"What this country needs is another labor movement"
Totally agree.
Trade unions and collective bargaining can produce some outstanding results for workers, but the only way they can have any teeth is through a coordinated "attack" against hostile work environments. It's hard to imagine how a loosely coupled workforce like IT professionals could effectively "wage war" on their employers. Words like "attack" and "war" might sound like hyperbole, but these types of disputes can get ugly; when describing the 1984 Miner's Union strike in the UK, Margaret Thatcher characterized the situation as:
"We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within,
which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty."
There are countless other examples of openly hostile responses to unionization across the world.
Part of the solution to this adversarial standoff between employer/employees might be a move to normalizing and standardizing the collective bargaining process. As a high school teacher I work as member of a heavily unionized workforce. Disputes about pay and conditions are baked into the system and occur on a rolling basis. In South Australia, where I work, our enterprise agreement is renegotiated on a rolling 3 year basis. The last agreement took a year longer to finalise which means that negotiations for the 2012,2013,2014 enterprise agreement overlapped the 2015-2017 negotiations (which went on in parallel). From my perspective I see a functioning system which brings great results for me as an employee while protecting my right to a safe workplace.
To give an example of the conditions which teachers in my state have fought for:
- 13 weeks paid vacation
- 10 paid, no questions asked sick days
- Excellent salary. I'm earning 20%-30% more as a teacher than I did as a developer
- 2 weeks paid paternity leave
- 14 weeks paid maternity leave
- 22 hours of class time per week
- Tight unfair dismissal laws
- Ongoing unconditional pay increases that outpace inflation.
"...corporations have been gaining more and more power over their employees."
absolutely agree with you there. There was a lively discussion on HN a while ago about whether making salary information public is a good idea. Employers don't want employees to have this information because one of the things it can lead to is collective action along the lines of "...hey we all want to get 110k/yr just like Joe over there..."
I'm not sure how exactly the lessons from not-for-profit, tightly regulated workplaces like schools can be applied more broadly to the rest of the economy, but what I do know is that my standard of living, autonomy and ability to actually stop and smell the roses has increased immeasurably since I became a teacher.
I think the labour movement that you're calling for needs to be broad based. Instead of a teacher's union and a miner's union I think a broad based worker's union regardless of sector needs to arise which demands that the fruits of our collective labour need to more evenly and fairly be distributed. The 1st world is a rich place, but you'd have trouble spotting with much of the modern day wage slavery that must be endured.
> Words like "attack" and "war" might sound like hyperbole, but these types of disputes can get ugly
See, that's the thing. Nobody is willing to lose their job for another week of vacation a year. Especially if it looks like there isn't another one coming.
Also, as an Australian, you have the privilege of living in one of the best managed economies in the world. Which means teachers aren't faced with "do you want layoffs or pay cuts this year?" every year for a decade.
That's a slightly loaded question. I'm assuming you're alluding to difficulties schools have with firing burned out and ineffective teachers due to strict rules governing employee dismissal.
This is definitely an issue, however in my experience it is exaggerated by the media. Yes there are some who shouldn't be teaching, but they are far outnumbered by regular hard working people.
As for the other protections enjoyed by teachers i'd say they have a positive effect on employee mental health and would therefore have a positive flow on effect on student learning.
Actually I really wasn't trying to allude to anything. I am genuinely curious about how more teacher-friendly policies like those you mentioned affect students. Your last sentence answers my question.
Trade unions and collective bargaining can produce some outstanding results for workers, but the only way they can have any teeth is through a coordinated "attack" against hostile work environments. It's hard to imagine how a loosely coupled workforce like IT professionals could effectively "wage war" on their employers. Words like "attack" and "war" might sound like hyperbole, but these types of disputes can get ugly; when describing the 1984 Miner's Union strike in the UK, Margaret Thatcher characterized the situation as:
There are countless other examples of openly hostile responses to unionization across the world.Part of the solution to this adversarial standoff between employer/employees might be a move to normalizing and standardizing the collective bargaining process. As a high school teacher I work as member of a heavily unionized workforce. Disputes about pay and conditions are baked into the system and occur on a rolling basis. In South Australia, where I work, our enterprise agreement is renegotiated on a rolling 3 year basis. The last agreement took a year longer to finalise which means that negotiations for the 2012,2013,2014 enterprise agreement overlapped the 2015-2017 negotiations (which went on in parallel). From my perspective I see a functioning system which brings great results for me as an employee while protecting my right to a safe workplace.
To give an example of the conditions which teachers in my state have fought for:
"...corporations have been gaining more and more power over their employees."absolutely agree with you there. There was a lively discussion on HN a while ago about whether making salary information public is a good idea. Employers don't want employees to have this information because one of the things it can lead to is collective action along the lines of "...hey we all want to get 110k/yr just like Joe over there..."
I'm not sure how exactly the lessons from not-for-profit, tightly regulated workplaces like schools can be applied more broadly to the rest of the economy, but what I do know is that my standard of living, autonomy and ability to actually stop and smell the roses has increased immeasurably since I became a teacher.
I think the labour movement that you're calling for needs to be broad based. Instead of a teacher's union and a miner's union I think a broad based worker's union regardless of sector needs to arise which demands that the fruits of our collective labour need to more evenly and fairly be distributed. The 1st world is a rich place, but you'd have trouble spotting with much of the modern day wage slavery that must be endured.