Socialist Progressives

Some of the departments were unionized, and some weren't. The unionized departments would negotiate their salaries through collective bargaining. The non-union technicians would then automatically get approximately the same pay raise. The reason for that was that the non-union departments didn't want their technicians to unionize, and they were afraid that they MIGHT unionize if there was too large a gap in pay between the union and non-union technicians.

That principle is generally true everywhere. Non-union workers benefit from unions, even when they don't belong to one! Unions put UPWARD pressure on salaries. Destroying unions puts DOWNWARD pressure on salaries. It's that simple. I can't understand why any SANE employee would be against unions; and the fact that there ARE many employees who oppose unions is a tribute to A) the power of jealousy and schadenfreude, and B) the skill of the propaganda merchants who work for the plutocrats and robber-barons.

(And FYI, despite the fact that unionized and non-unionized technicians had the same pay rates at that university, I soon found out that there were other differences. At one point, after having done a good job for years, my supervisor suddenly decided that I was a threat to her job and used a minor infraction to get rid of me. Turned out that you didn't really NEED a reason to fire one of the non-union technicians. All you had to do was suddenly decide that that technician was 'unsuitable' for the position. The non-union technicians had no job security. Did I end up resenting the unionized technicians for having job security? Hell no! I tried to organize MY department before leaving! I didn't succeed, but at least I tried.)