Lordy, they might swear or something.
But according to sources connected to policy negotiations, Labor wants to quash business fears that militant union officials such as Western Australia’s Joe McDonald could once again have carte blanche to enter worksites, causing disruption and jeopardising investment.
News continues to trickle out about the “refinement” (or whatever the term du jour is) of Labor’s IR policy.
A RUDD government would keep all of John Howard’s tough limits on unions entering worksites, as part of a commitment to be business-friendly if Labor wins the federal election.
The Australian has confirmed that full detail of Labor’s industrial relations policy will include no change to the existing laws on the union right of entry to workplaces.
And on another front, it looks like we’ll be getting AWAs dressed up as “common law contracts”. Leaving that aside, what are we seeing here but Labor losing its nerve in the face of business and media campaigning, and confirmation that that nice Mr Rudd probably never liked unions much in the first place. (He certainly didn’t like them when he was in the Goss government.) Consistently, surveys show that many more workers would like to be in a union than are members. Why aren’t they? Partly it’s the failings of unions themselves, but partly it’s the fact that unions face very strong legislative hurdles to signing up members in the first place and then effectively representing them because they’re denied workplace access. And these laws also necessitate the army of backpackers currently enforcing the “Workplace laws” because union officers no longer have the right to examine pay records and the like to check that workers are being paid their legal entitlements.
Just from a political angle, this sort of thing surely reinforces the government and business demonisation of unions. Whereas, as the CPSU points out in a new ad, the face of unionists these days is more likely to be whitecollar, and increasingly, female.
The scare campaign ads from the business bodies has been interesting in my house. My son is just starting to pay attention to politics and because we’d been having a look at some political literature while having brunch in Newtown he asked in a worried tone about whether any of the parties we might vote for were in favour of “rolling back workplace reform”. Yep, the scary music had got to him.
It ended up being an interesting discussion about how the ads used movie cliches to evoke apprehension in him even when he didn’t understand the point they were making, and further discussion on workplace laws and why workplaces are regulated etc etc. It ended up being a good hook for raising the kids’ political awareness, but it just goes to show that sadly, the ads are very effective in making the politically unsophisticated nervous.
It’s very easy to join a union. Phone them up and ask to be sent the membership form or download it from the internet.
Yes, but that presumes a level of interest already that might not exist in the absence of workplace activism from the union.
A very interesting anecdote tigtog, I spend a lot of time with people who have no idea about politics and their ability to spit out, word for word, the latest line of propoganda from whereever they hear it never ceases to amaze me. What makes it frightening is the complete inability to link the words with meaning, they just hear the line, its almost subliminal.
Has anyone seen or heard anyone mention that it appears to be ok for the bosses to ‘unionize’, but not employees. My partner is is AMWU they have big opposition from AIG(Australian Industries Group), lots of money lots of power.
The fact that the ALP is led by an authoritarian Vulcan, married to Ausutralia’s richest woman, who made her millions helping employers get cheap labour, all with Luvvies cheering from the rafters will have Orwell turning in his grave.
I know of at least one person who was scared off from joining the NTEU through their busted-arse website because you basically have to expose your credit card / payment details to them before they actually bother telling you how much you’ll be paying in dues. I only found out after the first payment went through.
It’s a pretty crummy experience, actually.
Friggin’ hell you’re a fruitbat, Greensleaves. When are you going to take the hint.
Is that Gina Rinehardt or Janet Holmes a Court?
Don’t. Feed. The. Troll!
Yes, sorry Mark. I promise to be more disciplined in future, no matter what the provocation!
What about the membership costs and the free rider issue?
To become an NTEU member costs 1% of your income, and you get the same deal from your university whether you’re a union member or not. Yes, I know the reason we get that deal is because the union negotiated it in the first place, but essentially the reason to pay is because it’s the right thing to do.
But unions can have a broader impact on the working environment than just the setting of pay and conditions, Rob. One of the big things that the NTEU is pushing in Qld, and this’d be of interest to you, I think, is trying to forge career paths and more security of tenure for research only staff.
And for that matter, there’s the issue of individual protection.
“Our job, however, is to govern in the national interest - it’s not to govern in the interest of big business and it’s not to govern in the interest of any individual trade union.”
So says Mr Rudd, i wonder though, given society consists in the main of two antagonistic classes, how he will achieve such a feat…
On people not joining unions…workers will join when unions produce results, i.e. when they actually get stuck in and defy the laws. They are allowing themselves to be legislated out of existence. Legislation is not how they came about and its not how they will survive. “Boxing Clever” is what has got us into this parlous situation in the first place!
It’s all fun and games until someone’s union goes bankrupt, Chav.
Or individual workers lose their houses.
It’s worth noting that the laws try to eviscerate unions from a range of angles. One of the underanalysed effects of the removal of unfair dismissal protection is that it also removes an incentive to join a union. I could go on.
I’d invite Chav to think more about all this. Is it really being suggested, for instance, that the FSU could better represent the interests of bank workers and revive collective bargaining by taking illegal industrial action?
There are a number of changed realities from the 60s - not least the fragmented and casualised nature of the workforce and the abolition of compulsory unionism. It’s all very well to summon up the ghost of politicised unionism from the deep, but if you call it, will it come?
You’ve got to build some solidarity before you can do anything with it, I’m afraid. The conditions of possibility of the validity of the left critique of unions for not taking political action disappeared a very long time ago, to be frank.
I realise its not fun and games at allLiam, but unions are first and foremost, associations of workers who combine to protect their interests…they don’t have to be bureaucratic machines beholden to the bottom-line. I’m not pointing out anything that isn’t blindingly obvious to anyone who cares to look at the decline of the unions in recent decades. But I do realise, being the good materialist that I am, that the trade union leaders won’t be convinced to change their self-defeating direction by rational argument alone. It will take some group of workers, somewhere, who have finally been pushed too far and who take wildcat industrial action that spreads…out of control of the ACTU…
Nick Caldwell:
I’m a member of NTEU in Victoria.
It’s a shocker!
I’m not surprised people don’t join it.
The leadership consists of people spouting off what Mark might refer to as “ideological piffle”. For example, a few years ago a small but militant group of students at a large campus tried to break into the University Council meeting room. They broke some windows, harrassed staff, etc. The Council met elsewhere. Victoria Police were called to the campus.
In a subsequent email, NTEU referred to the police as if they were jackbooted Nazis or Stasi. It appeared that several staff, members of NTEU themselves, had been advised to leave their offices (in the building threatened with blockade) beforehand, by the NTEU. In other words the Union appeared to take the side of militant, threatening students, against its own members!!
This is just one example of ideological piffle perpetrated by persons who could never hold an argument here on a forum like LP, so deficient is their reasoning and debating skill. And yet they claim to “represent” academic and general staff at a large university! (I think the irony would be lost on them.)
This union (NTEU) contributes towards a left faction of the ALP*, as I understand it. On such weak foundations rests our only social democratic party with any mass support. Sad, so sad.
cheerio
* though this is never spoken of amongst the membership (I heard it from an aparatchik)
Mark, how well have the unions been doing in recent decades under the current direction of the ACTU and the ALP..?
A casualised like the wharfies in every Australian port early last century, sheep shearers, agricultural labourers of all stripes!?
The abolition of compulsory unionism is a result of political and industrial battle, its one symptom among many of the balance of class forces…its not some unchangeable outcome of some inevitable historical process (and liberals accuse marxists of being historical determinists! Sheesh!)
Will it come if I summon it? I don’t know. I think it will come, sooner or later, whether I summon it or not, but I’m not going to start summoning something I don’t want!
By allowing yourself to be legislated out of existence? By not taking solidarity action? How is this solidarity to be achieved?
There have been attempts, Chav, to estimate the degree to which structural changes in the workplace, the Accord/union strategies and legislation have contributed to union decline through econometric modelling. But it’s a long time since I’ve looked at them - though I do recall that after the early 90s most of it has been accounted for by the first factor.
On your other points, you’d be familiar with the Marxist distinction between a class “of itself” and “for itself”. The reality in the last two decades is that we’ve got a high level of class consciousness among managerial and owner interests which is being directed - quite consciously - to the fragmentation of the workforce and the erosion of workplace solidarities.
Awareness of common purpose and interests among workers is far lower than it was in the 1890s, for all sorts of reasons.
How indeed?
Unions may not have always had good answers to that question, and some can’t be bothered thinking about it. But try, like people I know have, going out and doing the hard slog of trying to organise casual workers and workers in industries with little union presence, and you’ll get a clue both to why it’s absent and why it’s hard to build.
As to the comments about the NTEU from Ambigulous, I can’t speak to the Victorian branch but I don’t recognise the Queensland Branch in those comments. And it’s a mark of the fact that unions have increasingly been seen either as an oligarchy or as a service provider commodified for a fee (union dues) that it doesn’t seem to occur to disgruntled members that they’re democratic organisations - at least in theory. Contested elections aren’t unknown in the NTEU. If you don’t like what your union is doing, remember that you’re part of the union to, and do something about it.
Permit me to put another spin on that. The decline in union membership is both structural and political. I’m sure you’re aware of the structural changes. The political changes can be traced back to the dominance of Stalinism and its policies of class collaboration. In particular the capitulation of the CPA and other left-wing elements in the union movement to the Accord. Once the unions were tied to the class collaboration of the Accord, the ALP and union leadership were more able to successfully police the more militant elements in the movement. Witness the de-registration of the BLF under a labor government and Hawke’s support for the smashing of the pilot’s strike.
Ever since then we have seen a decline in the numbers and power of shop floor militants in most unions, with the result that the leadership is less responsive to the class.
I would agree, but I would like to add this is not an irreversible situation.
I’m hoping that wasn’t an attempt to patronise me…I too have friends who are union organisers and a thankless task it often is. And what I say to them is that the policies of their leadership are making their jobs more difficult.
No, not at all, and I’m sorry if it sounded as if it was. I’m merely trying to point to the extreme difficulty of union work in the current climate.
Ambigulous,
As a member of the same union, in the same state, and having been involved in the union in a few small ways, I’d be very surprised if the NTEU contributes (in cash or in kind) to the ALP. NTEU members might - certainly, it would be unsurprising to see NTEU members elected to office within the union who are also ALP supporters, notwithstanding the ALP’s largely crap policies on higher education. This is different to an official position of support that’s apparently hushed up. I just don’t think the union would be able to keep secrets that well.
So,repressive anti union legislation happens because bureaucratic union leaders let it happen and if they would just show enough determination,call their members out on strike, show a little ’solidarity’ none of this repression would happen.
Talk about ahistorial and anti materialist reasoning! Has it ever occurred to left sectarians that sometimes, the Right wins because it is just well, stronger than its opponents on the left?
It is stronger because it has vastly more resources at its disposal, both material and ideological, and sometimes it takes some time to have a victory, and the means are sometimes a little ‘direct’ than it would be the case if we could just snap our fingers!
I don’t agree Kim, re “losing nerve” I think there’s a degree of subtlety that needs consideratin ie it removes at a stroke the power of the “union thuggery” ads currently running which may well be negated wholly in the campaign ahead. I am much impressed with this take by Evan over at Poll Bludger:
http://www.pollbludger.com/?p=551&cp=1#comment-30001
Even more clever if expediency dictates a “non core policy” when in office although I don’t think Rudd will approach the levels of cynicism and self serving b/s that typified Howard.
I think, again, this is a pragmatic response which significantly de-fangs Howard on unionism and placates the business end of town. Any loss at the left end of the spectrum will more than be outweighed by the appeal to and support from mini (at least) capitalists/swinging voters/whatever.
No, Amused, the need for repressive anti-union legislation is dictated by capital’s own constant need to remain ‘competitive’. The repression will always happen, whether under the Liberals or the ALP. Even a cursory examination of history will tell you that.
Amused, the union movement has been in decline since the late 1970s, at least. Some is that for structural reasons, much of it is a question of politics.
What is this strategy, apart from a naive clutching at the coattails of the ALP, that is leading us to victory?
Well that really worked for the Pilots Union back in the 80s, didn’t it?
Oh, and Chris Corrigan ended up getting everything he wanted when the Wharfies strike/lockout was all over.
I have to agree with Chav on this.
Mark :
I’ve been at work all day as an organiser for the NTEU at the Uni of Qld branch and this is my first chance to dive in on this. I would have to endorse what Mark says. Whatever was happening in Ambigulous’ branch I can’t speak to but likewise I don’t recognise my UQ Branch or any other Branch in Qld, let alone the Qld Division itself in those comments. In the NTEU, each university is an autonomous branch with its own elected executive. If the membership don’t like their elected office holders they can vote them out. Even better, people can get involved in their union and stand for election themselves. The reason too often elections are not contested is that no one steps forward and gets involved. A large part of an Organiser’s work is trying to find people willing to do the hard yards involved in being a union delegate and serving on union committees
Ambigulous:
Actually, the NTEU is not affiliated with the ALP or any other party (let alone factions of parties) and we pay no money to political parties. We are affiliated with the ACTU but we remain indepenent of political parties. Individual memebrs of course may belong to the ALP and factions as they do also of other political parties - Greens, Democrats, various Socialists, even the Liberals. Membership of a political party does not preclude one from holding office in the union but as an officeholder (and also employees) of the union your first loyalties lie to your members.
In principle this is how all unions operate. Of course, unions are a human institution like any other (parliaments, churches, universities, charities, companies/businesses, town councils, clubs) and so, like all other institutions, don’t always live up to the principles on which they are based. But at least unions are based on democratic principles. Corporations on the other hand run on very undemocratic principles, having much more in common with authoritarian states than anything else. Maybe that’s why Howard, no great democrat himself, was so keen to push through Work (no) Choices when the chance arose.
Just on point of fact, abstract questions like whether you would “like” something really don’t speak for much. People will nominate that they “like” lots of things that they really don’t care much about and will make no effort for. That survey also found that only around 55% of people think management has more power than unions (???!).
Sadly it isn’t as easy as picking up the phone & joining. You have to know who to join, which may involve an inter-union disagreement, and then you have to negotiate their incompetent administration. The Australian Services Union (representing the admin assistants of the nation) don’t have an online sign up facility. They send you a dodgy photocopy. It’s far from reassuring. It took me three very terse emails to get the NTEU to stop taking money from my credit card when I changed jobs.
They thought I might want to stay a member, even though they wouldn’t have represented me if I’d run into trouble, because I’d changed industries. I’d join a union gladly. If only they weren’t so bloody incompetent.
Welcome to Australia, and bloody well enjoy it
Bullied and abused, with no escape
Aussie farm enslaves Phillipino, subjects them to racial abuse and finally kills them by tipping them off the back of a ute.
How Aussie 2007 is that?
Work No Choice
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/bullied-and-abused-with-no-escape/2007/08/27/1188067034475.html
Alister,
What I meant, and expressed poorly, was that simply by the weight of their NTEU Branch membership numbers, the elected NTEU officials are entitled to a certain number of reps at State conference; and these go to Socialist Left (or whatever sub-faction). My point is that the membership, some of whom are undoubtedly ALP members, while others support Greens, Liberals, Democrats, etc are NEVER asked which section of the Victorian ALP we would prefer our elected officials to throw their lot in with. And in Union elections, I can’t recall such factional allegiances being spelt out by candidates.
As a disgruntleed union member, I wonder now whether other employees in other workplaces have simply given up on the union, through cool empirical observation, and a harsh judgement of its utility. In other words, by direct experience in the workpace, not overly influenced by that bogey, the “MSM”, or that big bad bogey, the Liberal Party; nor that faceless but all-powerful “preponderance of class forces”.
Mark, perhaps it’s hard work trying to sign up new members, because the workers are seeing their own interests really clearly now; and they’d prefer to spend that subscription money in more productive ways than funding a union??
Of course, there’ll always be a union organiser who knows better than the workers themselves, what their true interests are. Like Sunday School teachers, opinionated columnists, bossy neighbours, etc.
Ah, the cards are stacked against us comrades, we’ll all be rooned.
I wonder if unions will just wither on the vine? If so, I think it’ll largely be their own doing; and if their leaders are like the Victorian NTEU helmspersons, they’ll blame 647 other causes before they look to themselves, their own actions, their own overblown rhetoric.
Piffle, I say.
Look it is simple….. We can hang Rudd only after he kicks the other little man out of office. It would help the Union Movement more than the ALP if the two split apart, but not until it kills off the Liberal Party after this year’s election.
If it is a Ruddslide, hopefully one of the underemployed backbenchers will become to Rudd what Pauline Hanson was to Howard; someone who is willing to say what a lot of the supporters really feel (in this case advocate some more Left wing policies).
There are some circumstances where it would be hard to imagine an alternative to the withdrawal of labour and other forms of civil disobedience.
The test for unions will be whether they can connect their actions in individual cases with the broader concerns shared by society regarding fairness. If, instead, they choose to act out of narrow self-interest, they will lose ground.
That said, I think the ACTU has been largely successful in making the connections with those broader concerns, and in painting a convincing picture entirely at odds with the bully-boy propaganda currently being pushed out by Howard’s PR machine.
As for Rudd, I will reserve judgment until the full details of the Labor policy emerge, together with responses from the Greens and Democrats et al. It would be good if those responses could be captured here at LP.
Let us not forget the destruction of the unions began with Hawke and Keating. I wouldn’t be surprised to find Rudd, if elected, delivers the final blow.
/flame shield up
I’m really having serious doubts about how much better a Rudd ALP govt will be over the existing government. I fear it won’t be much.
We seriously need a left, progressive party in this country not two right wing ones.
/end shield prot
Now I would normally chime in with my refrain of ‘try the Greens’ as the only lefty party with any clout AND ethics at all in Australia at this stage.
You know the ‘give #1 to the Greens and #2 to the ALP’ line, “send them a message”.
But I’m even suss about the Greens, ideologically unsound you see.
So unless the ALP wise up and fly right [ie left] and the Greens get some clout we, as in the mildly left side of the spectrum, have got sweet fanny adams going for us.
OK, lets get rid of the Coalition, that’s not really progress but at least it will stop us going backwards.
But if the ALP win AND don’t DO anything, and the Greens are powerless [cos I’m not optimistic about their chances at this election, then we are in for Coalition lite for too long and I’m too old to be an optimist any more.
Lets not even consider the Coalition winning again please [which in my nastiest nughtmares I actually think is a good chance].]
Depressing.
PS
Joe Blo
Thanks for that link [sincerely meant], now I’m really depressed AND ashamed of being an Aussie, blimey what the hell has happened to us, how did we lose simple decency?
Ambi, I am sorry, but what you say here is incorrect.
Unless a Union is affiliated with the ALP, it has absolutely “No” rights to send delegates to ALP Conferences or have any say in ALP policy.
Individual members of an unaffiliated Union can, if they are a Member of an ALP Branch and have been elected as a delegate representative of their FDE, attend ALP Conferences.
Elected delegates of Unions affiliated with the ACTU can of course attend ACTU Conferences and partake in Trade Union related business and policy, but this does not give them any rights to ALP Conferences.
Hannah’s dad, may I return the compliment you paid the other day.
So, to the logical conclusion. It all hinges on how anal Kevin Rudd turn out to be.
the last hope for a bit of real joy would be a last minute wedgie from poll-panicky Howard and Turnbull over Gunns aimedat Lennon, which would flush elements even as stubborn as Rudd and Garrett out, BEFORE the election.
The Franklin happened along these lines, a long time ago. But lightning doesn’t strike twice.
No power on earth can force evil people not to be evil.
Ambigulous:
Which State conference? It can’t be the ALP because the NTEU is not affiliated with the ALP. The NTEU is affiliated with the ACTU which is different to the ALP
Everyone
Nature abhors a vacuum ….. so where do workers turn when the current Liberal-Labor-Nationals Faction gets its way and the trade unions are reduced to rubber-stamps as they were in Communist “peoples’ democracies”?
Do these idiots really think that sidelining the trade unions will have effects no worse than those of sidelining the conventional religions a few decades ago? Get real! There are probably dozens of very very nasty extremists who are delighted at the way the Liberal-Labor-Nationals Faction is doing all the recruiting for them.
Sans Blog, you said
I am not a unionist, not because I have any objection to them, in fact I think they play an important role in society.It is just that in my sector, they don’t really do anything for me and the people around me.
I find the leadership disconnected from its constituency and while I acknowledge that the Howard Government is doing everyting it can to destroy unions, the fact that some unions have done little to modernise themselves is making this task easier.
The two things I admire the most from the union movement in recent times has been the “rights at work campaign” (which I have contributed financially to) and the James Hardie campaign, both of which show how important the role of unions are.
Perhaps if the union covering my sector (tertiary education) focused on the needs of its memberships and the significant peroblems in the sector, plus that actually got out and canvased new members, they might be able to stem their decline.
Who do you mean by “we”, Kim? I’m not earning over $100k this year, but if you are then you can take your chances. AWAs were misplaced in screwing down the conditions of, say, a retail worker on $35k but if you’re on $150k and you want to trade down your tea allowance or whatever, the same level of injustice isn’t there.
From the very small sample of friends I’ve chatted to about this and observing how the union I’m a member of acts, unions can have a real image problem when it comes to people who are effectively small businesses - the image is that unions are often very conservative and resist performance pay and other measures that more directly integrate individuals into the market.
Should add that I think that this is one of the negative images influencing why many people don’t join unions.
OK,
Thanks for the corrections - the comment made to me about how a particular action of the NTEU Branch was linked to internal factional ALP politics, was around 1993 or so. Either it WAS affiliated to ALP then, or he was talking about the ACTU and I became confused in the meantime, or he was MISTAKEN when he said it.
Graham: your experience is similar to mine. An ineffectual leadership, and an apathetic membership. On my campus, more and more NTEU members simply ignore “strike calls” from the leadership. In my view, members’ apathy may well be a result of the NTEU’s ineffectual ramblings. There’s a place for ideological rants: in Melbourne, the Yarra Bank or the Bourke Street Mall, or the steps of the Museum in Swanston Street. Fine. We get them from the Branch by email and newsletter: dreary and uninformative.
Mark: yes, of course disgruntled members can stand for election or press for changes. But is it worth the candle? My experience in my University is that the vast majority of worthwhile reforms and improvements - for students, general staff and lecturers - come through the boring old University committees; where innovation and collegiality are encouraged.
The “leadership” of my NTEU Branch spout off about “collegiality”, as a slogan only, and seem uninterested in innovation, generally. They fight “rearguard actions”. Is it the only way they can see to protect their ars**?
Sorry, a bit of non-Ruddish vulgarity crept in….
Anyway, the union issue goes way beyond the NTEU, but when it comes to something close to my heart and life, I prefer to use a living example for discussion rather than a portrayal taken from “The Age”, “The Herald Sun”, or from Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, or John Halfpenny for that matter.
Now, about DEMOCRACY: let’s introduce a bit to the Aussie workplace. At what point does a union cease to own the right to collectively bargain? When 50% of the employeses belong to it? 40%? 30%? 20%? Come on, democrats all: name a figure……
This exclusivity in bargaining may be a possible cause of union laziness (or worse).
I’m thinking of the PLO’s insistence for decades that it was the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”. [And why did the world’s free press fall for that hogwash???]
cheerio
Sacha,
great comment and very apt for small businesses.
Kim,
which union do you belong to?
Should say that I’m a member of a union, partially because it negotiates my employment contract on my behalf and I should pay it a fee for doing so - and generally, it negotiates quite good outcomes on my behalf.
What I found in the last enterprise bargain negotiation is that I made a number of suggestions, including introducing some form of performance pay, and was amazed at the conservative reaction from my representatives. The rhetoric was very black and white and suggested a mindset perhaps more fixed than desireable.
I think in part the Unions have themselves to blame for this latest attack by the Ruddster. I am not silly enough to think that Unions control the ALP but realistically they do have some influence over the ALP especially in the nomination of candidates in certain areas.
In recent times a significant portion of the representatives in the ALP caucus seem to come from a Union background but the problem as I see it, is that once these people get their noses in the trough in Canberra, they forget about where they came from. They often get caught up in messy factional politics (which do not seem to have any ideological basis despite the left/right label) and so the wheel goes around.
The Unions need to bind these representatives together (ex union officials and those with strong industrial politics) and get them voting as a block at least on industrial issues. They need to move beyond left/right factional politics on this issue in my view. When Rudd goes to caucus to get his policy approved (I presume he has yet to do this otherwise it would have leaked earlier) there will be a vast majority of ex unionists who vote for it. Why is the question I ask myself?
RE Unions and Performance Pay.
When workers negotiate a collective agreement, the underlying principle is to deliver the benefits in common to all workers in recognition that the product of our labour contributes in common to the production of surplus value or profit. The old adage which is still usedin some unions is to take labour out of competition - capital must find other ways to make profit other than from workers competing with each other to sell their labour at the cheapest price - read Adam Smith - Wealth of Nations to get the picture, its not really any different today.
So performance bonuses that reward individuals are usually treated with utmost caution by union negotiators as their are usually no guarantees that the employer will provide any sort of transparency in divulging the true profits made or allocate the full value of the extra productivity to the worker. The practise is also divisive on the “shop floor” as workers quickly become aware of the inconsistencies of the system and the inequitable allocation of bonuses to the few who are in the position to gather individual payments such as managers and salespeople at the expense of all the grunts whose work makes their results happen. Despite this many collective agreements do have performance based pay increases - ie finance sector and telecommunications but the union will usually argue on principle that these not replace core living standard increases to wages - if they are really bonuses they should genuinely reflect real profit sharing.
On the matter of how crap unions joining mechanisms are - Yes thats true, I work in the movement as an organiser and I find it difficult to negotiate other unions websites (as well as my own) to get accurate information about joining for members r those leaving my industry to go to others.
But I have a brilliant idea! There are a multitude of people on this blog and thousands like them who seem to know how to make things better - how about sharing that knowledge with us cyber cretins and offering to get our union webpages up to speed? Most unions are really stretched for this type of help, at most we can afford one person to try and keep the old steam powered website going - rumour has it he has to pedal the generator down in the basement a lot of the time so the whole thing doesnt fall over. We freely admit we need help to make us more attractive and that goes for our sad newsletters as well, which is quite often because people like me are the only ones who ever write anything, despite harrassing delegates and committee members to write a word or two.
You are all correct in saying we need help - can you lend a hand?
Concerns about correctly identifying and rewarding “performance” in performance pay systems are well-founded. However, this doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be attempted. Simple KPIs are relatively easy to use in performance pay systems, but more complicated KPIs, such as notional ones attempting to measure teaching performance, are more problematic.
Of course, one can have whatever KPIs one wants and use those.
I should add - whatever incentives are built into the system will of course affect people’s performance.