Hi, it's Alex. Today I want to talk about something that exists in a lot of unionized workplaces. Relative to people who have similar political views to me, I tend to be a little bit more skeptical of unions and there's a specific thing that I've seen in unionized workplaces that I really don't like. And this I've seen it both when I've been working for a large employer that is unionized and I've seen it sort of from the outside, for example, in school systems where there's a teachers union and I'm the student in the school system. And what I see that I don't like is that there's often the system of seniority in place. So these unionized workplaces will negotiate a union contract and the contracts are pretty complicated but in the contract there is this system of seniority spelled out so that over time as people stay with the employer longer and longer they get certain additional benefits. So the three things that I see come up most frequently is that people who've been there longer tend to have higher pay so that's usually written into the union contract that the pay goes up over time and the pay increases can be substantial so they get higher pay. The second thing they tend to have more job security. Now union contracts typically spell out conditions for when and how you can fire people and they typically make it very hard to fire people. But most people in union unionized workplaces because it's hard to fire people they're not losing their jobs because of getting fired for doing something bad. They're losing their jobs because of layoffs. So when there are budget constraints and the management either is forced to scale back or they want to chip scale back and choose to lay people off whether or not it's forced typically because of the union contract it's the people who have worked there the least amount of time who get laid off. So that's a second thing the people who've worked there longer tend to have more job security. What's the third thing that I see the third thing is that the people who have worked there longer usually get a pick of easier jobs and this is often explicitly spelled out. For example in a bus system you typically have this concept of a pick where there are these different bus routes and in order of seniority the operators go in and they get to choose which run they want to drive. So the desirable runs get taken first. Now the desirable runs can include both ones that are easy and ones that pay more. So there's some drivers who just go for the really high paying route which might be like a night shift, a swing shift, some shift that people don't really want to take so the union contract spells out that it pays more. But the other thing a lot of times it's just they're going for the easy runs, the easy pleasant things. And you see the same sort of pattern playing out in police forces. For example like new officers are typically put out on the street whereas as they get more senior they often move into the office and get sort of higher status work. It's like a little more cushy you know you're not placed at risk, you're not having to deal with difficult situations on a daily basis. And okay I'm really dislike all three of these things. So the three things we have here is that there's a higher pay as you get older, there's higher job security as you stay there longer and there's your job gets easier. And why don't I like these things. First of all there often can be a big disconnect between your performance in these jobs and your pay when you're in a unionized job. And if your pay goes up on the basis of a formula there's not much incentive for you to do the best job that you can do. And this has been my experience in these situations. Some people do a great job and they're really committed and some people don't. But because of this union contract and these constraints the employer can't do anything about it. They can't promote the people who are doing a better job. They can't recognize them. They can't give them a higher salary even if they're contributing more to the functioning of the organization. Like some some employees might be doing things to cut costs and it's saving a lot of money for the organization but they don't get any financial resources as a appreciation of that. And that bothers me. Okay so there's this thing of people not really getting compensated and recognized for what they're doing. The second thing though is it's really hard on the people who start off. So for example one unionized workplace, most police departments, New York City, look up the starting salary of a police officer there. I don't know what it is now but I looked it up a number of years back and it was in the 30,000s and this is in New York City like you can't possibly live in New York City with that kind of salary. It is crazy and over time as you work your way up you'll start making more but like okay it can be really hard on the new people and when I think it's even harder is often the lack of job security. This is an issue facing many of my friends who start out teaching in public school districts because the public school districts are mostly or almost exclusively unionized. So teachers they go in and also school districts are often subject to cuts and layoffs. So it's really common for a teacher to go in one or two years and suddenly bam they're out. They lose their job. Whereas the people who have been there longer have a lot of job security. Now I don't necessarily think it's totally problematic to have your job security increase as you get older and as you stay there longer but there are a lot of teachers in there who are not really working as hard as these new new teachers and the new teachers are often really busting their butts and because they can be easily laid off a lot of them are really afraid of losing their jobs and so the administration will kind of harass them. Be really really hard on them. Whereas the teachers who have been there for a longer especially when they have tenure they can get away with really crazy stuff that most people wouldn't be able to get away with. Like basically the few people I know have gone fired it's usually because there's something horrible like having sex with a student who's under 18. I mean like awful stuff like that. Not just that they're being lazy they're not doing a good job in the classroom they're sort of being unfair to the students like those types of things won't get you fired and this really bothers me. So there's this disparity in power right there and the new people who tend to be young people ride our college they tend to be financially in a rough situation to begin with. They're the people get the short end of the stick. Okay so what's this last last element of it? Well the last element is the nature of your work and sort of picking the easier jobs. So this is more an issue in some workplaces than others but basically this comes down to the same thing that I said right to the beginning like people aren't being that they're not working in a way that's more efficient for the organization as a whole. Different people are going to be better at different tasks and when you're talking about like police officers some people are going to be better on the street some people are going to be better in the office and as you get older you don't necessarily get better in the office there might be some newly hired cops who might really be at their best working in the office but they're not doing that because that's not the way the system works and similarly there might be some older ones who really are just at their best when they're out there and they're not as good in the office but they move into that because it's it's a more pleasant job so they pick that job same thing with bus drivers like some people are better at certain types of things than others and like you see it in performance of like things like people's accident rates absences stuff like that complaints about a driver so so when people are allowed to pick routes as they get older it doesn't necessarily lead to the most efficient operation of the organization as a whole so what's the solution to these things I honestly don't know it's complicated I just don't really like the setup as is and I want us to start talking about it and I would like to see especially people who are really gun-holed unions like if you're like yay labor unions yay unionized if you want to commence me that unionizing is a good idea you need to propose some ways to adjust these problems and especially how are we going to make it so that the union system isn't so hard on the young people I think that's a really important question to ask if you're someone who's like all about unions throw it out there what's your idea how can we address these problems because I don't see unions doing it I would rather take other methods in society to address these problems this is only the beginning of it I could I could tell you more things that I don't like about unions but I think this video is wrong enough um yeah I'd love to hear from you are you someone who supports unions and do you have a way to address these concerns I want to hear it um do you do agree with me and do not like unions I don't know I want to hear from you regardless of what your viewpoint is yeah thank you