Fair & Reasonable... vs. Reality
Recently I was assisting a consultant on a project for an organisation. We were reviewing some of the practices of the workers who were unionised. During this engagement I learned of some of the behaviours of the workers and their representatives around enterprise bargaining and the forces of the prevailing political climate.
I had a difficult time coping with what I perceived were ungrateful workers who did not recognise how much better they had it than people who lived in the real world (outside their union environment). I had been trying to reason philosophically that the money isn't that important and on the whole I was in a better place due to my job satisfaction. This approach was wearing a little thin until I recalled the words of a consultant I encountered in a previous role.
In this previous role I was providing assistance in a practice sales audit to determine tariffs on our organisation's exports to the USA. The antagonists were US business groups who lobbied the US Department of Commerce for protection against so called predatory pricing from international competitors (us).
The consultant shared two principles; one about the process and another about the lobbyists. The first was 'Eliminate any notion you have that this is going to be in any way fair.' And the second was 'What they will demand from the officials will be limited only by what they can say out loud while keeping a straight face.'
So the actions of the union workers, in my opinion, were really just them throwing their weight around because they can. And not because they have a genuine need or were addressing an imbalance. Once I accepted they had this power it got a whole lot easier to deal with. And I was very grateful I was not in the direct firing line of this power.
It's just one of those things that can't be cured. It can, at best, only be managed to an acceptable level and then one has to find pleasant things to do in the mean time.
I had a difficult time coping with what I perceived were ungrateful workers who did not recognise how much better they had it than people who lived in the real world (outside their union environment). I had been trying to reason philosophically that the money isn't that important and on the whole I was in a better place due to my job satisfaction. This approach was wearing a little thin until I recalled the words of a consultant I encountered in a previous role.
In this previous role I was providing assistance in a practice sales audit to determine tariffs on our organisation's exports to the USA. The antagonists were US business groups who lobbied the US Department of Commerce for protection against so called predatory pricing from international competitors (us).
The consultant shared two principles; one about the process and another about the lobbyists. The first was 'Eliminate any notion you have that this is going to be in any way fair.' And the second was 'What they will demand from the officials will be limited only by what they can say out loud while keeping a straight face.'
So the actions of the union workers, in my opinion, were really just them throwing their weight around because they can. And not because they have a genuine need or were addressing an imbalance. Once I accepted they had this power it got a whole lot easier to deal with. And I was very grateful I was not in the direct firing line of this power.
It's just one of those things that can't be cured. It can, at best, only be managed to an acceptable level and then one has to find pleasant things to do in the mean time.
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