The Inherent Bias of Profitability
Sep. 5th, 2019 05:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peristaltorHey, DW. Been away a while, I know. Stuff.
Quick catch-up: I have a job. It's one of the few with an active union, in which I am also active (a bit). And something has been bugging me of late.
I you are an employee of the company and you pay your dues, you can participate in the unions doings. You don't have to be whip-smart and legally-trained. You just participate. And that means you can submit motions for consideration and all kinds of other stuff. You can affect your workplace. I've done it myself. I was personally responsible for bringing a major contract violation to the attention of the local; my grievance closed that violating practice (which allowed a lot of people to actually take the vacation they earned).
But we are not paid, we union members. It's just a thing we can do if we are so interested. Our efforts to help people improve their working lives and even help people keep their jobs is just feel-good activity on our part.
However, if the employer side of the equation decides to "get involved" in the workplace, that can have real-world consequences, meaning money. So there is an active incentive for employers to employ people with mad skillz in contract negotiation, interpretation, rules implementation, people who can get in there and really fuck with our working lives in order not to screw us personally, but merely to save some dough for their boss.
How much dough can be saved is significant enough that management has a very real incentive to higher some pretty high-caliber tinkerers to think of tinkers they can tailor for us workplace soldiers, gefuckenings that will earn them their salt, as they say, their salary.
So, on one side, are people personally interested in preserving a happy and productive workplace, hopefully rewarded for those efforts with a happy and productive workplace.
And on the other, are people financially interested in slipping as many caltrops on that pavement, in forcing as many flies in the ointment, in dumping as many turds in the punchbowl, as possible.
Again, the people making life difficult are rewarded for it. They don't have to suffer the indignities they inflict.
They only have to inflict them, and walk away richer for it.
I just makes me sad.
Quick catch-up: I have a job. It's one of the few with an active union, in which I am also active (a bit). And something has been bugging me of late.
I you are an employee of the company and you pay your dues, you can participate in the unions doings. You don't have to be whip-smart and legally-trained. You just participate. And that means you can submit motions for consideration and all kinds of other stuff. You can affect your workplace. I've done it myself. I was personally responsible for bringing a major contract violation to the attention of the local; my grievance closed that violating practice (which allowed a lot of people to actually take the vacation they earned).
But we are not paid, we union members. It's just a thing we can do if we are so interested. Our efforts to help people improve their working lives and even help people keep their jobs is just feel-good activity on our part.
However, if the employer side of the equation decides to "get involved" in the workplace, that can have real-world consequences, meaning money. So there is an active incentive for employers to employ people with mad skillz in contract negotiation, interpretation, rules implementation, people who can get in there and really fuck with our working lives in order not to screw us personally, but merely to save some dough for their boss.
How much dough can be saved is significant enough that management has a very real incentive to higher some pretty high-caliber tinkerers to think of tinkers they can tailor for us workplace soldiers, gefuckenings that will earn them their salt, as they say, their salary.
So, on one side, are people personally interested in preserving a happy and productive workplace, hopefully rewarded for those efforts with a happy and productive workplace.
And on the other, are people financially interested in slipping as many caltrops on that pavement, in forcing as many flies in the ointment, in dumping as many turds in the punchbowl, as possible.
Again, the people making life difficult are rewarded for it. They don't have to suffer the indignities they inflict.
They only have to inflict them, and walk away richer for it.
I just makes me sad.