IT doesn’t traditionally gafe unions in the USA. Teachers are unionized here and are one of the most powerful political forces. They are also a likely reason why so many people here don’t like unions.
And in the EU it is probably why they have free healthcare, high minimum wage, work weeks of 34-38 hrs, welfare, 8 hour work days, overtime after, high proportion of part time workers, and highest productivity per hour in Germany.
But yeah, unions, hate what you gotta hate. I personally hate long hours for bullshit pay.
I pay 9% of my income in Poland for the public healthcare I couldn't use due to enormous queues. Therefore I pay subscription to the private medical provider, pay for dentistry, for all the medicine prescribed by any doctor(public as well).
What percentage of income typical software spends for medical insurance and bills?
In the US? Having to go to the hospital, having an illness etc can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Other countries pay more per paycheck, we pay a lot more per bill.
Going to the hospital would bankrupt me even as a relatively well off software engineer and even with my decent (work-tied) healthcare I still have months of wait time. In order to get into a doctor I made an appointment in February for a visit in September.
Well, it's not really free healthcare, at least not here in Finland. You're expected to spend at least an hour every day exercising with all the time we have off here to make sure you don't get super sick in the first place. In practice then we actually work 45 hours a week every week.
Would love a deeper explanation of this! Is it voluntary or required for all employers or what? There seems to be a Finnish program called Fit For Life originated in 1995 but I can’t tell if it’s compulsory and/or effective?
US median income, even disposable income after all the medical/housing costs, is higher than all of the large EU countries (France, Germany, etc). So if anyone has bullshit pay, it’s the Europeans.
The list below represents a national accounts derived indicator for a country or territory's gross household disposable income per capita (including social transfers in kind). According to the OECD, 'household disposable income is income available to households such as wages and salaries, income from self-employment and unincorporated enterprises, income from pensions and other social benefits, and income from financial investments (less any payments of tax, social insurance contributions and interest on financial liabilities)…
This indicator also takes account of social transfers in kind 'such as health or education provided for free or at reduced prices by governments and not-for-profit organisations.'
The USA wallops even tiny, rich Luxembourg. There are some not-insignificant Covid-related distortions here, will be interesting to see the 2022 numbers.
The opposite is true in my experience. The stats are very clear but Europeans never seem to accept that maybe their perception is skewed, it's a weird form of nationalism.
(I'm not American, it's just something that I keep observing recently. Europeans have a much harder time reflecting on issues Europe has. It reminds me of Americans back in the early 2000s.)
A lot of European countries have a higher household debt load than the US. Compared to Europe, especially the richer parts of Europe, the US compares favorably:
Median household net worth (assets - liabilities, not including NPV of future cash flows from personal labor income) in the US is $192,900 according to the latest Fed data: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm
Until fairly recently (in historical terms) civil servants were not allowed to form unions in the US. Nowadays the civil service is a stronghold of unionisation in the US.
> Moe points out that Roosevelt, "an ardent supporter of collective bargaining in the private sector, was opposed to it in the public sector."[11] Roosevelt in 1937 told the nation what the position of his government was:
>> All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters. Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable.[12]
Of course, how typical of FDR to regurgitate a bunch of mumbo jumbo. Good for thee but not for me. In the end the federal government is just like any other employer.
No it’s not. The reason being the public sector Union gets large enough to pick winners. The winner is the person who approves their contract and budget and is likewise incentivized to grow the Union more to secure more votes.
That famously powerful voting bloc, federal civil servants. You always hear about what the federal civil servant lobby is pushing for and the concessions they squeeze out of anyone who's running for office.
Teachers unions are pretty notorious, rightly or wrongly. And other civil service unions have significant impacts as well. (Not sure why you single out federal civil servants compared to other levels of government?)
> Teachers are unionized here and are one of the most powerful political forces.
This does not seem compatible with all the stories I've heard about underpaid teachers having to buy material for their students out of their own pocket. I'm sure it somehow ends up both being true in a twisted way, but it still sounds strange.
If you think about it, American teachers are the most obvious example of why unionization doesn't necessarily improve anything at all. An average class of 24 costs just short of $700k per year to the citizens of New York City and the cost is rising rapidly every year. Meanwhile, teachers are supposed to be underpaid, overworked and exploited.
I guess teachers are supposed to take solace in the fact they are very powerful.
That is an absurd conclusion to draw without looking at the details of what the various organizations and institutions actually structurally do in practice.
It's not like the whole system is a magical black box that just does what it does and there is no way of knowing what is going on.
"Buying things out of pocket" was such a smart tactic from the union. Have each teacher buy a box of pencils for a few dollars and complain loudly so people think you are spending much more.
They do in many cases, it doesn't help because it's such an easy PR story. They just ask for more. The objective can never be "stop this group from wanting more money" because human desire is infinite.
So when one of my high school teachers had a projector bulb die but they couldn't afford any more bulbs that year, she should've just bought one and submitted it to the county for reimbursement? Or when I repaired their laptop carts with duct tape and prayers, they should've just expensed new ones?
That's incredible, I can't believe they were all were so stupid! /s
I guess that wasn't one of the many cases that I was referring to, where, when given a supply budget, the union immediately claimed it was too small. It was increased, they still claimed it was too small and wanted more. You'll notice the omnipresent demand of "more" never a specific amount mentioned unless it is something wildly impractical for anchoring purposes.
Of course, no matter what budget is promised, it can be misspent, and the tendency for administrators of all sorts of organizations to only spend on splashy new things they can brag about and not cover boring operations and maintenance of existing equipment is well known.
IT Teacher (professor) part of a union here.
Unions in the U.S. are incredibly weak. U.S. unions can barely represent, much less collectively bargain. That's why software engineers keep failing to unionize.
My union wants to pay tenured CS/IT folks less than non-tenured English Professors. English profs here had the biggest raise in decades, going from 62k to 80k.
They want to pay IT/CS profs 69k. Where I am (Seattle) that's considered Low Income...
Software engineers fail to unionize because most of them know it’s a bad deal. Tenure in and of itself has 0 to do with your value as a software engineer.
But yes your point is right on in that the unions are useless. In large part because they are a corrupt themselves and their grift is taking a vig on employment.
I think you're doing downvoted because you put words into the parent comments now that weren't there. They didn't say unions are useless. They said American unions are weak. The implications are very different.
"Unions of type T are weak, therefore all Unions are without purpose" is not logical.
A poor implementation of a system is not a case against the system, particularly when other countries have proper implementations of the system.
(BTW I'm discussing things with the opinions given by others. I certainly don't think unions, even in the US, are particularly weak or useless. The president had to take action to prevent a particularly useful and impactful railworkers' strike last year. Teachers in Virginia got good pay raises after a strike several years ago. Writers and actors are fighting for their long-term survival against large studios.)
> Teachers are unionized here and are one of the most powerful political forces.
I cannot even imagine what sort of lens you'd have to be looking through to identify teachers as "one of the most powerful political forces" in the United States.
Certainly the awesome political power they wield hasn't helped to increase salaries (compare them to any other credentialed profession requiring a college degree), or prevent charter schools from eating away at public school funding, or to restore some of the pension benefits that were taken away in the eighties. [0]
[0] https://hackertimes.com/item?id=32542324 (I am delighted to report that the "Nobody wants to teach anymore" comments are up to 666 points exactly at this moment in time)
That means the teacher unions, public schools, and/or lawmakers in CA kind of suck. (I lived there but I never had kids there, so I don't have any deep knowledge on the matter, except that #3 is really obviously true)
It doesn't mean teachers are "one of the most powerful political forces" in the United States. It's like a tangent within a tangent so I guess there's not much more I'd say about that claim, other than... it's a really weird, obviously wrong thing to assert.
>Certainly the awesome political power they wield hasn't helped to increase salaries (compare them to any other credentialed profession requiring a college degree), or prevent charter schools from eating away at public school funding, or to restore some of the pension benefits that were taken away in the eighties.
I cant speak for the nation at large, but this doesnt track with my experience in california.
Public school funding has massively increased. It has gone from somewhere around 9K/student in 2012 to $24k/student in 2023. With an average class size of 29, that is $700k per class per year.[1] They are rightly scared of charter schools and private school vouchers.
California teaching is a decent profession on average, but compensation is extremely seniority based, with senior teachers payed 2X new hires, while doing essentially the same job (~$50k vs $100k) .[2] this is an internal struggle that most US unions have. Based on US union law, there is one union while in Europe employees can shop between multiple. As a result, US unions suffer from a tyranny of the majority which will sacrifice minority member interests for that of the majority.
I have a friend in a public utility union where the union fought against WFH for IT workers, simply because the field workers were jealous.
