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OK, I promised myself that I'd stay out of this one, but I do think I have
something to add to the discussion. It seems that people are talking about
unions in blue-collar environments or, if in white collar jobs, they are not
professional jobs. I have some experience with unions in a job environment
similar to that of what we do as tech writers that might shed some light on
the discussion.
Background: From 1984 - 1988 I worked as a technical trainer teaching
operating systems internals (bit-and-byte level courses) to the company's
software and hardware engineers. Starting in 1988, I spent 2 1/2 years
teaching the same courses at the company's European subsidiary in Brussels.
The sub was a completely European company, operating under European work
rules, including European vacation schedules and, yes, unions. Three of them
in the same office as a matter of fact. I cannot think of a better situation
for comparing union and non-union shops in professional situations since, as
has already been pointed out, we don't have professional union shops in the
states.
Observations: Though it may be a bit difficult to disentangle the influence
of the unions from Belgian, in this case Flemish, cultural norms, my overall
impression is that greater job security led to better performing employees
than their US counterparts. Though I understand that this may be
counterintuitive to most of my countrymen, that is what I saw. Greater job
security led to greater stability in the workforce. Most of my colleagues
had work there many years, had developed a great deal of loyalty to the
company, and got to know the company and its products to a depth that many
of the US employees could simply not match. For example, when the guys in
R&D at the home office got a bug they just couldn't for the life of them
figure out, they sent it to one of the instructors in Brussels. I saw one of
my Belgian colleagues crack a bug in 20 minutes that R&D had been looking at
for weeks.
Even in the states, the European sub in Brussels had a reputation for much
higher productivity and competence. The only thing I can attribute it to is
lack of competition within the company. I know that runs against everything
we've been taught about what make people work, but consider this: employees,
freed from having to look over their shoulders at who's doing what to whom
and not having to worry about polishing their resumes and not constantly
having to look around to see what else was out there, could just do their
jobs. They were free to take pride in their work for its own sake instead of
just adding another line on their resumes.
So, what happened when it all went down the tubes? That happened, too, while
I was there, thanks to massive mismanagement on the US end that eventually
brought the whole company down. I returned to the states. None of my
colleagues in Belgium seemed to have any trouble landing new jobs well
before their very generous severance benefits (another characteristic of
European union-driven lawmaking) ran out. For my part, I lasted another year
at HQ in the states before the layoffs caught up with me, too.
I could go on and provide a great more detail, but I think you get the
picture. This is just one man's experience and observations. Your mileage,
if you should ever be in a similar situation, may vary.
Bob Hooker
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