Re: Volume 11 - JMS's salary

Josh Hill wrote:

In part, it appears to be -- in my experience, it's practically
impossible to fire a union member for any but the most egregious
violations. It's not that the procedures don't exist, but that they're
extremely costly and time-consuming and so tend to be exercised only
in the extreme circumstances. And I've heard that this is true of
industries in which I'm not involved, e.g., that it's virtually
impossible to fire an incompetent teacher or principal (e.g., the NYC
principal who couldn't be fired even though he was smoking crack).

This is especially true of public-sector unions, where the procedures
are further encumbered by red tape and bureaucracy.

There was a time when I believed that employees should have protection
from unjust dismissals. But experience has taught me that when a bad
boss is bad, the best thing you can do is move on, because if he can't
fire you he'll just make your life miserable. I don't know how many
people I've seen walk out of the building crestfallen after being
fired by an ***, only to show up a month or two later with a broad
smile on their face, having rediscovered what it's like to work for
someone who you don't have to fight.

This is the situation I'm in now... I was "downsized" from my last job,
which was doing tech support for a digital arts school. I loved the
work, I loved (most of) my co-workers, I loved dealing with the students
and the instructors (most of the time), but the management had been
dragging me down for months - "Yeah, you're probably the best tech we've
ever had, BUT..."

Bring in a buy-out by another big international "education company" and
the associated bureaucracy, bean-counters, and general assholery, and
going to work every day became a drudgery for the last five or six
months I was there. Adding to the overall frustration was that it HAD
been such a great place to work when I started there...

Getting laid off was a load off my shoulders like you wouldn't believe.
Even my wife, who normally would be distressed by my being out of a
job, welcomed the news as she was more concerned about the stress she
knew I was under.

After a brief stint on unemployment benefits, I lucked into my current
job dealing with CCTV security systems: I work for a small family-owned
company - just the boss and his wife - with no office politics. My
skills are fully recognized, appreciated, and utilized, and any
complaints from pinheaded clients are met by him with a simple, "Yeah,
my guy knows what he's doing, so STFU." I love my job, and in retrospect, getting canned for stupid bean-counter reasons was a GoodThing<tm> :)

(BTW, I'm not opposed to unions, which at their best offer workers
protections and benefits that have all but disappeared in today's
Wal-Marted economy.)

I'm not opposed to unions AS A CONCEPT. The thing I have a problem with
is that big unions have tended to become political entities of their
own, in some cases BECOMING the very hob-nailed boot they were
originally established to protect the workers from, with the only ones
they protect anymore being their own upper echelon and their own
self-interest.



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