I think it’s that if the switching fails, I’ll be left without any job and risk homelessness. And that the general narrative I hear is that “we should be grateful to have a job at all”.
I think it’s that if the switching fails, I’ll be left without any job and risk homelessness. And that the general narrative I hear is that “we should be grateful to have a job at all”.
I am going to answer this twice. Once for my current job with a strong union and once for any of my crappier jobs. These are across 4 states in the US.
Now: I have a job description and work plan. These I have a hand in modifying yearly along with my supervisor, but they’re guides not contracts. The cleaning is also union, so they absolutely couldn’t ask me to do it without getting push back from that union. There is a process for disciplinary action that mostly won’t result in instant firing as long as I don’t do anything dangerously negligent. Promotions are approved by an established process and come with increasing responsibility and changes to a work plan and a raise. There is a union agreement that defines my benefits. I could quit on a minute’s notice if I thought that was a good idea.
Then: Job description/posting gave basic responsibilities, but for all of my crappy jobs that included cleaning and other work like that. They could fire me whenever. Promotions/pay increases were verbal. I always checked the paystubs to make sure that there weren’t any ‘clerical errors’. My benefits were defined by legislation, so I had no sick leave, no vacation, and no retirement to keep the company on track with. Still, I could quit whenever I wanted. I never had any problems with getting shorted or asked to do unreasonable things. I did have to take my boss aside and correct how they treated me and other employees at couple of places. Just as context I check most of the privilege boxes, and I know that my relative ease navigating these jobs is not universal.
My general thought is that if it isn’t collectively negotiated the contract probably favors the company because they have a disincentive to write a contract that protects your rights. If you have the means, you could bring your work contract to a lawyer and see what they think about it. In my experience companies try to write a bunch of stuff in that is unenforceable/illegal so employees will read and abide by it without looking into whether they actually have to. I would rather have a union at my back than have to worry about an individual contract. At this point in my life, I wouldn’t sign a work contract if I didn’t like the terms or the tone - time to look for a place that isn’t trying to screw me over before I even start work.
Por que no los dos.
It’s an interesting take. I think that if you are desparate for work you will be forced to accept an exploitative contract and that’s bad. But that having no contract allows you to be exploited much worse. A manager could literally make stuff up - one day say “you don’t work here anymore” with no notice or “you forfeited those wages because the moon was in Scorpio”.
But unions are also important. And not having a large body of desperate workers is important.
You’re right about being exposed to instant firing, but generally being short staffed on short notice hurts the company. For random garnished wages or whatever I depended on labor law protections. It is literally illegal to do what you describe in the places I have worked. There are probably less extreme examples that the law doesn’t protect against that a contract could, but what incentive does a company have to write protections for you into their contract? There are probably good contragts out there. I just personally don’t trust them.