>>Let me begin by saying that we're not unfirable. It takes a bit more doing, but you can either be shown the door eventually or reshuffled into a go-nowhere job with no responsibility that'd otherwise be done by a new hire or something.
The phrase “we’re not unfirable” is incompatible with the statement “you can be shown the door OR reshuffled into a go-nowhere job” in my mind. If your response to “we can’t fire union workers” is “well but you can give us a big paycheck based on our seniority to do a job a new hire could do” then I guess you really can’t be fired.
Even amongst the union it seems like you realize the union is inefficient and staffed with layarounds. But when there’s a problem you blame management? And you think that there’s too much management while this article mentions downsizing of management/engineering by a factor of 10 (1600 -> 124)?
>“well but you can give us a big paycheck based on our seniority to do a job a new hire could do”
That's not really how it works here. Pay band for a given job title is strict and relatively narrow, and the way you substantially increase pay is by moving into management or getting a new title, which are both up to management to decide. So, the hypothetical loafer/shirker long-tenured guy may be getting paid 15%-20% more than the guy in his title who's just out of school, not exactly a big paycheck.
>Even amongst the union it seems like you realize the union is inefficient and staffed with layarounds. But when there’s a problem you blame management?
Funny. Most of the "layarounds" we all know about are heavily protected by their management, either they're on very good personal terms or are very narrowly doing the work they're asked to make the boss happy and don't care much about a request from me. I've seen quite a few people pushed out the door here and it's typically not one of them, usually it's those with personal issues with the boss.
You don’t get it: if you should be fired then you should be getting paid 0%-0% of what a guy just out of school is getting paid, not 15%-20% more. And you sure as shit shouldn’t be getting benefits, accruing years of seniority, and accruing years towards your retirement benefits.
The phrase “we’re not unfirable” is incompatible with the statement “you can be shown the door OR reshuffled into a go-nowhere job” in my mind. If your response to “we can’t fire union workers” is “well but you can give us a big paycheck based on our seniority to do a job a new hire could do” then I guess you really can’t be fired.
Even amongst the union it seems like you realize the union is inefficient and staffed with layarounds. But when there’s a problem you blame management? And you think that there’s too much management while this article mentions downsizing of management/engineering by a factor of 10 (1600 -> 124)?