Unions

I am always looking for an interesting piece of news to comment on, and I must say that there is never a lack of it. Finding the time to write a little blog entry it then almost becomes difficult to select which article to comment on!

Today there was one I found particularly interesting, and worthy of some comments. A Union in Switzerland has made a suggestion that Swiss telecomm companies should be required to block professional email addresses outside of working hours in order to protect the employees from stress resulting from working outside of regular hours. Well that is just brilliant, and I don’t even know where to start my comments.

Okay, first of all, it always bothers me when unions decide to impose things on employees under the premise that they know what is best for the employees. I would gladly admit that historically unions have done a lot of good in improving working conditions. Although I was not around to experience it, from what I have read it was pretty tough on the workers 150 years ago, something more akin to sweatshops in Bangladesh today. Add to that weekends, and reasonable working hours along with salaries that allow us to have a very good standard of living. Certainly all of this is not entirely thanks to unions, but over the years they have no doubt greatly contributed to making our work-life easier. Unfortunately after having seen all these improvements it seems as if they lost their way simply because there was nothing really more to do and improve. So, they began to want to get involved in the running of companies, and then voicing demands that are simply unreasonable as well as often being against what the actual employees want.

There have been many cases in recent history where a group of unions have forced their members to participate in a strike in order to push through unreasonable and economically unsustainable demands. They fully set aside all concern for the actual economic situation, and only focus on the short-term benefit of their members. A perfect example is that of a company that is struggling with their revenue due to a weakening market. At some point, the costs exceed the revenues, and so it is necessary to revise the costs so as to find a positive balance. When a job cutting plan is then proposed, the unions vehemently oppose this, first of all by having the workers go on strike so as to send a message to the management. Sure, a message is sent but at the cost of production being halted temporarily. This interruption has the effect of totally cutting revenues for a period of time, as well as sending a negative message to the clients. Some clients at this point may consider other vendors, further reducing the revenue. Finally the management is forced in to not implementing the job cutting, and things continue as they are for a while.

Six months later, the losses incurred by the company are such that they are no longer able to honor their creditors leading to the company going bankrupt and the whole staff being laid off. At this point the union steps in and criticizes the management for having run the company to the ground and claim it is their full responsibility that all these people are now unemployed. In reality, had they allowed for the 10% job reduction, not only would the company still be up and running, possibly looking in to expanding to new markets, but it is likely that a majority of those 10% laid off would have found new employment by now through the assistance offered from the management in form of outplacement services.

Back to the article of the day. There are a lot of businesses that require at least a portion of their staff to be available off regular working hours for things to work. The world does not stop at five PM on Friday. Furthermore, there are a number of people that actually appreciate the possibility to manage their workload themselves. I for one much prefer having a look at my business email a couple of times over the weekend when it is not disruptive rather than finding an overloaded inbox on Monday morning as I come to work. It makes for much more efficient Monday mornings, as well as very appreciative recipients on the other end that actually appreciate a rapid response to their queries. I am a grown adult, and am actually capable of assuming the responsibility of managing my time. I most certainly do not want a union telling me when I can or can’t work. Switching off the Blackberry myself is not that difficult, and I have the possibility to switch it back on whenever I want.