Does Our Profession Need a Union?

My second paragraph clearly states my distaste for unions, at least in their current form. They’ve outgrown their britches and a symbiotic relationship that is not in the best interest of the citizens has developed between unions and the political party they contribute to, who then in turn cater to the unions. It’s gotten out of control and has become a financial burden for tax payers and businesses alike. It has also prevented our education system and industries from adapting and staying competitive with other countries. But the unions of today are not what they were intended to be.  

At the turn of the century, they were started for noble reasons and were very effective at protecting the workers from abuses. Their battles were hard won including; creating the 8 hour work day (when 16 was the norm) and making working conditions safer for employees. People used to get maimed or die on the job all the time because employers didn’t want to spend money on safety equipment and people were worked to exhaustion.

I hear a lot of LAs are complaining about long hours, low pay, a lack of benefits and little job security. It seems to be a problem that plagues our profession which should not be the case for a career that requires a lot of education, personal investment, intelligence and technical abilities. LAs also tend to be poor business people. We get pushed around and walked over because we are supposed to be nice and sensitive people who don’t push back.

So while the unions have overstepped their boundaries in the public sector and major manufacturing, earning unskilled and uneducated people tremendous benefits, many people in the private sector have been losing ground in the never ending struggle for workers rights. Companies have been pushing the “doing more with less” mantra and while unemployment is at an all time high, so are profits. People are being over worked and over stressed across the board and fear is the mechanism they are using to extract more work and more hours from their employees.

We are in interesting times… things have become unbalanced. A smaller private workforce is being expected to work harder and pay higher taxes to support an expanding public workforce with unsustainably high benefits. LAs were some of the first to feel “the new economy” and we’ve arguably felt it the hardest. 

My post is intended to promote discussion (which it appears to be doing) not advocate unions. My second paragraph clearly states that there are issues with unions today and my last paragraph points out benefits to both employers and employees of working under independent contractor agreements. Attempting to create a union for landscape architectural employees would probably do more harm than good. At the same time, I’d like to explore ideas that we could employ to give us more strength, job security and negotiating power with our employers.

Perhaps union was a poor choice of words. Guild would be more appropriate as it reflects the nature of our work, our sense of community and a conscious decision to unite as a profession of artisans with a common goal of promoting our works value to both our employers and clients alike.         

In China and India because our corporations are allowed to outsource work, creating the same working conditions abroad that US unions protested while paying foreign peasants under a dollar a day. I remember back in the 80’s and early 90’s sweat shops were a major issue. It’s all you heard about on the news. Now a days we’re happy to turn a blind eye to that reality today.

Unions applied pressure. Corporations moved where there was no pressure. It’s a constant game. A balancing act. But when U.S. jobs are lost to laborers overseas obviously something has gone wrong. Either Unions demanded too much, or it’s too easy for corporations to chase cheap labor around the globe. Probably both though I have the feeling that these jobs would have gone overseas regardless of unions. It is a corporations duty to increase profits and create value for its share holders. One of the best ways to do that is with labor savings. So it doesn’t matter if they are paying a US worker a fair wage (with no union), if they can get the same job done for 1/10 the cost, that is what they will do, every time.