August 16, 2008 10:01 PM UTC
Everything's going well, so lets f* it up
108 Comments- by: DavidThi808
Colorado has a pretty good business climate, from the perspective of both business and labor. Is it perfect? No. But it runs pretty well. Companies are able to operate and succeed. Unemployment is a bit lower here than elsewhere, there are a lot of well paying jobs, and labor strife is pretty minimal.
Most of the effort here is that of businesses going on about their business. And the bottom line is profit for the owners and salaries for the workers all come out of that effort so the concentration on actually working means there’s more for everyone. Yes, there is always a tension between company and worker. There is always a tension between union and executives. There should be.
So let’s look at the upcoming ballot initiatives being proposed. There’s bad ones on both sides but lets start with the worst one. The Just Cause Initiative has the potential to inflict more damage on this state than TABOR, and to do so rapidly. This will destroy parts of the economy, and the jobs that existed in them. It is a bullet aimed at the heart of Colorado’s economy.
Lets take a look at this train-wreck, here’s the title:
An amendment to the Colorado constitution concerning cause for employee discharge or suspension, and, in connection therewith, requiring an employer to establish and document just cause for the discharge or suspension of a full-time employee; defining "just cause" to mean specified types of employee misconduct and substandard job performance, the filing of bankruptcy by the employer, or documented economic circumstances that directly and adversely affect the employer; exempting from the just cause requirement business entities that employ fewer than twenty employees, nonprofit organizations that employ fewer than one thousand employees, governmental entities, and employees who are covered by a collective bargaining agreement that requires just cause for discharge or suspension; allowing an employee who believes he or she was discharged or suspended without just cause to file a civil action in state district court; allowing a court that finds an employee’s discharge or suspension to be in violation of this amendment to award reinstatement in the employee’s former job, back wages, damages, or any combination thereof; and allowing the court to award attorneys fees to the prevailing party.
The honeybee is a small part of our environmental system and yet very critical to the entire system. In the Denver/Boulder area we have a vibrant high-tech industry, including a gigantic number of start-ups. This area actually has a higher percentage of high-tech jobs than Silicon Valley (Silicon Valley has a larger total number).
A key component of this system is all the start-ups. Sun located here because of all these businesses. Conoco-Phillips for the same. We are becoming a center for renewable energy research in large part due to these start-ups. To have a future with these kind of high-paying jobs that in turn generate more jobs (all job growth in the U.S. comes from small companies), we need these companies.
Now lets look at start-ups. Most of them fail. Of the ones that succeed, most of them come very close to failing several times before they finally make it. It is a very tough Darwinian environment where you have to be very good, react very quickly, and have an idea that people actually will pay for once it’s delivered. And the people who put money into these ideas have to look for the ones where the odds, while bad, are better than any of the other opportunities.
So what does this initiative do to start-up companies? It kills them. Here’s why (speaking from personal experience):
- I have fired people who are competent. Because competent is not sufficient, to survive in the start-up world you need people who are incredibly good (the rule of thumb is the top 5%). Having to hang on to people who are average (or god forbid mediocre) means we get beat by another company that is staffed with superstars.
- I have fired superstars. Because how well a team works together has a larger impact on success than the skills of any individual. So someone who is the best programmer, but does not play well with others, is actually a detriment to the team as a whole.
- I have made mistakes. In a start-up you have to make decisions quickly. By definition some of those decisions are wrong. But if you make sure on every decision, once again you’re out of business. So at times I have certainly fired people who were competent, and would have done a good job, but I made a bad decision.
- Lets say they are clearly incompetent. We hired (on contract) a sales team who’s job was to call leads. And they were required to work at least 20 hours/week. So when we ended the contract and ended up in court as to was it "for cause," even though the sales team admitted they had made a total of 1 call over 2 months and had worked under 20 hours some weeks, the judge still found it was not for cause (and we had to pay for an additional 30 days of time). So even if someone is clearly incompetent, that doesn’t mean a judge will agree.
So what does the above do to startup companies (which grow to over 20 people quite quickly)? They will get saddled with incompetents. And that will have a devastating effect on morale as the others then have to work even harder to make up for these boat-anchors. A successful start-up is a group of people that are putting their heart and soul into making a long-shot a success. This kills that drive.
And so what happens to the venture capital money? Venture capitalists aren’t stupid – that money all goes out of state to places where a company can fire those they need to fire. For really good ideas they will tell people that if they move to any other state, they will fund them. Which is ironical since we presently have people moving to Colorado for the start-up environment here.
In short, rather than building on the Silicon Valley we presently have here and possibly becoming the top place in the country for renewable energy start-ups, this will stop virtually all future start-ups and piss away what we presently have. This puts Colorado on the road to an economy where the only businesses here are ones that must be here such as retail. For any company that can locate elsewhere, it will.
My company competes world-wide. We derive no advantage from our geographical location. Nor do we derive an advantage from being inside the U.S. We have competitors located in both China and India and their location also has no impact on who wins sales. We successfully compete against these other companies while paying higher salaries, health insurance, more in taxes, etc. But we can’t compete with this proposed albatross around our neck.
And here’s the kicker, if we go out of business, there’s no jobs. Even if this union led wet-dream public school teacher level of job protection is imposed, when a company shuts down, all the jobs are gone. So if you impose iron-clad job protection for all employees at a 55 employee start-up, you have not protected those 55 people from being fired – you have destroyed those 55 jobs.
In addition, this does not protect the job, it protects the bozo presently holding the job. When we fire someone, it’s rarely a downsizing, it’s because we need someone better. So the job still exists, it’s just we will offer it to someone else. So this initiative does not protect jobs per-se, it merely protects the person presently in that job who is inadequate for the position.
Ok, so this initiative, if passed, will drive jobs out of state, destroy the high-tech business environment built up at great effort here, and devastate our economy. Because of how damaging it will be, hopefully it will fail and then we’re done – right?
No. Even if this fails, it has the potential to cause quite a bit of damage this election year due to blow-back. My plan was to donate the maximum to Betsy Markey and Joe Whitcomb. And probably to Joe Rice and Morgan Carroll if their races were looking close. All gone. I donate to Act-Blue candidates every month. No more. There’s needs vs preferences. I need to keep my company in business. I have put a ton of money and effort into it and I have a lot of employees who depend on our success for their monthly paycheck. That responsibility comes before my preference in a number of legislative races. My company will survive another 2 years of Marilyn Musgrave. It probably won’t survive this initiative.
I’m just one person. But I’m not the only one. Virtually every liberal/progressive/Democrat/etc in the high-tech industry will be devoting some, if not all, of their time and effort this election to defeating this proposed disaster. Because like me, while they would prefer to see progressive candidates win in November, they’re more concerned about having a job after November.
And in every single high-tech company there is an example where you can say "imagine if we could not have fired *****" and everyone there will shudder at the thought. This initiative does not appeal to those who are good at their job, it appeals to the marginally competent. Every progressive who looks at this and shudders at it’s effect, that’s one less person that will be out there working for a progressive candidate because their time and money will be focused on defeating this.
It also means people like me are being driven into the arms of the business interests opposing this (you know – the bad guys – Republicans). We might find other common ground, such as taking on the teacher’s unions in order to fix the public schools here. That would be a good thing for the state, but a bad thing for all the unionized incompetent school teachers.
In other words, this initiative is a horrible idea, not just for businesses, competent employees, Democratic candidates, and the state economy, but potentially also harmful for the unions themselves. It’s amazing but it look like ProtectFuckColoardo’sFuture has managed to propose an initiative that causes major harm, while providing nothing positive.
As to those that will say this is just a response to Amendments 47 & 49, when someone else is drowning kittens your response should not be "well the we’re going to drown puppies." A pox on both your houses! (What we really need is a well funded progressive group dedicated to a NO on all these proposals. I’d much prefer to donate to that rather than Coloradans for Responsible Reform which is staying silent on 47/49.)
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Whever I fire someone, it’s to improve the business and get back to work. I especially am sympathetic to your rationale about start-ups. Their ability to survive and thrive is in direct proportion to their ability to manage the human resource to the ultimate degree.
Employees are both a boon and a bane, as anyone who has had a company can attest. Lets not put laws and judges between the entrepreneurs ability to manage the human resource quickly, efficiently, and fairly.
I think you nailed it. I will take a great group of people with a mediocre idea over a mediocre group with a great idea. Plus a really good group will figure out that idea 1 isn’t working and will change direction and execute well on idea 2.
You’re both sounding like free-market Republicans here. Holy crap.
We want more jobs, not fewer. That way those mean companies will have to offer more money because it will be harder to find people to hire.
We’re sneaky…
You’re being oddly free-market about it all.
You may have just convinced me to try to register to vote in Colorado this year, though.
It’s either there or New Mexico – I’m looking pretty good on getting my money’s worth in a useful vote, either way.
I don’t have the time to write a lengthy response right now but I’m pretty shocked to see you attacking basic workers rights with such vitriol and hyperbole.
I’m glad to know that you are so very careful about whom you fire and why. Unfortunately a great many employers act differently.
Ensuring working families some basic modicum of security is hardly going to be the death of business in this state.
Frankly, you’re being hysterical.
Every time you think rich people really have the best interests of the poor in mind, or that employers really want to take care of their workers, you should slap yourself.
I like the “teachers unions suck” argument too, thrown in for no good reason.
Whenever you see people like DavidThi start “reaching out to Republicans to find common ground,” starting blogs together and such, it’s usually the first step to converting to Republicans. DavidThi could have actually written the exact same rant about taxes. “I was going to donate to Betsy Markey, blah blah blah, but if my taxes go up, I won’t do it. Because personally it doesn’t matter to me who’s in office, as long as I’m still rich.”
As I recall, that’s how it happened with Christopher Hitchens: he realized rich people have better parties anyway.
What do Betsy Markey and Joe Whitcomb have to do with this initiative? Seriously.
As for the rest, he talks about reaching out to Republicans, but he slagged Will Shafroth for talking about working with them.
As for Polis, I am totally neutral in that primary. I’ve met him. He’s a smart guy and a nice guy, but I do have my doubts, but hopefully he does well.
I certainly didn’t vote for him, but it wouldn’t bother me that much if he represented my district.
It would bother me if one of the most anti-labor closet Republicans I’ve seen in years ended up representing the progressive wing of Colorado blog politics.
As David Thi pointed out on his other post, you don’t kill puppies just because the other side is killing kittens. It’s the same idea, you don’t go running to fund the ultra conservative, big business Republican forces behind this just because you don’t like one ballot initiative most voters won’t even vote on anyway.
Vote no on it, you can tell your friends, whatever, but you don’t have to give money to Jon freaking Caldara over Betsey Markey. Don’t kill the puppies, David!
Lets take a look at the Boulder Valley School District. They have I believe 2,700 tenured teachers (from memory – could not find it on their website). In the last 17 years how many tenured teachers have been fired?
Zero.
Yet tenured teachers can be fired “for cause.” Are you going to claim that not a single teacher in all that time was incompetent?
I taught a class last semester where all the students were pretty good, and some were great. I didn’t fail anybody.
Are you going to argue that’s evidence of my LIBERAL BIAS?
Simplier counter-argument – I have had 3 girls go through BVSD schools and in each school they have been in there have been teachers that every single parent wanted fired.
And the reply from the principal was that the effort was too onerous so we had to live with them – but they promised that each child would only have these disasters once.
You have the vaguest of insinuations about all sorts of people, yet you dearly want them fired. So much so you’re threatening to join the Republican Party over this. (“…people like me being driven into the arms…”)
I’ll enumerate my points; you seem to get a kick out of that.
1. Nowhere will you find “every single parent” agreeing on anything, unless you’re talking about teachers molesting girls (and then it’s easy to fire them).
2. Most of the parents of John Scopes’ students wanted him fired too.
3. Many times when students fail a class, parents call the department and complain about how terrible the teacher is. If that doesn’t work, some call the administration. I’ve seen cases go up to the university president. Most common excuse? “The teacher’s accent is too thick! He’s from a FOREIGN COUNTRY!”
4. Your principal was pandering to you. He didn’t want to do anything, he figured you were receptive to right-wing arguments, so he said, “I can’t do anything, Dave.” That’s how you get unreasonably irate people off your back. You’ve run a business; I’m surprised you don’t know this.
5. As much as you may think you know about teaching from watching “Lean on Me,” “Stand and Deliver,” and “Dangerous Minds,” not every teacher can inspire 30 kids to learn something they hate. Frequently you connect with some students, while other students just hate you for no good reason.
I teach math. Most of my students take math because they have to. I do my best to make them enjoy it. Some of them love me, some of them hate me. Hardly any of them go on to become math majors. Should I be fired?
Probably, by your standards. Which is why I’m glad we have a union.
You’re a math teacher. One of my kids had a math teacher in middle school who did not know that the Pythagorean theorem was for right triangles only. We parents ended up teaching our kids math that year.
I know as a teacher you feel personally attacked when people post that incompetent teachers should be fired. But it strains credibility (and elementart statistics) to state that out of 2,700 teachers, none of them are incompetent.
I’m not looking for teachers to be perfect or to reach every kid. I am looking for them to be competent on their subject, to challange their students, and to put in a strong effort.
Teachers insisting none deserve to be fired are like cops insisting there are no bad cops – you lose credibility.
More then just passing Right-to-Work is needed here.
But really, he’s a progressive!
Have more rights than the owner of a company who has taken all the financial risk, responsibility, and carries the burden of management?
I can’t imagine that you really think this is righteous.
Like the workers don’t have as many burdens to bear as the management? At least management can decide to go out for golf on Friday afternoons if it floats their boat (good or bad decision though that may be…).
I don’t like the initiative, but sometimes I wonder at the extent of the communication gap between progressives and conservatives revolving around the importance of labor vs. management. You could have just gotten it over and said “those f’ing peons!”.
That’s a big burden.
… you think you’re the only one in the company that could possibly be responsible for making the payroll.
A company is not its management, but rather the entirety of its employees and owners. If management thinks it alone produces the results that make the payroll, then the company is already in trouble.
1) I am the one person who can never take off to play golf Friday afternoons (actually I’ve never played). One leads by example and doing that is a tremendous hit to morale and productivity. In management you’re more constrained in many ways.
2) It’s the efforts of everyone that earns the money for payroll. But it’s the responsibility of the owner to meet it. If we don’t earn enough to make payroll, I’m the one taking out a second mortgage to meet it – just me.
You’re an owner of a small company. And if you can’t meet payroll for an extended period of time, you’re not taking out a second mortgage, you’re more likely to be shutting down the company and telling the workers their paychecks are never coming.
Not everyone is a good employer. There are always bad apples in the bunch who will screw over the little guy.
I think Steve said it best when he said ensuring working families a basic level of job security isn’t going to be the death of business in the state. It’s ridiculous to say so.
There are good, competent team players who do their job well and deal with their coworkers well who lose their jobs in favor of bozos, who inexplicably keep their jobs. It happens all the time. You think that everyone who gets fired is automatically a bozo? Seriously. In this day in age, many people lose their jobs for no reason whatsoever. NONE! Hell, some really incompetent people get promoted all the way to the top. People in high up positions practically have the power of God while those lower down are virtually powerless. Frankly, your comparison of workers to honeybees is insulting and your blanket assertions that people who would believe in this initiative is extremely judgmental.
Your blanket assertion that people who would believe in this initiative are marginally competent is extremely judgmental.
Sorry. Didn’t do it right the first time. Guess I’m only marginally competent.
You’re outta here, CO Dem. Rule of thumb is, top 5%. The other 95% can fend for themselves at the whims of their betters, er, I mean supervisors.
Exactly. 🙂
I siad that that does happen in my above post. And yes, bozos manage to hang on to their jobs. But if you’re looking for perfection in the hiring, firing, and promotion process – you’re not going to find it.
Not only are manager imperfect (and some incompetent), but any 2 people are going to disagree on their evaluation of others. There is no single perfect measure.
As to your assertion that people at the top have the power of God – you’ve never had an upper management job have you. It’s actually the reverse, your success is totaly dependent on the efforts of those that work for you.
But I have seen managers agonize over decisions and I’ve seen managers with hair-trigger instincts to fire. And for someone who is an underling, these managers do have the power of God and many of them abuse it. Furthermore, you have stated that this does not appeal to “good workers” and that it only appeals to “marginally competent workers” which is a judgment. This is a big reason that I slagged you. And since a lot of mistakes are made on the part of bad managers, they shouldn’t go unchecked.
People make mistakes. And all of us are imperfect. The question is do we take the firing decisions a company makes and move them to the courtroom. My point is that this cure is much worse than the disease.
This diary is doomed to devolve into a management vs. labor, peon vs. God debacle because for some strange reason you couldn’t keep it to that simple point.
The cure is much worse than the disease.
…maybe we need to take the time to find a cure that works. The problem I have with you some times is that (a) you come off as sanctimonious and (b) you use very flimsy logic to support your reasoning for splitting hairs with other people. You did this on a thread I posted on another blog. (c) You talk in a way that really feeds into the notion that people on the low end have about managers. That managers look down their noses at people beneath them and don’t really see that these people have to meet their needs, and instead you see them as merely tools, and if they make a mistake, they’re gone, end of story. The Honeybee analogy is the perfect example of that. You said lower down that you have been through that. If that’s true, you should know better. If you disagree with it, fine, but don’t start making nearly-blanket assertions about people that lose their jobs.
Bottom line, is that this is a problem. Much bigger than you think. If you want to solve it as much as some of us do, then work with us to find a solution that works so that nobody ends up shooting themselves in the foot.
Like everyone else, I’m not perfect. The honeybee analogy though I was making about start-up companies, not employees. I think start-ups are the honeybees for the rest of the high-tech companies.
As to people needing to meet their needs vs being tools for a company – fundamentally, although I would never phrase it that way, you may be right. When it’s all said and done, if an individual is not benefiting a company, that person’s needs, expenses, etc are irrelevant to the company – if they don’t help a company does need to let them go.
But how else should this work? Should I hire people who provide no benefit because they need a job to buy groceries? That economic system has been tried and it doesn’t work very well.
But you need to look at people as more than just tools. The problem is, there are many people that do their jobs well, but they have quirks. Occasionally they slip up, or maybe people are just trying to do things correctly so speed becomes secondary to them and they either get micromanaged, or in some cases let go due to their quirks and not because they are bad employees. I’ve seen and heard about plenty of examples where between two temps, one was a hard worker and the other was a slacker and the hard worker got let go and the slacker was made permanent, because the slacker was a kiss-ass. The problem I have is that getting and keeping jobs in most places isn’t about your background, or your competence, it’s about being able to BS everybody. The people who can’t do more than simply BS everybody don’t deserve those jobs, because they’re not willing to perform many tasks even at a marginally competent level, whereas the people who don’t BS, but will do their jobs deserve the jobs. But that’s not how it works and that’s the problem. This is why there needs to be some reason explained for termination of employment. Something concrete. Maybe this amendment you’re railing against is not the right one, but that’s why we need to come up with a solution that works.
But you want to talk about the good BS-ers winning, think about who will do best in front of the judge.
Yes the ass-kisser doing better than the hard worker is a major problem. Companies realize that and try very hard to fight that too because it’s in the company’s interest for that to not work. But human nature being what it is people are swayed by it.
I’ve faced this myself, I’m a lousy ass-kisser and have been successful because I am very very good at what I do. But I also know that it’s only because I am so good that it makes up for my focus on being successful.
The way I try to address this is I have told people on their reviews that one of the items they need to work on is to disagree with me more. I gave one guy a hug after he told me no the first time.
But with all that said, this is not a solution to that problem. There is no way to legislate that companies must evaluate employees perfectly. And at the same time, if there was a way to get perfect evaluations – companies would implement it instantly.
But I am going to re-iterate my point. I would like to find a solution. If “The Cure is truly worse than the disease”, then we all need to take a step back and examine it as well as the problem itself and how to solve it. Because it is a much bigger problem than someone would think. When I talk about management, I’m not just talking about you. For all I know, you’re as fair as you can be, but many managers don’t even try to be fair and when they fire someone for little to no reason, they get away with it, because they “have the right” to do it. They use that as their reason for not being fair, or not even trying to be fair. I think something needs to be done. Maybe this isn’t it, but God, I wish that everybody would just try to acknowledge that it is a problem and have some desire to do something about it.
What I want is a robust economy where being fired is no big deal because people can get another job the next day. And that the market is very competitive so that companies with bad management go out of business.
That combination uses the market to resolve the problem from both ends without trying to involve the state in individual firing decisions. And with a more efficient economy, GDP goes up and there’s more money for everyone.
But you need to account for stability as well. Instability is not good for resumes nor is it good for worker’s benefits. When you talk about what you want, that doesn’t seem to factor into the equation.
IBM was supplanted by Microsoft which was supplanted by Google which is being supplanted by Facebook. Change is occuring faster and faster.
Benefits can’t come from the company in the future, they have to be tied to the person and travel with them – health insurance, 401-K, etc – it all has to move sommthly with the person.
As to the resume, I worry when I get a resume from someone who has been 5+ years at one company – I worry that they aren’t pushing themselves.
This rate of change has it’s good and bad points (mostly good). But there’s no stopping it and we’ll do better to make use of it rather than fighting it.
Do benefits travel with people most of the time? No. Furthermore, people can grow when working for a company for a long time. And many people would be worried about job hoppers who don’t last at a place. If one is having to change jobs almost every year, that’s not good, regardless of the reason. I don’t favor the contract model that has taken over things. Furthermore, there is a stigma to getting fired. You have to wrap your head around the fact that there are many people don’t think like you. And you talk about how things should be using how things are to defend your views. But the problem is, how things are get in the way of how you think they should be as well as how someone else thinks they should be. Furthermore, just because things are a certain way doesn’t mean that it is how it should be. Furthermore, instability has helped create at least 2 boom-bust cycles in the last 10 years. Dot com and housing.
(CO Democrat & David Thi), this is one of the more interesting threads I’ve actually read all the way through. Really interesting actual discussion.
Actually, for most people, the economy is pretty crappy.
Must be hard to tell from up there.
It’s called being an elitist. It is written all over his post.
…was not about the economy, it was about the labor vs management balance of power in this state.
you’re against workers having rights? The deck is already so stacked against workers. You have the probationary period, contact employment, no free speech rights, and to top it off, Colorado is an “at will” state. I can be fired tomorrow simply because my boss likes McCain and doesn’t like how much of a fan I am of Obama, or because he doesn’t like the color of my shoes.
You’re saying you want the very best employees but don’t want them to have any rights. Would well trained slaves be better for you?
All the more reason for programmers, IT, and engineers to have a labor union!
He did compare workers to honey bees and made it clear that all we do is perform a function for the hive. So, yeah, I think he was saying that workers shouldn’t have rights and Slave Labor would be better for him.
You talk about contract labor. Don’t even get me started on temping.
I know I have posted a lot on this thread, but man the elitist assertions posted really pissed me off.
If this passes you’ll see the same response here as you presently see in France where they do have this requirement for firing. Virtually every new job is a contract position.
For every action you get a reaction.
Furthermore, it is becoming more and more prevalent anyway here. Particularly with the economy as bad as it is. If you get in somewhere that is not that way, you are insanely lucky. Even if they’re not contract, they are probationary.
No wonder so many people don’t have health insurance. “Independent contractor” is the worst legal classification ever.
In anticipation of an earlier rant about why “knowledge workers” shouldn’t have unions — because their skills are portable, startups can’t be bothered with unions, they’re generally well compensated — then don’t call them unions, call them “guilds,” and look to newspaper reporters and photographers, TV news writers, screen writers, playwrights, actors and directors for a model. Every movie and play production is, effectively, a start-up, and the owners manage to deal with guilds. There’s no reason tech companies couldn’t do the same.
Look at the contracts Hollywood has – it set sminimum rates for just about everything. It sets rules for when they must list credit on the screen. What it doesn’t do is stop them for firing anyone at any time.
It’s not the idea of having a union, it’s moving the decision to fire from the company to the courtroom.
I really doubt this will fall under the “frivolous lawsuit” category. I bet it will be hard for people to prove they were fired without just cause if in fact, they weren’t. This is something no lawyer will take to court unless it’s a strong case, like say, my employer clearly discriminated against me because of my political leanings (Monica Goodling search string, anyone?) and that’s why they let me go.
It could also play out the public school teacher way where “just cause” means you can’t fire anyone. And you put at risk how it plays out the economy of this state and the future of every business in this state.
Yes, this is an “at will” state and so a company can fire anyone for any reason. And yes, some companies do fire people, with no warning, for totally bullshit reasons.
I’ve been fired a couple of times, once for reasons that I still see as total BS. And twice because the company shifted direction and I was no longer a great fit. And I felt discarded each time. So I have seen this from both sides.
But here’s the crux of the issue. There are a large number of issues that go in to is an employee the right person for a job in many industries. And each company weighs different criteria by their own standards. I know managers who don’t care if employees get along well while I view that as very important.
And these decisions do not only affect the company and that one employee – they affect the co-workers of the employee. Fire someone who’s viewed as a strong performer or keep someone that everyone’s carrying – either of those actions hurts morale & productivity.
So what’s the best solution? I am in favor of unions (where supported by the workers) as it allows the two sides to negotiate a probationary process. Where there is no union, it is in a company’s interest to have a process that is viewed as fair.
And keep in mind this is a 2-way street. We put in an effort training an employee, purchasing equipment for their use, hiring others to work with them, and they can quit at any time. And boy can that hurt.
As to your last point about a labor union for IT workers, there’s a reason labor unions have not been successful there – we don’t want this level of worker lock in and identical salaries. For the vast majority of us we would be worse off in that environment.
the ability of workers to quit as equal to the ability of bosses to fire.
Some people use the fact that they’ve lived both rich and poor as a way to empathize with the poor. Others say, “I became rich, so can you.” Good to know which side you’re on.
As for the “reason that labor unions have not been successful” in the IT field, it’s fascinating that only in your field is it because workers really don’t want them. It couldn’t possibly be that the NLRB is unfriendly to unions? It couldn’t be Taft-Hartley?
Yes I believe that employees should be able to quit at any time. But it does have a negative impact on the company and many employees at the company.
As to unions not making headway at knowledge-worker intensive industries, it’s not NLRB, etc – it’s that I have never heard a co-worker say they want to see a union come in. And when it’s discussed there is a lot of hostility voiced.
I’d say the big reasons IT workers don’t want a union is:
1) Pay is determined by union pay scales. Most knowledge workers realize that their value to the company is different from every other employee. More than some, less than others – but different.
2) Work rules. The idea that work would be categorized and what you can and cannot do is specified is unworkable in most jobs.
3) No firing of the bozos. We don’t want to have to carry deadwood. Success is hard enough as it is. My goal has always been to only hire people smarter than me and to work with people that are better than me – it keeps me working my hardest.
If any union is ever going to make inroads in the IT industry, it will have to be one like the Writer’s Guild of America.
David’s worldview on this topic seems pretty limited to IT and to mostly startups.
A lot of IT positions require extensive investment in training, and there’s nothing short of a supplemental contract to keep a worker from walking right out the door with the $2500+ in training you just spent on him/her. I’ve seen it happen repeatedly with my co-workers in the past.
In IT, my guess is most people don’t want unions – above a certain level. If the tech support crowd ever figured out that they’d benefit from forming a union, their lives would be considerably improved. For programmers, sysadmins, and other higher-level types, David is basically right – most IT people don’t see themselves as benefiting from a “union” arrangement. Whether or not it’s true, it is the predominant sentiment.
it would be illegal for your boss to fire you because you support Obama. It’s one of the rights you already have as a worker (even though you’re apparently unaware of having any).
And sometimes, the cure is worse than the problem.
That’s not an anti-discrimination statute…
I say YES on Amendment 47, its all about employee free choice and self-determination.
It is time to stand with Guv Ritter to stop forced unionism, stop forced union dues and stop forced union agency fees.
On November 2, 2007 Guv Ritter gave Right-to-Work protections to some Coloradans, should all Coloradans have equal workplace rights?
p.s. go read the executive order
You didn’t quote the entirety of Amendment 47 this time. You’re slipping.
shall not be that you are forced to join the union, forced to pay union dues and forced to pay union fees.
You should shall also be free to join the union and pay dues too.
That is what Amendment 47 says and what the Guv gave state workers on November 2, 2007.
My point is we should leave it alone – that all the proposals from both sides are trying to screw up what presently works pretty well.
…I disagree that things work well. They don’t. Maybe they work well for you. They don’t work well for your “marginally competent Honeybees”.
Oh and Libertad, give it up. Nobody is buying your bullshit.
The Guv agreed with Right-to-Work. I believe it must have been a moral standard of his that he needed to include in the executive order.
Anyway state employees have Right-to-Work.
…in the sense that you’re talking about. Ritter didn’t give them that; it has always existed. And many state employees don’t have a right to work anyway…they’re exempt from the classified system. Gettit-togetha or go-away!
Go be a divider somewhere else. More choice is better.
…I must have missed all of those people uniting with you.
When you are squeezed why is it that only bitter union juices flow?
Ok, for the next couple of paragraphs only, lets postulate that my main point is true – that this will be a job killer. And a killer of “good” jobs (pay well, nice work conditions, etc).
The liberal/progressive answer to a something that would reduces jobs like this is to fight it with everything you have. Why?
First, so very much comes from having a job. Pride in yourself, taking care of your family, the ability to then do what you want. If there are fewer jobs, then fewer people have this and more people are unemployeed. A central tenant of progressive action is to increase available jobs, not decrease them.
Second, salaries are set by the law of supply & demand. If there are fewer jobs then more people are chasing every job opening. So even for those people who don’t qualify for the jobs lost, they now have more competition for the jobs they do qualify for.
Third, the people with these jobs spend their money. This increases the number of other jobs. Even for something as basic as a job at McDonalds – if more people are buying Big Macs, they need to hire more people there.
Back in 1999 during the Internet boom one of my daughters went looking for a job and had 3 offers in one afternoon. There was a shortage of workers in every industry.
We can’t provide job security for all by making it impossible to fire someone (which is what this would pretty much do). We can provide it for some, but not all. And the economy as a whole would be hurt and how well we do as a whole depends solely on how the economy does.
On the flip side, a booming economy does provide job security. Not at any one location, but by the simple fact that if you are fired for any reason (or no reason), you can walk down the street and get another job.
This second approach leads to an economy with more jobs and a large total GDP – and that means we are all better off.
This is why I think if you are looking at what is best for everyone, you accept that fact that companies are imperfect but support the system that leads to more jobs, and more demand for employees.
What you’re describing is an American economy that doesn’t exist anymore and hasn’t for years. The boom just finished — whether we’re technically in a recession or a major cooling-off period, the fact we can’t even tell is a big symptom of our problems — saw a substantial rise in GDP and overall wealth, while at the same time median family income has actually fallen by $1,000 over the last seven years. From the top, things look great, In the middle and below, it’s the opposite. You’re lauding a system and set of rules that weigh even more heavily in the wrong direction. This liberal ain’t buying it.
we definitely need to implement some major changes in the economy, starting with tax policy and economic incentives (mostly getting rid of the perverse ones).
But the bottom line remains that the only way to improve life for most people is to increase the GDP. And the only way to make this available to most everyone is to get everyone an education that includes a college degree.
There are a lot of other pieces to the puzzle too. But the above 2 items are fundamental and if we don’t get those right, nothing else matters.
There seem to be a lot of pent-up hostility here towards the evil ones in management, business owners, etc. Let me give you a little bit of how this has played out for me.
First off, the job is generally 60+ hours a week. At one start-up I would wake my daughters at 10:00 pm when I got home to go for a walk with me so that I could talk to them during the week.
Second, the are you the best fit question is stricter the higher up you are. I had one job where a change in company direction meant I no longer had the needed technical background. If I had been a programmer, there would have been a way to make that work but at my level – no way. The possibility of being fired not only extends up to the CEO level, but the higher you are the less likely there is to be a probationary process.
Third, managing people is hard. It is very very hard. And to get the most out of people you have to have them own their work, have them control their part of the work, have them work in their own style. Yet at the same time all those unique individuals need to work together toward a common goal. Managing people is more difficult than any other job – and I have worked a ton of jobs from washing dishes & framing houses (in College) to programming & sales.
Fourth, you have the livelyhood of all the people that report to you as your responsibility. And you have a responsibility to the investors to use their money wisely. Screw up badly and people no longer have jobs. One of the hardest things in the world is to tell someone that they did a great job, but for other reasons they have to be let go. I had to do this once for an incredible team because the crash hit and there was just no more money – and yet even with it all out of my control it was still awful.
Fifth, if you are the owner or a major investor, you are betting a lot of your own money. At one point with my present company I had to take out a second mortgage to cover costs, betting that we could turn the company around (we did). As an employee if the company goes under, your total loss is the time you’re unemployed. But for someone like me, you can lose everything you’ve built up over a lifetime of work.
Sixth, even if everything is going great, you live under the worry of what if sales dive next month. A software company basically has about $0.02 of variable costs. So I have several hundred thousand dollars of expenses next month – even if we make nothing. And sales are bouncy. So there’s never the ability to relax.
I’m not asking for sympathy, for all the bad times, worries, stress, etc there have also been spectacular times. While I could have had a much more secure life, it would have been a lot more boring. And the bottom line is this is what I choose to do.
But keep in mind that the other side of this equation may be a little different than what you assume it is from your perspective.
I find myself terribly attracted to you right now, David.
Shame on you for thinking that far left Dems would have a sliver of economic common sense.
Bravo to SR for seeing the big picture on this one, too.
And yes, the teachers unions suck.
I don’t find that strange at all.
It’s only strange when other people are attracted to Republicans.
If you owned a company, and had a competent worker that, well, acted like you do and everyone around him said they were going to quit because he was such a douche, shouldn’t you have the right to get rid of them for the good of your company?
No?
Oh – you must be an educator!
🙂
If this diary didn’t prove it, then this other one clearly proves it.
weren’t progressive enough, just before he became a Republican. Oh, I forgot, he’s still a “progressive” too.
… I think most middle and higher level managers spend more time managing the budget and the company planning than they spend managing their employees. Or at least that’s always been what I’ve seen in the positions I’ve worked. A lot of the “people” management I’ve seen is either micro-management (bad), or excessively verbose attempts at communicating to their reporting employees.
And yes, a lot of managers do work extra hours – not just in start-ups but in retail and service jobs, too. Your average McDonald’s worker is certainly not short of hours. But many managers also get the luxury of flexible work schedules, extra time off, excellent bonuses, or the stereotypical afternoon round of golf. As an IT worker I’ve often been asked to work longer hours and put in more for my company, but I’ve never gotten a manager’s compensation for doing so. If I were paid an IT industry manager’s salary, maybe I’d make the trade – or maybe not since I value my off-work hours exceedingly highly.
Unless you’re an investor in a start-up, your house and savings aren’t on the line. But if you think unemployment is the only suffering of an unemployed worker, you haven’t seen my retirement account lately; neither have I, because I had to withdraw it the last two times I was unemployed (including once because the company went under…).
If you do it well, people don’t “see” most of it because as you point out – obvious management is annoying and in many places counter productive. What works best for me is I ask lots of questions and with those questions try to guide people where I think it’s needed.
As to unemployment – been there. I went through 2 years straight of being unemployed between cancer and the .com crash. But what’s the answer to that – that a company that ran out of money somehow must be funded for eternity including paying a V.P. who could not work for a year due to cancer treatment?
It’s a big problem – but I don’t see how putting the solution here does anything other than make it worse.
I’ve managed a team of ten IT support folks and been manager of the IT “department” at a small software dev company before…
At that level, there’s a significant amount of people management – it’s a primary function for managers of relatively small groups. But as a “high-value” employee with experience managing teams, I’ve also had the luck of being in the confidence of some of my managers and their immediate bosses, and even in a mid-sized company with the CEO/President. Most of their day was not spent managing people, but rather on business management.
As for the “VP with cancer” question, the answer is universal health care. In the alternative (and currently), it is considered Really Bad to fire someone on medical leave.
And again, I don’t disagree that this particular solution is bad – as I noted below, this thread would be a whole lot shorter if you’d kept away from the manager pity party…
Such is life my friend. Such is life. It’s not just execs who work long hours and have to juggle family life. You should be commended for doing a good job at home and with your various start ups but your story is hardly unqiue or special.
Go talk with some folks who are working 2 or 3 jobs just to put food on the table and keep the lights on and then get back with me.
There’s no pentup hostility from me. I just come from a blue collar family and know how hard those folks have to work just to scrape by. Ensuring that their jobs are protected from the whims of management is the least we can do for them.
With BS regulation like this, they won’t have anyone to sue.
Do you see how this could be a Pyrrhic victory for Labor?
Why are you so rude to David, anyway? He’s almost always liberal, fair, and civil.
Yes, that is the same for families having trouble making ends meet. But there are a couple of additional items.
1) If a blue collar worker is fired, they can go get a job elsewhere. If I’m saddled with an employee doing a poor job, I can’t go elsewhere.
2) If a blue collar worker is fired, they have no income until they get a new job but that is the extent of their loss. If a company fails it can take everything the owner has earned over a lifetime – their house, their kids college education, everything. I know people this has happened to.
3) If a blue collar worker is fired, it effects them and their family. If a growing number of mediocre employees drive a company out of buciness, then every employee and their family there is affected as they are all out of work.
4) If the business environment here makes it virtually impossible for start-ups to succeed, you have removed the largest engine of job growth for the state. All those jobs that never will be include a lot of blue collar jobs.
So yes, some parts are similiar. But there are some major differences too.
And in trying to protect one person from being fired, you eliminate many many other worker’s jobs.
That’s what it ought to be called.
Any person who gets fired will have an open invitation to file a lawsuit. And to extort settlement money – one-third or more which will go to his or her lawyer.
And companies will have to hire scads of high-priced defense lawyers to try to defend them.
Either way, the lawyers come out ahead!
As a Democrat, I’m appalled.
and saved a whole heap of controversy.
Allowing each and every fired worker to use the courts to sue for the real or imagined unfairness of their firing would be extremely destructive. The cure is worse than the disease. Throw it on the pile of Amendments this year that deserve a “NO” vote.
I had to rate this less destructive than TABOR, though, because in the long run court precedent would’ve (somewhat) minimized the pain of this measure, while TABOR remains the ultimate thorn in the side of a properly run government.
And before he says it, let me preempt Libertad and say that that definitely needs a NO vote.
Unless there’s one saying that these initiatives that are going into the Constitution rather than the statutes book has to have a supermajority yes vote to pass, I’m planning on voting NO on every one just for that reason. No need to acquaint myself with the amendment.
Referendum O is the I&R Reform measure. All of the Referendum questions deserve “YES” votes this year, IMHO.
So far, none of the Initiative/Amendment votes deserve a “YES”, though I know there were a couple of TABOR-related measures circulating.
A campaign to vote YES on Referendums, NO on Initiatives is probably the order of the season.
Ritter’s elimination of the O&G tax credit and Romanoff’s SAFE initiative. For the rest, I’m so in favor of NO that I may even vote NO on the two inititives to eliminate obsolete provisions.
David, it sounds like neither of these are amendments but rather are referenda. Is that correct?
It plays with the tax refunds so it has to be in the constitution.
We so need a constitutional convention!
You know you need to standup for abortion rights, its your duty for the choice cause; but you are also pro-life.
You stand-up for union choice, but would choose to join the union.
Amendment 47 … simple, sustainable, fair and tested.
I don’t even know what that means.
David Theilen of the left-wing Hawaiian nutjobs thinks this ballot item is stupid !!!
We, on the right, already know that.
Who remains to support this idiocy?
P.S. I voted against TABOR, but now I am really happy that we have it.
There are a lot of progressives out there who don’t like bad legislation, regardless of its “leaning”.
Even when you cozy up to right-wing twits, they still hate you.
Who remains to support the bill? Um, actual progressives. David doesn’t represent anyone but himself, and even then not so well.
sxp151 – you’re a public school teacher so you live in a world of ironclad job security and you appreciate it. But that does not mean it is a good thing per-se.
If this bill is even somewhat as destructive to jobs as I have laid out, how can a progressive support a measure that drastically reduces quality jobs in the state? The true progressive response in a case like this is to support the avenue that encourages job growth, not that constricts it.
You can say anything – but this proposal is not progressive, it’s regressive.
This right wing “twit” respects Dave’s opinions even when we disagree. And I have a feeling that if we ever met in person we would be able to get along pretty well. He is extremely thoughtful and earned the right to promote diaries to the front page with his ability to put forth ideas and ague on the merits of them. He has earned that respect from me, and others on the right, not because he agrees with us on every subject, but how he disagrees with us.
As far as the initiative goes, this working man thinks it is a lousy idea that will do nothing to improve working conditions or relations between business owners and the workers. If I am working in a manner that is unsafe, or poorly represents my employer, he should have every right to remove me. Like Dave, he has put his financial well-being on the line to build up his company, and hopes to expand both his clientele and workforce. No one else in the company are taking that risk, we are only sharing in the rewards. That gives me no right to dictate to him in any way my employment status. Unlike sxp151, this gives me reason to not only work as professionally as possible, but look to improve my skills as to make myself more valuable, and therefore less replaceable to my employer.
If I don’t like those conditions, I can always look elsewhere for work or try and start my own business. If 47 makes it into the constitution, it will make it much less likely that I could do either one.
Thank you for your very kind words.
I also want to thank everyone for their replies on this issue. Especially since my original post was written pretty emotionally. (It’s amazing how it changes your perspective when an initiative directly impacts ones financial future.)
A couple of postscripts:
1) What I wrote was overly long but I wanted to touch on all the points I saw and I think that’s one of the benefits of a blog. I do appreciate that, based on the comments, you all did read it all.
2) A giant thank you for the comments in that they will help me narrow in on what I should, and more importantly should not write about on this issue moving forward.
3) Don’t mentions bees! My point was that start-up companies are the honey bees of the high-tech industry. But clearly if you say the word bees a number of people think you are calling employees worker-bees. So while I think it is a valid metaphor – no more.
4) I was worried that this initiative will pull time, money, & effort from Democratic candidates. And it does. But I think it pulls even more from Republican candidates as more of the effort to defeat this will come from Republicans.
And finally, I look at the poll results and I am very positive now about this being defeated. ColoradoPols posters are more liberal than Colorado as a whole – and even here it goes down in defeat.
For the entire collection of these initiatives (47, 49, 74, 76, 92, & 93), some are pro-union, some are pro-business, but all are anti-worker?
But I will agree with you in that Colorado is about as employee/employer neutral a state as you will find in the country. We have had a good balance between the two for a long time now, and any changes proposed should be looked at very carefully. I will likely be voting no on most if not all these measure just because any imbalance will likely involve a swing in the other direction somewhere down the line.
Will it make unions and their conspiring companies work harder to do right by the employee, yes.
The Guv gave Right-to-Work to state employees, surely his premise to provide this choice in his order allowing unionization is not anti-worker.
Last ColoradoWINS has thrived … under Right-to-Work.
We have a system that works very well in this state and you bozos started this war of exchanging nukes.
You can argue up the yin-yang why your proposal is a bit more fair. Let’s say it is for the sake of argument. Is it worth the possibility of an amendment that will make it impossible to fire anyone? Or even more simply, is it worth creating acrimonious warfare between companies and employees?
Even if this is everything you say it is (it isn’t), it’s still not worth the cost. Some battles even if you win, you lose.
ps – if you are so strongly for pro-choice, are you also in favor of legalizing all drugs (let people choose)?
These guys are fighting 47 and 49 and worse yet 59… talk about damage to our state.