10 ms·

Here’s the problem I have with this discourse: > Apple also withheld new benefits from unionized locations, drawing outcry from labor advocates. I am pro-unio

by 35208654 3y ago

Here’s the problem I have with this discourse: > Apple also withheld new benefits from unionized locations, drawing outcry from labor advocates. I am pro-union. Fight for your rights! But understand what you’re getting into: once you engage with a third party (union) to negotiate for you, you will only get what you bargain for. The animus around unequal benefits ought to be directed to their union leaders, who need to do their fucking jobs and bargain for the benefits. That’s what you pay them for! It’s up to the individual and the collective to figure out how and whether unionizing benefits them in the context of their employer-employee relationship. Eyes open: the company has interests too. Mischaracterizing those interests is a disservice when you’re at the negotiating table.

shrike 3y ago
Starbucks did the same thing, arguing that - “Wages and benefits are mandatory subjects of the collective bargaining process,” the company said. It rejects the union’s argument that it could offer the wage and benefit enhancements to unionized stores at any time. The NLRB countered - "...the NLRB said Starbucks violated labor law by offering raises and benefits — including increased training, career development opportunities, expanded tipping and even looser dress code policies — only to nonunion stores."* Source: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/starbucks-shortchanged-union-workers-in-seattle-labor-board-says/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/starbucks-shortchanged..., @ https://archive.ph/CrZTh https://archive.ph/CrZTh
- 35208654 3y ago
  Is there an update to this story? The story doesn’t cite what law the NLRB claimed was violated, only that doing what starbucks did interfered with their ability to organize. The final paragraph mentions that the case is yet to be heard: >The regional complaint will be heard by an administrative law judge at the NLRB. Once a decision is reached, either side can appeal to the full National Labor Relations Board in Washington. Full disclosure: I’m operating on logic, not an expertise on labor law. I am genuinely interested in expanding my understanding of labor laws and process.
  - yardie 3y ago
    https://www.seattletimes.com/business/starbucks/starbucks-illegally-refused-to-bargain-with-wa-and-or-stores-nlrb-says/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/starbucks/starbucks-il... Unfortunately, by reading the first article I'm paywalled from reading the second. But the NLRB judge found them guilty is in the first paragraph.
    - 35208654 3y ago
      From reading the article you linked, it appears they violated the law by refusing to negotiate, not by giving non-union workers benefits that they didn’t give to union workers.
    - firstlink 3y ago
      The NLRB process is to first find the company guilty no matter what, and then look for convenient soundbite-ready justifications later.
bittercynic 3y ago
I think the discourse makes a lot of sense if part of the purpose is to show the extent of the imbalance of power between Apple and its retail employees - even if they are able to unionize. Apple is so enormous, and so powerful, that it's going to take more than some locations unionizing to start to level things out.
DubiousPusher 3y ago
Agreed. Virtue capitalism is the sociological illness that defines our times. A widespread belief in corporate paternalism is the spoonful of sugar that helped the pill of de-unionization go down in the first place. We fight for unions on the basis that absent better labor laws the corporation requires an adversary to keep it from exploiting workers. It's hypocritical to insist upon a union and then get mad about a lack of corporate generosity. I think the ultimate solution is a economic system which fundamentally recognizes that workers are involved with enterprise and deserve an ownership and some power stake in it. That might create the opportunity for this relationship to become one that is more cooperative. At least that way the struggle might get a little less existential as every corporation would be on an even footing. I think a good portion of corporate resistance to unionization is about fearing they will have to compete with an un-unionized company.
- 35208654 3y ago
  > I think the ultimate solution is an economic system which fundamentally recognizes that workers are involved with enterprise and deserve an ownership and controlling stake in it. That might create the opportunity for this relationship to become one that is more cooperative. I believe this is how Germany does it. I may be getting the details a bit off, but I believe corporate boards have to have a worker’s/union representative as a member. This makes total sense to me.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  Very nice comment. > I think a good portion of corporate resistance to unionization is about fearing they will have to compete with an un-unionized company. Who is Apple actually in competition with?
  - DubiousPusher 3y ago
    Google, Samsung, some other company in a market they aren't in today but may be in 10 years from now.
- brightlancer 3y ago
  > I think the ultimate solution is a economic system which fundamentally recognizes that workers are involved with enterprise and deserve an ownership and some power stake in it. Our economic system _permits_ that; is there something you think is specifically handicapping employee-owned businesses?
hiddencost 3y ago
Part of the negotiation process between unions and their employers happens in the public sphere. Apple plays hardball, by blaming the union for Apple's failure to extend benefits. The union blames apple for union busting in the public sphere. The hope is that Apple's attempt to kill the nascent union will be so unpalatable to people like us, that apple will suffer more harm than benefit and agree to work with the union on an honest basis. There's no requirement that the relationship between a union and management has to be hostile; unions are just democratic self governance structures for workers. Having a worker-led say in how the business is run can be good for the business, as unions can push back again short term business incentives. (E.g., protecting against the cost cutting measures that led to the catastrophic train derailment in Palestine, Ohio.)
- catiopatio 3y ago
  > There's no requirement that the relationship between a union and management has to be hostile How could it not be? It’s inherent to the adversarial nature of the relationship between management and a union.
  - uni_rule 3y ago
    Workers don't exactly decide to collectivize in situations where the status quo is comfortable and they already feel like their voices are heard. It's almost a sense of "if there isn't a workplace democracy we'll make it one". If anything an adversarial relationship with upper management precludes attempts to organize as it implies they failed their boots on the ground in some way and the problems got so fad they felt there was absolutely zero "internal" channels available to get the changes they want heard, let alone enacted.
    - scarab92 3y ago
      Apple employees aren’t unionising because of poor working conditions in Apple stores. It’s generally considered one of the best employers for retail staff already. They are unionising because Apple has money and the employees would like some more of that money. No judgement, but both sides here are simply motivated by financial self-interest.
kadoban 3y ago
> once you engage with a third party (union) to negotiate for you, you will only get what you bargain for. The animus around unequal benefits ought to be directed to their union leaders, who need to do their fucking jobs and bargain for the benefits. That’s what you pay them for! It could be this, or it could be Apple playing tricks. If Apple just waits for the union to negotiate something and then immediately gives a better version to the non-union workers and refuses to negotiate afterwards, then that's not the union's fault.
- prepend 3y ago
  Yeah, but it’s good for workers. The union members sacrifice for the greater good and are still benefiting the worker (just jot them). So they are resulting in better worker benefits. Or maybe Apple is just doing what they were going to do anyway to attract and retain workers and they are restricted from changing the benefits agreed to by the union bargaining agreement.
  - kadoban 3y ago
    > Yeah, but it’s good for workers. The union members sacrifice for the greater good and are still benefiting the worker (just jot them). So they are resulting in better worker benefits. In the short term it's good for the workers. After it kills off the union, it'll go back to being bad.
    - oh_sigh 3y ago
      But anyone can still unionize at any time, so it isn't much lost.
      - anigbrowl 3y ago
        LOL, LMAO It's hard to form a union in the US. Companies do things like retaliating against organizers, messing with the election process, forcing workers to sit through mandatory HR briefings etc. Most unionization attempts are fought by companies who refuse to give countenance to the idea that employees should be able to delegate the business of negotiation. American business practice is to keep employees feeling as if they're in competition to each other for the affections of management. The moment workers try to avail themselves of the benefits of a corporate model (specialization, delegation, efficiency) it's treated as some sort of betrayal.
guelo 3y ago
The timing of the new non-union perks points to it being illegal anti-union vote tampering. They announced them days before the Oklahoma store's union vote. Apple is also spreading misinformation about the perks, messaging that it's impossible for union employees to receive them, and using them as a scare tactic ahead of other store votes. Also, Apple suspiciously announced these new benefits via news media instead of internal communication. You can read the union making these points here https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/23209996-core-letter-to-tim-cook/?embed=1&responsive=1&title=1 https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/23209996-core-lett...
bwestergard 3y ago
The workers are the union, and workers elected by their peers will be bargaining. Source: I am a software engineer in the same union, currently serving on a bargaining committee.
- rvnx 3y ago
  Then instead of being able to negotiate by yourself or freely pool together with other employees, you will have to go through the union. Which means it becomes a political game where the union is going to help you only if you help them. Essentially adding a third-party that lives on the monster. And then the bosses get used to these unions and they know personally the people who represent the union, etc. And you end up with a negotiator that will negotiates his own best interests.
  - illiarian 3y ago
    This is such a bleak and very American view. Especially ironic is that the (frankly quite few) benefits and rights that workers have in the States are thanks to unions.
    - phpisthebest 3y ago
      >>Especially ironic is that the (frankly quite few) benefits and rights that workers have in the States are thanks to unions. This is very slanted view of how labor developed in the US to simply give unions 100% of the credit, it is very revisionist history and not completely factual. Unions can claim some credit, but to say they are solely responsible for "benefits and rights that workers have" is false. Hell most "benefits" today (health insurance, vacation time, etc) are more directly attributive to wage price controls during WWII than they are to unions. as employers had to get creative with compensation to attract workers as they could not simply raise raw wages
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - 3y ago
anonymouskimmer 3y ago
> The animus around unequal benefits ought to be directed to their union leaders, who need to do their fucking jobs and bargain for the benefits. If you don't actively support your union by signing petitions, being a member (US unions can no longer collect funds from non-members, so membership rates matter), and voting to take action, there's not much the leaders can do. There's still some things the leadership can do, but it's typically not action that will get the company to do anything. > you will only get what you bargain for Negotiating in bad faith does happen. At my job management quickly agreed to, and paid out early, our bargaining. And then a couple months after it was signed gave out out-of-cycle inflation raises to non-represented employees. The first time this has happened that I know of. And my union can't do anything about it for a few years because our contract is signed. Management said that all raises, even this special out-of-cycle one, was subject to negotiation. Even though our bargained contract stated that out-of-cycle raises could happen without negotiation. Heads they win, tails we lose. Edit: changed "month and a half" to "couple months" because it was shortly after, but I may be a bit wrong about the timing.
- junofan 3y ago
  That’s what you signed up for.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    No, I didn't sign up for disrespect and lies. Regardless, even this is better than the alternative I had before (years working as a permatemp, no yearly raise above 2%, even with outstanding ratings). At least now I can vent my ire at the boss without getting fired.
    - junofan 3y ago
      I think it’s disingenuous to paint a decision in the framework you agreed upon as “disrespect and lies.”
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
anigbrowl 3y ago
union leaders, who need to do their fucking jobs and bargain for the benefits You're assuming good faith bargaining, which is frequently absent. It's strategic for the company to reward non-union employees to hurt the union, even if it's economically inefficient to do so. The reality is that the only leverage the union has is litigation, moral conflict (complaining about it publicly), or going on strike. The union's resources are a function of its members' resources. Apple is rich, the union members are relatively poor, and Apple intends to keep it that way. A lot of modern labor strategic dilemmas stem from Samuel Gompers, a 19th century trade unionist who was deeply anti-socialist. He fought against affiliations of unions across industries (as promoted by more socialist groups like the IWW), arguing that laborers within each industry had more interests in common with their employers than workers in other industry. He argued instead for a federalized model of labor, which gave rise to the modern AFL. The reason this matters today is that the fragmentation of trade unions makes coordinated industrial action virtually impossible even where unions exist, because few companies are vertically integrated. Trade unions thus have only one site (their own workplace) to exert leverage because they're unable to coordinate with workers in other areas (ie farther back on the supply chain), and sympathy strikes are now generally illegal. In theory the AFL was supposed to fill this coordination function. In practice it served as an administrative brake on the ambitions of more assertive organizers, and kept workers at their posts during World War 1 to ensure the successful participation of the USA in that war (which was opposed by more socialist minded organizations). Intentionally or not, Gompers institutionalized the fragmentation of the labor movement in the US, and practitioners of corporate divide-and-conquer tactics have been quietly thanking him ever since.
nimbius 3y ago
I'm a Union diesel mechanic and I've seen this before. Its an undercut strategy used by companies who have lost a union battle but don't understand what that means, so they're told by consultants that if they just piss hard enough in the union cheerios people will see the difference and give up their membership. Sometimes they do it to undercut new membership but its been my experience unions often unintentionally make the membership bar pretty hard to begin with. Ultimately the union bargains for benefits above and beyond what companies already give their non union employees. The tactic winds up putting some companies over the barrel during union negotiations sometimes as it means whatever we win gets extended to an already well compensated non union workforce. Thank a union carpenter for your 40 hour work week ;)
- waboremo 3y ago
  Yep, they aren't new tactics. Might be new to tech union figures, so it might be beneficial for them to take a great look at physical labor unions and the various strategies that will be deployed to potentially weaken numbers. There's decades and decades of these little tactics to learn from!
  - colechristensen 3y ago
    But also now any time Apple does anything positive for its nonunion employees it will be cast in the light of being an anti-union tactic. I’m happy about workers fighting for rights union or not… but what gets me irritated is rhetoric that focuses on the union itself and not the workers. In this case… The union agreed to its contract, people should stop whining about what they agreed to. You want now you have to wait until it’s time to renegotiate. You wanted a deal that only gets updated periodically when the contact is up, that’s the mechanics of what you agreed to.
    - waboremo 3y ago
      Well, it is an anti-union tactic. You're selecting which employees get [new positive thing] based on whether or not they're in a union. If they want to avoid such light they should only base the additions off department/team. I do agree that they should be focusing on renegotiations, what's currently happening is they're letting a lot of reporters get away with framing the situation as a "loss" for the union. I don't fully grasp your irritation regarding the focus on the union itself, it's supposed to be a representation of the workers as a baseline.
bluefirebrand 3y ago
There is nothing stopping companies from offering the same benefits to union employees that non-union employees are getting. It is not 100% automatically on the union to chase the company for literally everything. That only winds up being the case when the company is actively trying to weaken the union. Any union that automatically rejects offered benefits from the company unless they are part of yearly negotiations or something is just a bad union. Maybe many such bad unions exist. I think it's much more likely that companies are very aware that they can make your unions look bad by offering benefits to non-union employees and when asked they pretend to be helpless. Obviously it's the big mean union that is not working.
- 35208654 3y ago
  >There is nothing stopping companies from offering the same benefits to union employees that non-union employees are getting. Sure, but it could be construed as promising benefits to employees to discourage their union support, which violates the NLRA [0] and indeed was cited by Merck, Sharp & Dohme Corp. in the dispute against them back in 2019 [1]. No company with a sane legal department would treat a counterparty differently than the contract stipulates, even if such a treatment could be considered 'preferential.' The legal risk is just too great. [0]https://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/human-resources/article/national-labor-relations-act-violations https://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/human-resources/article/nation... [1]https://ogletree.com/insights/nlrb-explains-when-granting-benefits-to-nonunion-employees-and-withholding-the-same-from-union-workers-can-be-lawful/ https://ogletree.com/insights/nlrb-explains-when-granting-be...
  - bluefirebrand 3y ago
    > it could be construed as promising benefits to employees to discourage their union support, which violates the NLRA [0] Ok, but there is nothing stopping them from approaching the union with the proposed new benefit.
mannyv 3y ago
Unions are advocates and adversarial by default, because there's no cost to being so and plenty of benefits. In addition, the union doesn't care about one unit of workers. They will happily sacrifice one store, or one industry, to further their goals - which may or may not be aligned with the workers. Their actions and their rhetoric shows that's the case. If workers agree to be a means to some other end then that's great. But most of them aren't smart enough or aware enough to understand this, from what it seems. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

shrike 3y ago

Starbucks did the same thing, arguing that - “Wages and benefits are mandatory subjects of the collective bargaining process,” the company said. It rejects the union’s argument that it could offer the wage and benefit enhancements to unionized stores at any time. The NLRB countered - "...the NLRB said Starbucks violated labor law by offering raises and benefits — including increased training, career development opportunities, expanded tipping and even looser dress code policies — only to nonunion stores."* Source: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/starbucks-shortchanged-union-workers-in-seattle-labor-board-says/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/starbucks-shortchanged..., @ https://archive.ph/CrZTh https://archive.ph/CrZTh

35208654 3y ago
Is there an update to this story? The story doesn’t cite what law the NLRB claimed was violated, only that doing what starbucks did interfered with their ability to organize. The final paragraph mentions that the case is yet to be heard: >The regional complaint will be heard by an administrative law judge at the NLRB. Once a decision is reached, either side can appeal to the full National Labor Relations Board in Washington. Full disclosure: I’m operating on logic, not an expertise on labor law. I am genuinely interested in expanding my understanding of labor laws and process.
- yardie 3y ago
  https://www.seattletimes.com/business/starbucks/starbucks-illegally-refused-to-bargain-with-wa-and-or-stores-nlrb-says/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/starbucks/starbucks-il... Unfortunately, by reading the first article I'm paywalled from reading the second. But the NLRB judge found them guilty is in the first paragraph.
  - 35208654 3y ago
    From reading the article you linked, it appears they violated the law by refusing to negotiate, not by giving non-union workers benefits that they didn’t give to union workers.
  - firstlink 3y ago
    The NLRB process is to first find the company guilty no matter what, and then look for convenient soundbite-ready justifications later.

bittercynic 3y ago

I think the discourse makes a lot of sense if part of the purpose is to show the extent of the imbalance of power between Apple and its retail employees - even if they are able to unionize. Apple is so enormous, and so powerful, that it's going to take more than some locations unionizing to start to level things out.

DubiousPusher 3y ago

Agreed. Virtue capitalism is the sociological illness that defines our times. A widespread belief in corporate paternalism is the spoonful of sugar that helped the pill of de-unionization go down in the first place. We fight for unions on the basis that absent better labor laws the corporation requires an adversary to keep it from exploiting workers. It's hypocritical to insist upon a union and then get mad about a lack of corporate generosity. I think the ultimate solution is a economic system which fundamentally recognizes that workers are involved with enterprise and deserve an ownership and some power stake in it. That might create the opportunity for this relationship to become one that is more cooperative. At least that way the struggle might get a little less existential as every corporation would be on an even footing. I think a good portion of corporate resistance to unionization is about fearing they will have to compete with an un-unionized company.

35208654 3y ago
> I think the ultimate solution is an economic system which fundamentally recognizes that workers are involved with enterprise and deserve an ownership and controlling stake in it. That might create the opportunity for this relationship to become one that is more cooperative. I believe this is how Germany does it. I may be getting the details a bit off, but I believe corporate boards have to have a worker’s/union representative as a member. This makes total sense to me.
anonymouskimmer 3y ago
Very nice comment. > I think a good portion of corporate resistance to unionization is about fearing they will have to compete with an un-unionized company. Who is Apple actually in competition with?
- DubiousPusher 3y ago
  Google, Samsung, some other company in a market they aren't in today but may be in 10 years from now.
brightlancer 3y ago
> I think the ultimate solution is a economic system which fundamentally recognizes that workers are involved with enterprise and deserve an ownership and some power stake in it. Our economic system _permits_ that; is there something you think is specifically handicapping employee-owned businesses?

hiddencost 3y ago

Part of the negotiation process between unions and their employers happens in the public sphere. Apple plays hardball, by blaming the union for Apple's failure to extend benefits. The union blames apple for union busting in the public sphere. The hope is that Apple's attempt to kill the nascent union will be so unpalatable to people like us, that apple will suffer more harm than benefit and agree to work with the union on an honest basis. There's no requirement that the relationship between a union and management has to be hostile; unions are just democratic self governance structures for workers. Having a worker-led say in how the business is run can be good for the business, as unions can push back again short term business incentives. (E.g., protecting against the cost cutting measures that led to the catastrophic train derailment in Palestine, Ohio.)

catiopatio 3y ago
> There's no requirement that the relationship between a union and management has to be hostile How could it not be? It’s inherent to the adversarial nature of the relationship between management and a union.
- uni_rule 3y ago
  Workers don't exactly decide to collectivize in situations where the status quo is comfortable and they already feel like their voices are heard. It's almost a sense of "if there isn't a workplace democracy we'll make it one". If anything an adversarial relationship with upper management precludes attempts to organize as it implies they failed their boots on the ground in some way and the problems got so fad they felt there was absolutely zero "internal" channels available to get the changes they want heard, let alone enacted.
  - scarab92 3y ago
    Apple employees aren’t unionising because of poor working conditions in Apple stores. It’s generally considered one of the best employers for retail staff already. They are unionising because Apple has money and the employees would like some more of that money. No judgement, but both sides here are simply motivated by financial self-interest.

kadoban 3y ago

> once you engage with a third party (union) to negotiate for you, you will only get what you bargain for. The animus around unequal benefits ought to be directed to their union leaders, who need to do their fucking jobs and bargain for the benefits. That’s what you pay them for! It could be this, or it could be Apple playing tricks. If Apple just waits for the union to negotiate something and then immediately gives a better version to the non-union workers and refuses to negotiate afterwards, then that's not the union's fault.

prepend 3y ago
Yeah, but it’s good for workers. The union members sacrifice for the greater good and are still benefiting the worker (just jot them). So they are resulting in better worker benefits. Or maybe Apple is just doing what they were going to do anyway to attract and retain workers and they are restricted from changing the benefits agreed to by the union bargaining agreement.
- kadoban 3y ago
  > Yeah, but it’s good for workers. The union members sacrifice for the greater good and are still benefiting the worker (just jot them). So they are resulting in better worker benefits. In the short term it's good for the workers. After it kills off the union, it'll go back to being bad.
  - oh_sigh 3y ago
    But anyone can still unionize at any time, so it isn't much lost.
    - anigbrowl 3y ago
      LOL, LMAO It's hard to form a union in the US. Companies do things like retaliating against organizers, messing with the election process, forcing workers to sit through mandatory HR briefings etc. Most unionization attempts are fought by companies who refuse to give countenance to the idea that employees should be able to delegate the business of negotiation. American business practice is to keep employees feeling as if they're in competition to each other for the affections of management. The moment workers try to avail themselves of the benefits of a corporate model (specialization, delegation, efficiency) it's treated as some sort of betrayal.

guelo 3y ago

The timing of the new non-union perks points to it being illegal anti-union vote tampering. They announced them days before the Oklahoma store's union vote. Apple is also spreading misinformation about the perks, messaging that it's impossible for union employees to receive them, and using them as a scare tactic ahead of other store votes. Also, Apple suspiciously announced these new benefits via news media instead of internal communication. You can read the union making these points here https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/23209996-core-letter-to-tim-cook/?embed=1&responsive=1&title=1 https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/23209996-core-lett...

bwestergard 3y ago

The workers are the union, and workers elected by their peers will be bargaining. Source: I am a software engineer in the same union, currently serving on a bargaining committee.

rvnx 3y ago
Then instead of being able to negotiate by yourself or freely pool together with other employees, you will have to go through the union. Which means it becomes a political game where the union is going to help you only if you help them. Essentially adding a third-party that lives on the monster. And then the bosses get used to these unions and they know personally the people who represent the union, etc. And you end up with a negotiator that will negotiates his own best interests.
- illiarian 3y ago
  This is such a bleak and very American view. Especially ironic is that the (frankly quite few) benefits and rights that workers have in the States are thanks to unions.
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    >>Especially ironic is that the (frankly quite few) benefits and rights that workers have in the States are thanks to unions. This is very slanted view of how labor developed in the US to simply give unions 100% of the credit, it is very revisionist history and not completely factual. Unions can claim some credit, but to say they are solely responsible for "benefits and rights that workers have" is false. Hell most "benefits" today (health insurance, vacation time, etc) are more directly attributive to wage price controls during WWII than they are to unions. as employers had to get creative with compensation to attract workers as they could not simply raise raw wages
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - 3y ago

anonymouskimmer 3y ago

> The animus around unequal benefits ought to be directed to their union leaders, who need to do their fucking jobs and bargain for the benefits. If you don't actively support your union by signing petitions, being a member (US unions can no longer collect funds from non-members, so membership rates matter), and voting to take action, there's not much the leaders can do. There's still some things the leadership can do, but it's typically not action that will get the company to do anything. > you will only get what you bargain for Negotiating in bad faith does happen. At my job management quickly agreed to, and paid out early, our bargaining. And then a couple months after it was signed gave out out-of-cycle inflation raises to non-represented employees. The first time this has happened that I know of. And my union can't do anything about it for a few years because our contract is signed. Management said that all raises, even this special out-of-cycle one, was subject to negotiation. Even though our bargained contract stated that out-of-cycle raises could happen without negotiation. Heads they win, tails we lose. Edit: changed "month and a half" to "couple months" because it was shortly after, but I may be a bit wrong about the timing.

junofan 3y ago
That’s what you signed up for.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  No, I didn't sign up for disrespect and lies. Regardless, even this is better than the alternative I had before (years working as a permatemp, no yearly raise above 2%, even with outstanding ratings). At least now I can vent my ire at the boss without getting fired.
  - junofan 3y ago
    I think it’s disingenuous to paint a decision in the framework you agreed upon as “disrespect and lies.”
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago

anigbrowl 3y ago

union leaders, who need to do their fucking jobs and bargain for the benefits You're assuming good faith bargaining, which is frequently absent. It's strategic for the company to reward non-union employees to hurt the union, even if it's economically inefficient to do so. The reality is that the only leverage the union has is litigation, moral conflict (complaining about it publicly), or going on strike. The union's resources are a function of its members' resources. Apple is rich, the union members are relatively poor, and Apple intends to keep it that way. A lot of modern labor strategic dilemmas stem from Samuel Gompers, a 19th century trade unionist who was deeply anti-socialist. He fought against affiliations of unions across industries (as promoted by more socialist groups like the IWW), arguing that laborers within each industry had more interests in common with their employers than workers in other industry. He argued instead for a federalized model of labor, which gave rise to the modern AFL. The reason this matters today is that the fragmentation of trade unions makes coordinated industrial action virtually impossible even where unions exist, because few companies are vertically integrated. Trade unions thus have only one site (their own workplace) to exert leverage because they're unable to coordinate with workers in other areas (ie farther back on the supply chain), and sympathy strikes are now generally illegal. In theory the AFL was supposed to fill this coordination function. In practice it served as an administrative brake on the ambitions of more assertive organizers, and kept workers at their posts during World War 1 to ensure the successful participation of the USA in that war (which was opposed by more socialist minded organizations). Intentionally or not, Gompers institutionalized the fragmentation of the labor movement in the US, and practitioners of corporate divide-and-conquer tactics have been quietly thanking him ever since.

nimbius 3y ago

I'm a Union diesel mechanic and I've seen this before. Its an undercut strategy used by companies who have lost a union battle but don't understand what that means, so they're told by consultants that if they just piss hard enough in the union cheerios people will see the difference and give up their membership. Sometimes they do it to undercut new membership but its been my experience unions often unintentionally make the membership bar pretty hard to begin with. Ultimately the union bargains for benefits above and beyond what companies already give their non union employees. The tactic winds up putting some companies over the barrel during union negotiations sometimes as it means whatever we win gets extended to an already well compensated non union workforce. Thank a union carpenter for your 40 hour work week ;)

waboremo 3y ago
Yep, they aren't new tactics. Might be new to tech union figures, so it might be beneficial for them to take a great look at physical labor unions and the various strategies that will be deployed to potentially weaken numbers. There's decades and decades of these little tactics to learn from!
- colechristensen 3y ago
  But also now any time Apple does anything positive for its nonunion employees it will be cast in the light of being an anti-union tactic. I’m happy about workers fighting for rights union or not… but what gets me irritated is rhetoric that focuses on the union itself and not the workers. In this case… The union agreed to its contract, people should stop whining about what they agreed to. You want now you have to wait until it’s time to renegotiate. You wanted a deal that only gets updated periodically when the contact is up, that’s the mechanics of what you agreed to.
  - waboremo 3y ago
    Well, it is an anti-union tactic. You're selecting which employees get [new positive thing] based on whether or not they're in a union. If they want to avoid such light they should only base the additions off department/team. I do agree that they should be focusing on renegotiations, what's currently happening is they're letting a lot of reporters get away with framing the situation as a "loss" for the union. I don't fully grasp your irritation regarding the focus on the union itself, it's supposed to be a representation of the workers as a baseline.

bluefirebrand 3y ago

There is nothing stopping companies from offering the same benefits to union employees that non-union employees are getting. It is not 100% automatically on the union to chase the company for literally everything. That only winds up being the case when the company is actively trying to weaken the union. Any union that automatically rejects offered benefits from the company unless they are part of yearly negotiations or something is just a bad union. Maybe many such bad unions exist. I think it's much more likely that companies are very aware that they can make your unions look bad by offering benefits to non-union employees and when asked they pretend to be helpless. Obviously it's the big mean union that is not working.

35208654 3y ago
>There is nothing stopping companies from offering the same benefits to union employees that non-union employees are getting. Sure, but it could be construed as promising benefits to employees to discourage their union support, which violates the NLRA [0] and indeed was cited by Merck, Sharp & Dohme Corp. in the dispute against them back in 2019 [1]. No company with a sane legal department would treat a counterparty differently than the contract stipulates, even if such a treatment could be considered 'preferential.' The legal risk is just too great. [0]https://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/human-resources/article/national-labor-relations-act-violations https://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/human-resources/article/nation... [1]https://ogletree.com/insights/nlrb-explains-when-granting-benefits-to-nonunion-employees-and-withholding-the-same-from-union-workers-can-be-lawful/ https://ogletree.com/insights/nlrb-explains-when-granting-be...
- bluefirebrand 3y ago
  > it could be construed as promising benefits to employees to discourage their union support, which violates the NLRA [0] Ok, but there is nothing stopping them from approaching the union with the proposed new benefit.

mannyv 3y ago

Unions are advocates and adversarial by default, because there's no cost to being so and plenty of benefits. In addition, the union doesn't care about one unit of workers. They will happily sacrifice one store, or one industry, to further their goals - which may or may not be aligned with the workers. Their actions and their rhetoric shows that's the case. If workers agree to be a means to some other end then that's great. But most of them aren't smart enough or aware enough to understand this, from what it seems. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.