[Info-vax] Looks like HP has been stepping in the doo-doo again

[JF Mezei]

Richard B. Gilbert wrote:

> A union was/is an organization of manufacturing and/or service workers 
> and is concerned with extorting the maximum pay for the minimum work.


If you take the VMS example, a VMS union wouldn't have made a difference
since HP, with just a handful of exceptions, fired the whole lot, so it
wouldn't matter if they went on strike or not.

Now, if VMS engineers were in the same union as the
coloured-alchool-in-expensive-plastic-cartridge workers, then a strike
would cripple HP's profits.


Unions tend to be incompatible with such type of worker because tasks
and capabilities are so different, there is no way to set proper salary
scales.

When I worked for a bank, it was almost like a union, with different
salary classes a gazillion levels. A particular job had a salary range
that you could not exceed. So if the bank wanted to attract a highly
qualified person, they couldn't because they could only offer a salary
within the approved rates. And once in the bank, the only way to
increase your salary was to move from a technical to a managerial job,
at which point your technical skills are not longer worth much.

There were exceptions, notably in the money trading portions where
bonuses were de-rigeur to attract and retain highly profitable workers
who were paid large sums of money relative to how much profit they
generate. But the rest of the bank was pretty much civil service
mentality and strick salary limits set to jobs. You could move from the
bottom to the top of the salary range for your job, but not exceed it.