Gregory's ServerThe company's "HR department" is for the company.
Your HR department is called a Union.
 41 comments
 Conflict of interest, capture of union representatives by employers etc. Basically "Everybody's happy, what's not to like?" is the go-to justification for corruption. Remind me: Where is it allowed again that "the union does some of the employer's HR department's work as well"? Asking for a friend ... @glitzersachen @doctormo The UK. For example, an employee, not necessarily knowing who's best placed to answer a query, might go to their union rep rather than their line manager or HR to ask "How do I ...? How does ... work? What would happen if ...?" and if the union happens to know the right answer then that saves HR and/or management time. (Of course the union will signpost them on when appropriate, eg if they don't know the answer or it's not their business to give it.) @glitzersachen @doctormo Particularly if the union rep is on the shop floor, the line manager is always in meetings, and HR is on a different site. It's not the "giving people information on HR issues" part I am concerned about, but rather the dependency created by a payment. From my union I actually expect to provide a certain amount of counseling. @glitzersachen @doctormo That seems to be how it works. It worked OK in the only organisation in which I was involved in such things. @glitzersachen @doctormo Yes. A small district council. In my day (this may well have changed) two reps from different unions were each paid half time to do their day jobs and half time to look after their union members. Which included things like working on the union side of some non-trivial restructuring deals. I think this would not be called "being paid for doing HR's job". It's typical that union reps from the employees are still employed 100%, but get leave to handle union business (or worker's council business) for a certain percentage of their time ("freigestellt" in German, but I cannot find an equivalent, maybe "released for", but this sounds fishy to my ears). Their work contract (at least in DE) don't change which avoids part of the dependency problem. Also note that commercial enterprises and organisations on the government / local admin side are typically rather different beasts. At least in Germany the laws also partly differ. @kasiandra @doctormo I'm old enough to remember the change of terminology from "personnel" to "human resources". It never stopped creeping me out.  @doctormo the company HR department does NOT have your interests in mind. You're just a "resource". When you're not deemed "resourceful" anymore they'll get rid of you. Collective agreement or not. Ask me how I know. I'm due to start to collect EI in January after giving five years to my provincial health authority. True for me. Manager of my site leaves company for another job 1 month before I retire. Said mgr would normally communicate to HR information regarding benefits retiring employee is entitled to (in my case accrued vacation pay and a severance payout worth $15,000) per contract. At the time of my retirement, still no mgr on site, leaving me to deal with HR myself. Weeks of disinterest from HR. Go to my union. Union places strategic call to company exec. HR now interested. Coughs up $.  @doctormo For clarity the acronym HR stands for ‘human resources’. The company regards you in much the same way as it regards stationary. If your Union regards you as a resource it’s time to find a different Union.   @doctormo Agree with the impulse to separate from company HR, and, in fact, many unions do operate (well or poorly) as semi-independent HR bodies, but that's still what we used to call class-collaborationist, or later, business unionism. W.Z.Foster, in the TUEL days, spoke about this. More recently, Laurent Cantet's film Ressources Humaines explores this with subtlety and ferocity. HR exists primarily to keep the company from getting sued. HR is not the worker's friend. HR is not on your side.   This is clearly and definitely true at any for-profit corporation, it’s less clear when “the company” is not-for-profit or cooperative. For example, I know of a small university (in Canada) whose tiny faculty of 40 just unionized, and I suspect they will be sorely disappointed by the added (and unnecessary) structural adversarialism. If the organisation was aligned with the workers already, then I see no reason for it to be unaligned with a union. Though the question is; if the workers and organisation were so well aligned before, why did they unionise? Possibly the organisation isn't well aligned and the conflict will come from unrecognised differences. Progress will be made by not demonising the union but working with the counter weight as a legitimate part of the process. All possibly true, although sometime disaffection comes from a privileged group acting from an unfounded sense of grievance… in my experience par for the course when dealing with ‘leaders’ in conservative christian circles (which describes this institution well)  @doctormo They have been ever since they were renamed from Personnel to Human Resources  @doctormo @HollyGoDarkly They work top down. If it’s you vs your manager, HR works for your manager. @doctormo @TSindelar It’s amazing how many people don’t understand that the HR Department’s job is to protect the company. @Geoffairey i think HR can be disingenuous about their role which confuses a lot of people new to the workplace @TSindelar I think that many people who work in HR want to help employees as much as they can, but their primary role is to protect the company and that takes precedent. @Geoffairey Yes exactly: there are times when individual HR reps will do things that are good for employees (and therefore longterm good for the company by complying with the law, improving morale and retention etc). But that doesn't mean you should *trust* them per se, because at any point there may be a real conflict between good-for-employee vs good-for-company and ultimately their job security relies on them doing what's best for the company. @doctormo |
@doctormo Sometimes the union does some of the employer's HR department's work as well, and the union officials are paid by the employer at least partly because they'd otherwise have to hire more HR staff.