Kickstarter employees vote to unionize
I worked in a union shop once, as a summer intern.<p>Every day, we were told to be in the break room at 7:59am to begin promptly at the 8am bell. By 4:30 or 4:45pm, everyone was back in there, waiting for the clock to hit 5pm.<p>One day, I needed to connect two PCs together, which was approved by boss as they would be isolated from the network. So, being the diligent type, I went off and found some network cards and a cable to do this.<p>About the time I had one PC opened up and was installing the NIC, one of the local IT guys dropped by and told me "You can't do that." 'Why not?', I asked. "That's not your job.", he replies.<p>Not "you're not qualified", not "you're not taking the proper ESD protection steps" (was wearing a grounding tape strap), etc. This boiled down to the union job classification, which said that I couldn't open up a PC to put in a network card.<p>Unions, in my experience, exist to help keep mediocre, unmotivated employees employed. One has no incentive to excel, as promotions are based on years "served", much like prison.<p>I got my degree, went to work for a start-up where ambition and taking on responsibility are appreciated and rewarded. I never looked back...