Lol the fact that she even has a contract at all is because of unions.
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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Man I was sad as shit when Nina Turner lost. Bernie Sanders backed her up too.
I think she's running again. I was at a UAW conference last week and Nina Turner spoke there. I think she's trying to drum up support for another run.
How is it even legal to have explicitly preferential pay for people not in a union? Is there a limit to that, or can companies just say, "Anyone who joins a union will be paid minimum wage." Ofc with at-will employment they can always just fire you, but like, if you think about it it's pretty fucked up right?
sounds like their pay is based on union rates. that's probably just a company policy for everyone.
What I'm saying is that if they can set "$0.50 above union rates" as the company policy for everyone, they can also set "$5 above union rates" as the company policy for everyone and then cut union rates by $5. It's essentially just bribing people to not join a union or penalizing them if they do. It being company policy for everyone is irrelevant.
They can't cut union rates.
sure, but whether or not they know it they have caved to the union's demands by doing that
What kind of 5th dimensional chess are you trying to play where penalizing someone for joining a union is "caving to the union's demands?"
One of the main goals of unions is to increase worker pay. Mission accomplished.
The issue here is that if more people choose not to join a union for the pay raise in the short term, unions become weaker in the longer term. The capitalist in this case is paying a premium now to divide up labor for the chance down the line to save more money on labor overall in the long term.
if salaries depend on union decisions then surely they are following the union's demands.
i think the thing that makes it confusing is the missing context of whether unionised workers at that site are being paid less than non-union workers. i assumed the answer was no because it sounded like they had a CBA that the person was not aware of, since the alternative would have been immediately struck down by any union worth its salt.
My guess would be that this person is part of the collective bargaining block, but does not pay dues (possibly public sector). So the contract she describes was negotiated by the Union, and is the same contract that everyone in her position gets, union or otherwise. She probably just doesn't realize it.
Could be wrong, but the above situation is unfortunately pretty common.
I wouldn't be surprised if the union has other benefits that more then make up for the 50 cents, e.g. better medical, vacation, or whatever.
I get that, I'm just highlighting the potential for abuse. Or rather, that it's fucked up in the first place.
Oh of course. But this is America, the land of the exploited.
We still have 7.25 minimum wage.
I love how one person cites a statistic, and another person just dismisses it as false because of their anecdotal experience.
And I've never heard of a contract that explicitly ties non-union workers' pay to the union contact, but I'd be cheering the union guys on if they ever asked for a raise if that was the case.
That's actually more common than you think. It's not explicit.
My niece who works at a very popular coffee shop where some are unioned, the non-union ones get paid a bit extra and reminded on the daily about that benefit of higher pay for being non-unioned.
And my aunt works as a receptionist in a non-union hospital. Her counterparts in a union, when they went on strike and got a huge pay bump... She suddenly "mysteriously" got a pay bump aligned with it because the non-union hospital was afraid of employees unionizing (which secretly, they were).
It's in the news that Starbucks does that
Part of the problem is that statistics can be abused. It takes a reasonable amount of training to be able to differentiate between reliable statistics and potentially dodgy. Even worse, we are often presented with them, striped or context.
The best solution is to teach people how to both spot problems and seek reliable data. The proper meaning of "do your own research". Unfortunately, a significant chunk just give up with them and only trust their gut.
statistics can be abused
They can be abused, by people who understand statistics talking to people who don't understand statistics. This is a good reason to learn statistical methods rather than reject them.
There are levels of abuse, some blatant, some subtle. Leading questions are obvious, when you have the question asked. Publishing bias is difficult to spot, even for trained scientists looking for it.
Learning about statistical methods isn't enough. People need to be taught how to weigh the data presented against the value of misleading them.
It's a subsection of logical reasoning, and needs to be taught as part of an integrated whole.
Typically, statistics are abused by politicians/partisan hacks who take data from reliable sources and lie/spin it to their narrative. The thing is, the average Fox News viewer with a HS diploma isn't going to dig any deeper. And I wouldn't say they trust their gut... they trust the propaganda narrative.
When Trump and Vance said immigrants were eating people's dogs and cats, they just nodded their empty heads.. you can't teach someone like that to engage reason.
This is how most people think and see the world, which is why we (the US) are in the boat we're in now. People don't see the big picture if they never have to or aren't taught how to think critically.
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"your statistic is false because I have an anecdote" is literally the entire basis of the conservative understanding of science.
union workers don't make more on average because I earn half a dollar more.
global warming isn't happening because I brought a snowball.
vaccines cause death because my friend walked out of a clinic after a shot and got hit by a self driving tesla.
"conservative understanding"
Sounds like all conservatives are idiots or rather idiots are the ones who are politically conservative.
Global warming is a hoax, it's cold in my basement today!
Because I have an anecdote, and interpret it in the stupidest way possible, as exhibited in the OP
It really is a kind of solipsism, emotional immaturity as a self-justifying worldview. Problems don't exist until they impact me personally, repeat and nauseam.
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I live in California, so there was a lot of bemoaning the rising minimum wage.
“Why should someone flipping burgers earn as much as I do in a trade field?”
Mate, you should be arguing for increased wages, not trying to keep others down.
Seattle metro area has the highest minimum wage in the country. The top 5 cities in the US are all in this metro. This is because when the wage increases were passed by city, they were tied to the inflation rate so that increases every year, so no new laws have to be passed year over year to get this increase. No arguing every year for a simple cost of living adjustment.
Fucking thank you! Why is this so complicated?? Why fight for $15 or whatever if you know by the time your get the fucking laws past your dollar is worth half as much.
It's so transparently flawed to because tying minimum wage to a formula/basket/col/astrology FFS, Would mean not having to revisit this fight every. Single. Year.
Credit for that goes to Kshama Sawant, she had to fight the Democrats on the city council and shame them to get there.
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Net income is a small factor. One should compare the total package because the unions are usually way ahead of the non-union.
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