Why is it "mgt vs. labor"? It should be "workers (mgt+labor) vs. owners"

[NAO]

Ok, here's a thought: why are labor disputes always portrayed as "management vs labor"? Why aren't managers, who work for a living, rather than live off the labor of others, part of labor unions?

Imagine the collective bargaining power of ALL of the people on payroll, both blue collar AND white collar workers.

Blue collar employees AND white collar managers have the following in common:

- they work for a living.

- they are paid a salary which is negotiable.

- their earnings are related to, and contingent on, their labor, not the labor of others.

- their employment (and thus their livelihood) can be arbitrarily terminated at any time by capricious or just plain greedy owners.

- they are subject to the attempts of owners to get the most work out of them possible, for the least amount of money and benefits possible.

It would be a major adjustment for union workers to solicit and include management in their membership. But when rightly considered, they really should. Managers are really in the same boat as workers...they ARE workers. Their jobs include setting salaries and overseeing people, but they HAVE JOBS. They WORK FOR the company.

Management employees are part of the group that works but does not own, rather than the group that owns but does not work. The pitting of management against labor is artificial. It should be "employees vs. owners". If the owners need someone to bargain with the unions, let them hire consultants. Don't let them use some workers (management) against other workers (labor) when both groups are at their mercy and have the same need for collective bargaining to prevent brutal exploitation for greed.

[Maple]

1. Well who owns

GM or Ford?

[pop goes the weasel]

2. blame the Taft-Hartley Act

That act restricts the ability of "management" to unionize. This is why so many jobs that are actually "labor" are called "management." Fast food joints don't really need a half dozen assistant managers, like some of them have, but call those shift leads "managers," and you can work them overtime without paying overtime.

[wli]

3. salary in general is often used that way also

Computer programmers such as myself routinely put in 120+ hours a week with just salary as if the "overtime" were insignificant and unexpected.

[NAO]

5. "Salary" is shameless used to extract unpaid hours from people

I was completely horrified when this first happened to me at my first "real" job. I could not believe that they were offering the "status" of wearing a tie and a fancy job title as an excuse for not paying me for my hours. It made me very cynical.

[wli]

6. well, at least things calmed down after I changed jobs

The job I had before the one I'm at now had me pulling 140+ hour weeks to the point I had to sleep in my chair because I barely had enough time to stand up and go to the bathroom.

[abandoned]

17. 120+ hours a week?

I am a little curious about this as I am a computer programmer also. First I hope you have a drool proof keyboard because I know I would be drooling on myself at around hour 100, but the hallucinations might be pretty neat.

So do you work for everyday of the week for over 17 hours? I would think there would be a point when you hit negative productivity and spending a large amount of the following week having to fix what was messed up the previous week.

I know the job market isn't that good right now but there has to be something available out there with a little saner schedule.

[wli]

18. I'm not sure where the question comes from

But 120 hours a week leaves 6.8 hours a day for sleep. I telecommuted often in my prior job and do so now almost exclusively in my current job so it really didn't hit me all that hard (particularly given that my own rest requirements appear to be vastly less than the general population's). In any event I definitely never noticed any issue of that kind even at 140 hours. I can't really speak for anyone else, though.

[abandoned]

20. Curious

I am curious because it only leaves 6.8 hours for sleep. It doesn't really leave much time for anything (family, friends, etc...).

I just can't imagine working and sleeping and working and sleeping and little to nothing of anything else. It is great if you like it but I know from own personal experience I would need a padded room after a week or so of that schedule.

[wli]

21. there was no time for family or friends, as expected

It was not a happy time. A large part of the reason I changed jobs, especially after the participation in this deprivation failed to yield career advancement (the ultimate motive for subjecting myself to it).

[abandoned]

24. Good luck.

From my experience in the computer field the best way to get any type of career advancement is to change companies. You would hope the level of dedication you are willing to show would count for something, but from what I have seen that isn't the case.

[wli]

25. that's precisely what was borne out

I got a hefty increase in pay, though no advancement in terms of role.

ON EDIT: clarification of pay advancement

[NAO]

7. Managers can't unionize? That is SO EVIL.

How do they get away with it? It's like owners just make the laws to facilitate their extracting of value from the labor of others...wait, that is EXACTLY what they do!

So according to Taft-Hartley, what happens to managers if they unionize or go on strike? Is it a criminal act or just a reason (like they need one) to terminate employment?

As more and more people are being pushed out of the middle class - even if they get a fancy job title - it seems like they should start thinking along these lines, just for self-preservation.

[pitohui]

4. be that as it may

managers can't unionize or get overtime and when labor goes on strike, managers are often forced to work unpaid overtime to take up the slack

so they pit us against each other very nicely

[LincolnMcGrath]

8. Salaried front line supervisors got ovrtime in the steel mill I worked in.

[pitohui]

12. that is very unusual

salary by definition is exempt

i have never in my lifetime met an exempt employee who got overtime

it's terrific you met some exceptions but you do realize that is not the norm

[LincolnMcGrath]

14. They sued for it and won. (steelmill)

BTW The FLSs in the Weiner Plant I work in now get time and a half for all hours over forty.

Note that in both of these cases, they do not have the same OT rules as those of us working under a contract.

Now, UPPER level managers are a different story. They didn't/don't get it, and IMHO they don't deserve it.

[abandoned]

19. Exempt overtime.

Well here is another exception. I have always been salaried (exempt), the first place I worked out of college had a strange overtime rule for us. Working 40-50 hours a week got you your normal salary, working 50-60 hours a week got you your salary plus straight time for hours over 50, working more than 60 hours a week got you straight time for all hours worked.

So it wasn't overtime as hourly workers got (time and a half), but it was better than nothing.

The current place I work also has some goofy policy but I haven't worked over 40 yet so I haven't tried to figure it out.

[Sgent]

9. Its not even the "managers"

that have actual authority that I cry about -- its all the salaried, college degreed types who have no managemetn say who really get screwed -- the accountants working under the controllers, the engineers and computer scientists working under the CIO.

These people are the ones your thinking of -- managers (ppl with the ability to hire and fire, or who can actually sign off on corporate/dept level budgets) probably shouldn't be in unions.

[joemurphy]

10. In the typical corporation, upper-level management controls

everything. While I may own stock in General Motors, my stock ownership gives me little opportunity to control the way the company is run. Management typically picks the Board of Directors by controlling proxies. Management can choose its salary, plan its own retirement, and provide cushy "golden parachutes" when executives have to abandon the ship. The fight is between Labor and Management because I, and millions of other GM shareholders like me, control nothing by virtue of our stock ownership.

[leftofthedial]

11. management are owner's whores

like giving a moron an orange vest and telling them to direct traffic. they immediately become a concentration camp guard drunk with power

[mitchum]

27. Exactly! They are just overseers and straw bosses

[TahitiNut]

13. Management (particularly executives) are Agents of owners.

I think in terms of an individual enterprise - a one person business. That person is all three: owner, manager, labor. I think in terms of an owner/operator enterprise, like a small restaurant or grocery store. The owner also manages and works, but there are workers who have no ownership share or authority and possibly some managers who might work but have no ownership share. There have been some businesses where the owner/worker wasn't the most senior manager - that person was hired - but they've been rare.

I tend to wonder how we came up with these categories, way back whenever. I tend to wonder whether they're an outgrowth of monarchical/aristocratic thinking, and mirror those values (or lack thereof). It often seems to me that 'ownership' was once (perhaps for the majority of human history) assumed to be God and God alone. (Or whatever supernatural concept was the equivalent.) Somewhere along the line, some guy 'invented' the idea that he would be a God (like Pharaoh or the Emperor of Japan), or merely be God's Agent on earth (like Constantine or King Saud). I guess it depended on the gullibility of the people at the time.

I sometimes think the Garden of Eden myth was originally a way of describing Man's theft of "property" from the Gods - the presumption that a person could "own" nature. I know that Cain and Abel fable is thought to have originated as a way of describing the Hunter/Gatherer culture vs. the Totalitarian Agri-culture (the 'right' to kill living things that tried to eat crops in excess of needs).

All of this makes me wonder about the Justice in an owner's 'rights' (which I regard as an entitlement, not a right) to the proceeds from the labor of others. How much is just? Right now, employees of the S&P500 only get compensated about 1/3rd of the value of their labor. It's going down. What's the limit?

[Lone_Wolf]

15. Ever notice that labor makes "demands" while mgt makes "offers"

The MSM in this country has vilified unions for over 70 years now.

[kodi]

23. my dad, a 42 year UAW member and shop steward used to say just that

never trust management, ever.

[wuushew]

16. Some form of Anarchism would eliminate the conflict

Anarcho-communism or Anarcho-syndicalism As witnessed by the successful collectivism of industry in pre-Franco Spain.

[Hardrada]

28. There is some variety of worker ownership

in South American countries, Brazil and Argentina I think, where the plants have been abandoned by the capitalists and the workers have decided to produce on their own. Naturally we don't hear a whole lot about this. Maybe something on the old CNT/FAI Spanish model. This needs more investigation.

[ultraist]

22. Why on earth, do upper management, CEOs and CFOs...

who are raking in millions a year in salary, need to join unions? It's the laborers who are exploited and the frontline supervisors.

[skids]

26. All but the lowest layers of management...

...suffer from delusions of gradeur. It wouldn't matter if they were able to unionize, in most cases. They think they are on the "management career track" and harbor this stupid idea that the only difference between them and the front row is the amount of time they have put in. They are the ultimate wannabe patsies.