Why the fuck would an union cap anyones salary? Is this an American thing?

Over here the purpose of unions is to: Provide a strong enough legal response and guidance to deter companies from trying shady shit, pay better unemployment fees than the government and provide training/networking. They also negotiate collectively with the employers on behalf of everyone for things like paid sick leave, paid vacations etc.

I pay a flat fee every month because the union I'm in has always had relatively low unemployment, for others it's usually a percentage of their monthly gross salary (usually around 10-50€).

In what scenario would capping people's salary be good for the workers?

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joe_mamba 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>Why the fuck would an union cap anyones salary? Is this an American thing?

No, it's a thing in most of Europe like France or Germany for unionized trades. All trades there have publicly documented salary bands based on education and YoE per job, where the negotiations starting point for a wage for a position must not be below the minimum threshold but also can't exceed a certain upper threshold. In some cases, the company can decide to place you outside the union agreed tariff/band range to give you a higher wage, but then you might be exempt from some strict union rules like 35h/week working hours and such.

And they cap the top end of the salary bands because the yearly budget for wage increases is a fixed pie for most companies, and so to have money left to give entry level workers the great wage increases as mandated for by unions, they need to cap the increases to the top wages to prevent bleeding/bankruptcy. Do you think all European companies have unlimited money to give all their workers X% wage increases?

This is how it works in Austria.

	▲	theshrike79 an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In Finland we have salary bands for some jobs, but it's usually just the minimum. Some have a maximum, but there are always "personal bonuses" the employer can give on top of that. But these are usually "old" professions like teachers, nurses, factory workers. For IT jobs I haven't seen an official salary band anywhere and there basically is no union mandated maximum and the minimum is mostly a suggestion. We also get universally negotiated percentage raises every now and then, but it's like 1-2%. Personal raises are on top of that and can be a LOT more. The maximum cap sounds just stupid. When you hit the limit, why would you do anything past the absolute minimum to stay at that level?
	▲	bojan an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> No, it's a thing in most of Europe like France or Germany for unionized trades. This is how it often works even without unions. Everywhere I worked there were salary ranges you can't go out of without changing the role, and I was never in a union.
	▲	ernst_klim 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Same in Germany. That's why usually Max Mustermann (55) get's a better compensation for doing bare minimum than you for doing more work. But in case of layoffs you will be kicked out first and he would be kicked out the last and with a far better severance package.

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Muromec 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>Why the fuck would an union cap anyones salary? Is this an American thing?

Huh? If you have a collective agreement, all the compensation ranges are written down there. You get level 11 comp contract and your manager puts you at 85% of the scale, then the union decides the scale goes from say 85k to 95k. The next time the agreement is renegotiated, the scale gets bumped to 90k to 100k and you can't get past 100k until you promoted to the next function with a different comp level in a contract.

That's excluding pager duty hazard pay, may the God allmerciful steer your path away from it.

Unions are more about making the job conditions better than about maximizing the comp. Want to grind, go full 996 and sleep at work to afford that fancy house in Las Vegas.