job a staff member posted a picture of his broken hand from a faulty piece of equipment in the workplace, which is generally full of broken poo poo that hurts people all the time. He was fired, not even given a chance to recant, because he harmed the "vision and fundraising ability" of the company. We all now live in fear of mentioning the company in any way on social media. And these are just the tiniest, most insignificant examples, the union really improves every aspect of the job in pretty obvious ways as well as totally hidden ones.
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Mar 31, 2016 14:08
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Loopoo posted:Long shifts, working all night, usually the only places open were Dunkin Donuts since they have a bunch of 24/7 branches. Cops would go in, get coffee, grab a donut. The stereotype far predates Dunkin' Donuts, but that's the same general idea. When manufacturing was a bigger thing in America there were more people working overnight shifts, so there were more coffee and donut type places open to serve them, so naturally cops, who also work overnight shifts were congregating at those places as well.
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Mar 31, 2016 14:29
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HMS Boromir posted:The incompetent employee that the well-meaning boss can't fire because of regulations has always struck me as being welfare queen levels of mythical. There was a woman at my workplace who, for 20+ years, had shown up drunk to work, and twice in just the past year(!) was taken away in handcuffs by the police after she had a screaming drunken meltdown in public view. She was also in a position that gave her about maybe 5 hours of actual work a week, and instead of helping out in other departments or initiating projects to take on, when she wasn't drunk, she browsed the web or read at her desk all day and outright verbally refused to do any of that, and no one could/would make her. She was also deeply unpleasant and many of my coworkers were afraid to talk to her, because she could be loudly nasty. She was also nasty to patrons, who had complained about her to administration many times. Oh yeah, this is a library, and she worked the circulation desk, so all of this bullshit went on in full view of our patrons. But we're unionized, and no one wanted to be the one to make a formal complaint about her, because our union rep was her friend. AND her own boss, a tenured faculty member, is a lovely employee and actually shows up to work maybe 2-3 days a week at most, so he never did poo poo about her, and never would because then he'd come under fire. AND his boss, a member of Admin, was also completely useless as a manager and let all kinds of poo poo slide because she didn't want to take care of it! It took that Admin member retiring and an interim replacement who gives no fucks to write up a formal grievance on the drunk coworker, depose her worthless manager and take his supervisory duties away, hire a new manager in a brand new position custom designed to handle personnel issues exclusively, and relentlessly pursue her grievance, until finally, FINALLY FINALLY getting the okay to fire the drunk coworker. It took the interim admin replacement 7 months to get this done. E: flowinprose posted:In my experience (within federal employment), the shittiest employees frequently end up being promoted because they have more seniority. The reason for this as far as I can tell is that the people who were actually good at their jobs eventually get disgusted with working with incompetent coworkers and move on to another job elsewhere. The lovely employees end up never leaving because they have backed themselves into a corner where they wouldn't be able to get another job, but they also can't be fired. Eventually they end up having the most seniority and therefore are the most "qualified" to take higher level positions. It's an endless cycle where the current managers are the previous lovely employees who then hire and promote future lovely employees. Rabbit Hill fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Mar 31, 2016 |
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Mar 31, 2016 15:36
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Its almost like unions, like every other human endeavor, are of a quality reflected by the people running them.
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Mar 31, 2016 15:41
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your 👏 bosses 👏 interests 👏 are 👏 not 👏 your 👏 interests 👏
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