I joined a union

Veganic

CabbageCat said:

How can you tell whether you would benefit? If you're a particularly good employee you might be worth more to the business than someone else and could command better pay and conditions than average, so you could be being held back by collective bargaining.

Thought experiment:

Employers must pay enough to keep their employees.  Collective agreement gets a deal that covers all employees.  The agreement will then have to be skewed toward the more productive employees or they would leave. Therefore the agreement must be higher than average.  These higher wages then attract more productive workers pushing the average up.  

I dunno if that applies in practice.

I was in a Union for years through choice.  I thought I believed.  I have always worked for small companies so they were really of no use and not interested. I would have been better off putting the money in a pension.

mellowsun

chillidoggy said:

mellowsun said:

CabbageCat said:

mellowsun said:

Unions are often involved with pay and conditions negotiations. I believe that if staff benefit from that, they have a duty to join. Or negotiate their own pay rises of course!

How can you tell whether you would benefit? If you're a particularly good employee you might be worth more to the business than someone else and could command better pay and conditions than average, so you could be being held back by collective bargaining.

That's an interesting point to raise and I can answer that as I have experience of both at the same workplace.

At that company, they recognised the union and I was part of the union committee that negotiated the annual pay and benefits increase for staff there.

At the same time, one year I also negotiated a separate increase for my own role as I felt it was underpaid for what I was doing. 

So it is possible to do both - negotiate a standard, across the board cost-of-living increase for all staff, and have individuals negotiate their own merit-based increase. In fact, that was quite normal there.

Never heard of that one before.The only way that could happen is if you were doing a different and specific role within the company, which I assume was the case?

I've only ever known increases be applied to particular grades or posts, call them what you will, but never individuals on the same pay grade.

This was a private company, not public sector - there was no concept of pay grade.

The union negotiated the cost of living increase, not merit increases.

the only places I've worked that had pay grades for each job were public sector ones.

chillidoggy

mellowsun said:

chillidoggy said:

mellowsun said:

CabbageCat said:

mellowsun said:

Unions are often involved with pay and conditions negotiations. I believe that if staff benefit from that, they have a duty to join. Or negotiate their own pay rises of course!

How can you tell whether you would benefit? If you're a particularly good employee you might be worth more to the business than someone else and could command better pay and conditions than average, so you could be being held back by collective bargaining.

That's an interesting point to raise and I can answer that as I have experience of both at the same workplace.

At that company, they recognised the union and I was part of the union committee that negotiated the annual pay and benefits increase for staff there.

At the same time, one year I also negotiated a separate increase for my own role as I felt it was underpaid for what I was doing. 

So it is possible to do both - negotiate a standard, across the board cost-of-living increase for all staff, and have individuals negotiate their own merit-based increase. In fact, that was quite normal there.

Never heard of that one before.The only way that could happen is if you were doing a different and specific role within the company, which I assume was the case?

I've only ever known increases be applied to particular grades or posts, call them what you will, but never individuals on the same pay grade.

This was a private company, not public sector - there was no concept of pay grade.

The union negotiated the cost of living increase, not merit increases.

the only places I've worked that had pay grades for each job were public sector ones.

I gotcha.

In that case I can see it working but it'd be a nightmare to introduce if a pay structure existed (as in my place) I can see there'd be open warfare in the office, bun-fights all over the show!

I am generally in agreement with performance-based pay awards, but it has to be done carefully, and objectively, in case the twat of a boss that hates you doesn't dig the knife in. One place I worked at was like that, and it was as plain as day that some of the utter idiots who were always cocking up were being paid more than those that didn't simply because they were brown-nosing to the bosses.

CabbageCat

Veganic said:

CabbageCat said:

How can you tell whether you would benefit? If you're a particularly good employee you might be worth more to the business than someone else and could command better pay and conditions than average, so you could be being held back by collective bargaining.

Thought experiment:

Employers must pay enough to keep their employees.  Collective agreement gets a deal that covers all employees.  The agreement will then have to be skewed toward the more productive employees or they would leave. Therefore the agreement must be higher than average.  These higher wages then attract more productive workers pushing the average up.

Your logic seems pretty sound to me. Still not great for the crème de la crème (or, of course, the business) but quite possibly better for the workforce as a whole.