Quote:
Originally Posted by flamingreen
How is that in anyway unique to teachers or unions in general? I would bet eager young employees putting more into their job and being paid less than worn down senior employees counting down the minutes to retirement is happening in a majority of office buildings downtown right now.
To think that unions have a monopoly on unmotivated, lazy, not-giving-a-crap employees while private companies are able to purge such people at a moments notice is a pretty naive notion.
|
It may not be unique to union shops, but a highly successful company will typically be filled with people who earn their wage on the basis of performance, not seniority. Someone who brings positives should be rewarded, someone who goes through the motions should be turfed. In a union environment the latter isn't even an option. There's absolutely no reason to do more than the bare minimum, you can't be let go and you're guaranteed to get a raise. How does that make for an effective system?
In my line of work salary is determined by seniority for the first 7-8 years, each class year gets x amount of dollars. However, people are still rewarded for their work through bonuses and the prospect of differentiated salaries beyond that period. A strong employee will earn many times more than the guy doing the bare minimum at the end of things, and that causes people to actually bust their asses to be the best they can be.
You're right that non-union companies have their fair share of lazy unmotivated employees, but where do you get the idea that they can't be terminated at a moments notice? An at will employee can be terminated for any reason, or no reason at all, so long as there's no illegal basis/purpose. If a company is electing to retain a lazy worker it's either because they pay them a low enough wage that their laziness isn't an issue, or they don't have the ability to replace the worker with a better substitute. That's an issue of the company either being poorly managed or not having the means to make a change, there's nothing preventing them from firing a lazy employee when they wise up or achieve those means.