Unions, what are they good for?

Well unions brought us the weekend, 40 work weeks, and a whole host of other things.

But today Unions are catching a lot of heat, and a lot of blame, plus all this talk of "right to work", and during all this, people are forgetting their history. What was it like working without a Union. Well it isn't really history since it's still going on.

Years before the Manx Cat went to law school he worked as software tester for two of the big titans of the video game industry. There were no Unions for the Quality Assurance department. QA is a very strange monster, because of this fact.

Many companies will hire QA workers as temps because California requires several things to be provided for permanent employees. So typically a worker will get a job for about 9 or so months, then get laid off, take unemployment and reapply for their job again in three or so months. Sure at first it sounds like a sweet set up with 3 months "vacation" but on the other hand there's no guaruntee you'll get your job back.

The next issue is forget about upward mobility. You can also forget about getting a raise. You could get fired for next to no reason. When the project shipped, other departments like those (in the opinion of the Manx Cat) assholes in marketing get a bonus while we got the pink slip. If there were any issues with the project, the QA dept always, always got the blame. Essentially you were at the mercy of the management, which on more than one occasion was somewhat incompetent.

Most of all you are expendable, if they get rid of you there is always someone else there to replace you. Job security is really non-existant, you slack off too much, you get canned. You work super efficient and get the project out early, you still might get canned. The only hope for job security is getting into a different department.

It's almost like something out of a Charles Dicken's novel, just without ghosts of Christmas and beat downs by Pinkertons. On the plus side though the wages are good for what it is, one company paid $12 and hour, while another paid $11 and hour.

Nature of the beast? Maybe. But the beast would certainly be much different if there was a Union. If you think "right to work" is great, if you think Unions are bad, go work as a Quality Assurance tester in the video game industry, where you have no Unions to represent you.