Month: June 2025

As a vested Teamster, I’ve experienced firsthand both the value and complexity of union membership. This week I took a deeper dive into the broader discussion around labor unions, reflecting on my own experience and insights from The Week’s breakdown of union pros and cons (“Are labor unions a good thing?”).

Unions undeniably protect workers. They help secure better pay, job security, retirement benefits, and collective power when negotiating with employers. I’ve directly benefited from this—knowing my pension is protected and that there’s a structure in place if issues arise has given me peace of mind. As The Week notes, union workers earn roughly 11% more than their nonunion counterparts and are more likely to have health coverage and pensions.

But it’s not all positive. I’ve also seen bureaucracy, inflexibility, and internal politics slow down decisions and frustrate members. Some workers feel locked into outdated practices or see dues used in ways they don’t always agree with. That tension is real.

What stood out from this week’s course materials was how legislation—like right-to-work laws—has chipped away at union influence while promoting an image of individual freedom. But that “freedom” often comes at the cost of reduced bargaining power and wage stagnation.

For me, the value of a union comes down to protection. In industries with high turnover, physical risk, or where workers are often disposable, unions matter. I’d support unionization in any job where leadership fails to protect its people. I’ve lived the benefits—and seen the drawbacks—but overall, I’d rather have a union than face management alone.

Citations:

• Are labor unions a good thing? (2023). The Week. https://theweek.com/business/labor-unions-pros-cons
• Shermer, E. T. (2018). The right to work really means the right to work for less. Washington Post.

The most important thing I learned in this course is the predictive power of cognitive ability in employee selection and the value of using assessments like the Criteria Cognitive Aptitude Test (CCAT) early in the hiring process. This stood out to me because it directly challenges a flawed but common hiring practice I’ve seen repeatedly—making hiring decisions primarily based on whether someone “feels right” in an interview.

I’ve participated in multiple hiring discussions where other decision-makers focused almost exclusively on whether they liked the candidate. While likability and cultural fit are important, relying solely on gut feeling or how well someone performs in a loosely structured interview is a recipe for inconsistency and bias. This course helped me understand why that approach often fails: interviews, particularly unstructured ones, are not the most valid predictors of job performance. In contrast, cognitive ability testing has one of the strongest correlations with job success, especially when combined with structured interviews and work sample tests.

Learning about tools like the CCAT helped me rethink what it means to build a fair, effective hiring system. The CCAT doesn’t just test intelligence—it measures problem-solving ability, adaptability, and learning potential, which are all essential in fast-paced, cognitively demanding roles like the ones I’ve hired for in the past. Pairing a cognitive test with a situational judgment test (SJT) or personality inventory also helps triangulate key traits like conscientiousness and emotional stability—qualities that significantly impact long-term performance and retention.

This lesson matters to my future career because I plan to take on leadership roles where I’ll be responsible for building teams. Being able to explain—and implement—a structured, evidence-based selection process will help me avoid bad hires, reduce turnover, and promote equity. It also positions me to advocate for tools and methods that may feel unfamiliar to others but are proven by research to work better than intuition alone.

In short, this course gave me a practical, research-backed framework for talent selection. Moving forward, I won’t rely on who seems most charismatic in an interview. I’ll rely on structured tools that actually predict success.