How is it a beauty? Stupid decision made by 1000 people is better than by one? At least if I make stupid decision I am to blame and I can fix it. If 1000 people make it, I have 1/1000 of infuence (in fact even less if I am not eloquent or persuasive) and can't change anything. Talk about ignorable. I certainly don't need a "democracy" to take my decisions for me. There's a place for it as we can't each personally decide about national defence or building interstate highway, but I can certainly talk to my boss.
As an individual you have virtualy zero chance of effecting any change - I have how ever got several thousand people a better pension at British Telecom (I was the secretary for one of the larger BT union branches)
My experience suggests the opposite - I've successfully effected change of my personal conditions several times, without help of any unions. So did many other people I know personally.
Of course, it is natural for union officials to see themselves as benevolent godlike figures distributing goods to the plebes. But this particular plebe is doing just fine without you and would like to continue as long as possible without any unions.
And BTW guess what I found as looking up BT pensions on Google?
Are you sure you've told the members of your union about that? Who would be left holding the bag when this thing blows up? Would it be you, or would it be those thousands of people who got unfunded pension promises? Or would it be UK taxpayers who would be forced to pay for it?
Ah Lies dam lies and Pension valuations - the current pension valuation rules are designed by accountants to make it easy for companies to shut them down.
I'm sure these people were very happy with their union reps, and their union reps were very proud of it. Until it turned out their pensions are unfunded. And now the taxpayers have to pay their pensions.
I didn't study the BT issue, but I read a bunch about how California did their pension valuations, and it's a circus. They basically just assume the fund would earn what they want, and project based on that. And needless to say, they assume they're market geniuses. And when it becomes dangerously underfunded, they just screw the newcomers - basically make a Ponzi scheme out of it by making new contributions finance the gaps for the old-timers and have new member to accept much worse conditions then the old ones.
