The Dangers Within

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I was glancing through an article about the second largest Trade Union in England called Unite and some of the ideas they have been throwing around. Trade Unions in my opinion are dangerous for employees and employers as they have fixed agendas that they think is relevant in order to maintain support. Little do they realise they are making matters far worse as they are putting every worker in harms way when Mr Robot makes his appearance. This is coming and has already started.

When I worked for a Blue Chip Company years back in the tobacco industry we had one policy and that was you would not be hired if you belonged to a Trade Union. Some thought that was harsh, but that was the reality and it was something we all believed in. Knowing that I can guarantee you this is still the case today as like minded people hire like minded people and that is a fact.

In this article the new head of Unite was calling for a 4 day week with no change to the workers pay. One has to look deeper as to where the agenda is going and it is sometimes right in front of you. If the pay doesn't change then the Unions don't lose out as they still get their same slice of the pie. The workers are happy as they are basically getting a 20% increase for less productivity and why this is so unrealistic.

Money has to be earned and companies have to be stable in order to continue operating. Changing a work force hours for the same cost, but a company receiving 20% less is somewhat short sighted. If they carry on down this road you can see where this is all going.

Artificial intelligence is only one step away from most jobs that have a Union backing them and one cannot blame employees for going down that route. A robot works 24 hours and is never sick or complains if the work load is too much. In the UK they had the furlough scheme in operation and from what my family told me it is now coming to an end.

People don't realise how lucky they have been as in South Africa you received no financial support unless you include the $20 per month unemployment some type of support. Companies have been stretched and have had to lay off staff in order to survive and in many cases it was not the staff they wanted to let go either. The rules here are slightly different on how you hire and fire or retrench staff. If you retrench and then start hiring again you have to first find a spot for those you let go even if hey weren't the best candidates for that job.

This was the main reason for when I started my own business for not hiring anyone. Sometimes things don't workout and trying to get rid of individuals can take years as they are protected by the labour act. I know this as I had over 120 staff under my care and it was a nightmare on it's own. The staff would have been better off with no protection in my case as firing only happened for theft or absconding.

The more hassle an employee is then the companies are going to look for alternative staffing and if they can do without human interaction then they will.

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My personal opinion here though is you address the wrong concerns in this article lol. I'd have thought you'd be more concerned about automation inevitably taking these people jobs. It's not that the employer is being pushed to robots and alternatives based on worker performance or lack thereof.

The employer we well know is going to take whatever option anyway that produces the most money for him. Now in some cases i think this can become unethical as capitalism does from time to time. However it is what it is. I would say that an employee working 20% less a week could also go another way. You could have a healthier happier well rested employee that actually keeps up with production demand or surprasses it.

I know it's more in line less work equals less production. However that isn't exactly true. It's not less work equals less production. It's less qualified and motivated employees equal less production. So when an employee feels his company doesn't even care about them. Do you feel you're going to get the most production out of those employees?

My thoughts are you're going to get the most production out of the happiest employee who wants to be on the job in the first place. In the military they stopped the draft because you'd get unmotivated and unqualified soldiers. I don't think this goes far from the workforce when people being enslaved to work despite not wanting to be.

My solutions are in a double method approach or it kills two birds with one stone. Ubi helps to deal with the inevitable automation of most jobs and losing of jobs. It also i believe would make employees happier and they would be more productive. Now of course you can have the opposite effect. However i'm just suggesting it doesn't have to mean less production necessarily. I wanted to do something about problems like this so i went and created a ubi project in cryptocurrency. Most everyone else tried to build businesses on the blockchain that probably don't even belong on the chain. The others built pyramids and ponzi schemes and that's all they managed to accomplish.

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A good reply and I agree with a lot of what you are saying but it never works that way. Smaller companies may care about how happy their workers are but the big ones don't. They look at the numbers and if you are working less hours they will cut your pay. If you are not happy then they will replace you with someone who is prepared to work under those conditions as you are just a number to them. I have noticed a stark difference in how companies work over the last 10 years and it is rather scary as they have no concerns over their staffs well being. I do think differently as a happy staff member does produce better work but how many happy staff members are there these days. Companies want more bang for their buck and the only way they will get it is by automation. Thanks for such a good response.

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Yes you're correct that's the only way they'll get it. However you have to understand every business or company you thinking of serves the consumer. If the consumer can no longer be the consumer because mass automation and ai super intelligence has taken over half the jobs or 47% as the elon musk's and some economist predict. These are still service reciprocal systems. Which means when they can no longer serve human beings. Human beings won't serve it. So now the pandemic brought another reality to our job markets. That is people just stop working. They went on strike.

Yes the system our version of capitalism and the job market half way works now. There are no guarantees in the future these companies can expect the same outcome that they have had through the last several industrial revolutions. So i believe we're headed to uncharted territories. I don't think this is going to go the way many of us think.

I think you going to see people and governments doing things against companies we haven't seen before. The companies that think like what you're talking about on the old 20th century capitalist model. I think that's in for a big change.

i think you going to see alot more of this in the future or those companies you thinking of i don't think they will exist in the future.

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