Common experience is that performance reviews are bullshit and that scores are determined by warm fuzzies and management's political needs. Rachel has story after story. If you are politically astute, by all means don't join the union, but all this talk about "results" doesn't sound as if you are.
Do you not have the imagination to think of any situation where the majority of workers may want something that's not in your interests?
For example you morally support allowing new people to enter your field but the union is mostly comprised of more established people and they vote for credentialism to restrict supply.
Probably I'm very aligned with my employer on wanting to lower barriers to entry for the field!
> Probably I'm very aligned with my employer on wanting to lower barriers to entry for the field!
Well... until you start looking at advancing into upper management and realize that seniority-based hiring decisions and credentialism are very often in the best interest of the established managers and higher-ups.
In most large companies, the people making hiring decisions in upper management probably don't want to lower barriers of entry for their fields. They want to hire people who look like them, who have gone to the same schools as them and worked the same jobs as them, and they want to set up a performance system that makes it hard for them to get fired or demoted.
It's easy to make the mistake of thinking of corporations like they're some kind of impartial oiled machine, but the reality is that they're made of people who are just as biologically prone as anyone else is to forming cliques and gatekeeping their own jobs.
Do you not have the imagination to think of any situation where the majority of workers may want something that's not in your interests?
Consensus-building and making of viable compromises has always been part of governance, any institution comprises people with diverse, sometimes competing interests.
That said, the usual workplace conflict between employee and management is about working conditions and promotion. And for that it's useful to have a paid witness on your side, because HR is always working for the employer.
Codes of conduct are fashionable these days, but at the end of the day they are upheld by HR, which will always work in favour of the company.
> And for that it's usuful to have a paid witness on your side
But I'm not sure the union is going to be on my side. I know that's their pitch, but lots of people claim they want to act on my behalf - I'd be a fool to trust most of them!
The union will always be on your side, it's their reason for existing and what you're paying them for. They will support the most indefensible position you can throw at them because it's their job.
I’d recommend talking with employees of my local unionized Kroger, especially younger employees. The union is not always on their side. Benefits are heavily skewed to older employees by virtue of having more working-age years.
If I'm a junior worker in a union with a pay-by-seniority agreement because the majority of workers are senior, then they aren't on my side are they? They're on the side of the majority senior workers. They're on the side against me and my aspirations to get paid more.
In that situation, you have a clear way of getting paid more: Keep working, same as everyone else did. You're not getting special treatment, but it's not like they're working against you either.
> These are contracts with enforceable terms and are upheld.
Stop and think this through for just a second.
Try this thought experiment:
If I want dogs in the office and my colleague wants dogs banned, you’re telling me you think the union will simultaneously negotiate for both our positions with our employer?
Does not compute. It is not possible for them to be on everyone's side.
I'd also note that you appear to demand 100% alignment with your ethics from unions in return for your support ("think of any situation"), but are fine with being somewhat aligned with your employer.
You seem to already have chosen a tribal affiliation.
You said I since I didn't agree with you I must not be politically astute so I returned the favour!
> I'd also note that you appear to demand 100% alignment with your ethics from unions in return for your support ("think of any situation"), but are fine with being somewhat aligned with your employer.
But my employer pays me. And they're an essential part of the agreement. The union wants me to pay them, and they're optional, so yes I expect them to do a better job aligning to me otherwise why bother with them? What is the point joining a union, lending them what little power you have, as well as actually giving them money, if they aren't very aligned?
My current work negotiation is me and my employer. I have what I want and my employer has what they want. Why involve a third party, who may want something completely different, possibly morally offensive to me? Why do that?
I guess you're going to say 'because the union acts in your interest'. Well, let me tell you - there's a whole world of people out there offering to 'act in my interest' in return for something. Most of them are charlatans. Beware.
You can leave a company and get a new job. That’s a good time to renegotiate your terms of employment. You can even use the impending threat of your departure as a negotiating tactic.
Unions complicate an otherwise cut and dry relationship of your employer trying to extract value from you and you trying to extract value from your employer until you reach an equilibrium.
As a worker, you want "complications" in that relationship, because in its natural form, the balance of power is extremely lopsided toward the employer.
