Herein lies the problem with your analogy...the house doesn't belong to him, therefor, it's not his responsibility to fix it but rather to ask his landlord to fix it....meaning our jobs are not ours at all, they belong to the company, unless of course you own company stock, then you own a very small piece of that job. It's his responsibility to ask the company, in this case his landlord, to fix what is wrong and if the company/his landlord refuses, he can either live with what's broke or move on to a different house.
In your case, your landlord offered you the opportunity when you moved in (were hired) to negotiate repairs to your house, his did not..and he knew this when he was hired. Yes, the law says he has the opportunity to ask the company (his landlord) to negotiate the repairs but the law also says the company doesn't have to agree to any repairs, which leaves him back at square one...live with what's broke or move.
What you perceive as your house being the Taj Mahal, others see it as a prison that's owned by the company, the union acts as the warden and guards, and the employees are the prisoners....and while others perceive our house as being that same prison owned and ran by the company, we see it as the Taj Mahal.
The moral to the story is that everyone thinks the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence...until they jump the fence, then they soon realize that it's no greener than what they had, it's just a different type of grass!!
