Kickstarter employees vote to unionize
I worked in a union shop once, as a summer intern.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.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.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.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.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.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...