The story of this company is that management and labour are in a pissing match. There's nothing technical in here and nothing insightful on the business side either. This is just PR spin, but its sort of irrelevant. Company has been a financial disaster, and its a dying business regardless, so it sucks for everyone.
While a lot of people might be annoyed at the lack of technical content, it is a reminder to all who are employees that the cause of Labor is far from secure.
For those of us who wish to be employers one day, it's a good example of what not to do.
Apparently Sweden used to be around 80% unionized in 1999, but the numbers have fallen pretty sharply since then. These days they sit a little below 70%, which is still remarkably high.
My understanding is that engineers and other technical people are often unionized in Sweden, but that could be as outdated as my 85% number above.
I'm a computer programmer for a Japanese semiconductor/electronics company, and I'm in the company union, as are all other employees.
Japanese unions are rather different tho; they do seem to serve some purpose as an employee-advocate, but are very strongly inclined towards compromise rather than confrontation. [When I first started working here, I was warned every year during the salary-negotiation period to be "prepared to strike!" ... eventually I thought to ask, and was told there had never been a strike... :]
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 25.2 ms ] threadNo winners. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-hostess-failed-hedge-fund...
For those of us who wish to be employers one day, it's a good example of what not to do.
-- EDIT --
Here are some stats: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?QueryId=20167
Apparently Sweden used to be around 80% unionized in 1999, but the numbers have fallen pretty sharply since then. These days they sit a little below 70%, which is still remarkably high.
My understanding is that engineers and other technical people are often unionized in Sweden, but that could be as outdated as my 85% number above.
Japanese unions are rather different tho; they do seem to serve some purpose as an employee-advocate, but are very strongly inclined towards compromise rather than confrontation. [When I first started working here, I was warned every year during the salary-negotiation period to be "prepared to strike!" ... eventually I thought to ask, and was told there had never been a strike... :]