I think you didn't read carefully what I wrote. I will state the last sentence again. If it is infeasible to add air conditioning then that is a reality but the compromise is not fair.
My overall point though was that the act of compromising does not make a deal fair. Some compromises are still unfair.
It is not fair in this day and age to require people to drive air conditionless vehicles in hot weather. There may be no other feasible alternative but let's not declare this part of the outcome fair.
> It is not fair in this day and age to require people to drive air conditionless vehicles in hot weather
Why? (Honestly.)
This reminds me of the windowless-apartment debate in New York. Community board members in rent-controlled units complain it's not fair for the poor to have no windows. As a result, the cheapest (legal) apartment was a bells-and-whistles deal. Meanwhile, I (illegally) subletted a windowless room in a full-floor loft for $900/month; even when (years later) I had a window, I put blackout curtains over it. The loft was a fair deal for me. Even if it offended another's sensibilities.
Give and take doesn't make a deal fair. But it indicates both sides have bargaining power. Given a trade-off between more hours, higher pay, a faster roll-out of electric vehicles, and/or more hires, on one hand, and A/C retrofitting, on the other hand, there are valid--even fair--tradeoffs the parties could have made that differ from yours or mine.
> It is not fair in this day and age to require people to drive air conditionless vehicles in hot weather
Why?
Because my sense of what was is fair tells me this is not fair. To you it is fair. So be it.
But it indicates both sides had bargaining power.
It does not indicate this. Consider an extreme example.
Labor: We need a $5 an hour raise.
Management: We will give you $0.01 raise.
Labor takes deal because they, in reality, had very little relative bargaining power. But a compromise was made! The act of compromising does not, in and of itself, indicate anything other than that a compromise was agreed upon. It does not indicate fairness, relative bargaining power, or anything else without further information.
My point was to object to original characterization of this being fair since it was a compromise.
I don't know what the tradeoffs were in the UPS bargaining. I do know that requiring someone to drive in an airconditionless vehicle in hot weather is not fair.
> Labor: We need a $5 an hour raise. Management: We will give you $0.01 raise.
Labor takes deal because they, in reality, had very little relative bargaining power. But a compromise was made!
Except this doesn't reflect the reality of the deal. Real pay bumps, hiring commitments, a new paid holiday--these aren't minor concessions. There was palpable uncertainty around whether there would be a strike. Teamsters estimates the value of concessions around $30bn; that's 20% of UPS's market cap, delivered to drivers over five years.
Clearly you are not reading what is being written. As stated several times. My objection is your original characterization that the issue of air conditioning was fair because it was a compromise.
Not all compromises are fair. Not all compromises indicate relatively equal bargaining power. Not all compromises....
The point is, you don't know whether it was fair either and you have no idea about the relative negotiating powers of the parties.
Maybe the AC portion of the deal translated directly into wage dollars on the negotiating table. Maybe it was a "pick 3 out of 4 deal".
Your posts are just pointless pedantry about an article where we (as the public) have very incomplete information about the preferences and the negotiating powers of the involved parties.
My complaint is that people often times think something is fair because both sides compromised. That thinking is sloppy and incorrect. A deal isn’t fair because it involved compromise. It’s like when people say, “both sides are unhappy with the deal so it means it’s a fair one”. That’s dumb thinking and inaccurate. It might be correct most of the time but not all of the time.
That a compromise was made does not make it fair. The act of compromising in and of itself does not necessarily imply fairness.
I’m not being a pedant. I’m claiming the original reasoning for believing this part of the deal is fair because it involved compromises. I also claim that requiring people to drive all day in hot weather in an air conditionless vehicle is inherently unfair.
>But it indicates both sides had bargaining power.
>It does not indicate this. Consider an extreme example.
>Labor: We need a $5 an hour raise. Management: We will give you $0.01 raise.
Well, no because if they had no bargaining power management could have told them to fuck off, or pay them even less. "Had bargaining power" =/= "had the upper hand"
Pick a dollar amount greater than $0.01 then in my example. Pick the smallest value such that you believe it provides an example of where a compromise is reached but the compromise does not indicate relatively equal bargaining power.
In the original example I gave a compromise was made. Namely the $0.01 increase in pay. I claim one side didn’t really have bargaining power. Do you believe all instances of compromise indicate bargaining power on both sides? I don’t. Sometimes one side budges very little and has way more power than the other. So much so that it’s not accurate to say both sides had bargaining power.
Sometimes labor has very little pricing power for their labor. There are many instances of this being true. If you don’t agree with this then please read up on labor history.
Then what was the point of the comment you originally made that I responded to? It appeared to be sarcasm and saying that if management only offer $0.01 raise then get a job elsewhere. That sort of simplistic reasoning doesn’t work in all situations. Namely it doesn’t work if labor overall has very little pricing power for the cost of their services.
The sky isn’t always blue. Which is ironic given your response.
> "We’ve hit every goal that UPS Teamster members wanted and asked for with this agreement. It’s a ‘yes’ vote for the most historic contract we’ve ever had.”
While the issue of fairness is subjective, it seems objectively good that the union was able to get what they wanted and asked for. Seems fair to me.
Given that quote, it does indeed seem like a fair deal overall. I was objecting to the characterization that the part of air conditioning had to be fair because there was an agreed upon compromise.
Also, I think its unfair to require people to drive air conditionless vehicles in hot weather.
My overall point though was that the act of compromising does not make a deal fair. Some compromises are still unfair.
It is not fair in this day and age to require people to drive air conditionless vehicles in hot weather. There may be no other feasible alternative but let's not declare this part of the outcome fair.