Nuetral resources for union information

[atomic]

Tell them you will join if they can tell you where Jimmy Hoffa is buried at ?


Seriously the HELL with the unions they are not needed in todays economy. DO NOT JOIN ONE

[JGood]

Awesome. I should have known this wouldn't be productive.

If anyone has any reasonable advice regarding where I can find unbiased union information, specifically the changes that would set into place when a union takes over, please pm me. Maybe I'll start searching wikipedia or something...

[delatlanta1281]

the same thing they did then just not nearly as well due to all the restrictions an legal constraints that have been imposed on them over the last 30 years.

Ok, why were restrictions put in place????
B/c corruption is human.

[hugh jass]

It's a pretty polarizing issue, so it will be difficult to find unbiased information.
From my perspective, unions have a place in a capitalist economy. I spent a summer as a union organizer for janitors and home health care workes. Lots of people in low wage jobs get taken advantage of by their employers, and unions offer them a voice. We're not talking about people wanting $30 an hour, pensions, and full medical coverage that they don't have to pay a dime for. We're talking about poor people who are trying to make a decent wage at the bottom of the food chain.
Sure, there are plenty of instances out there of union corruption, etc, but without the protection unions afford a lot of people, you can be sure there would be a lot more exploitation in the workplace.
My wife is a teacher and her union representation is well worth the $50 it costs her.

[trashcop 80s 80s]

B/c corruption is human.

The entropy of the universe is increasing, it's only natural.

[delatlanta1281]

Ahhh yes, but in what room?

[LINUS]

JGood -

I won't pretend to say I'm anything other than a union supporter & currently still in one, despite being on leave since busting my back.

I'm part of the steelworker's union, as many have consolidated. I just am a refinery mechanic, but nobody is exempt from being absorbed in our current climate.

As a union guy in a statistically high risk environment, I benefit from the fact that the company HAS to listen if we bring up a safety concern, and there's a clear process to appeal if we get brushed off.

Many will claim that unions encourage a work setting where laziness prevails, and so on - but in reality I've seen far more benefits from being union than not. I know 1st hand that the local trucking outfit that is union has FAR fewer incidents/accidents either in the refinery or out on the road. In their case it provides a safe environment so drivers carrying chemicals aren't forced to long-haul past what their body can handle - which benefits all of us as these guys are carrying either sulfuric acid, molten elemental sulfur, or sodium hydroxide - all bad things to find on your car if you get in a wreck with them on the freeway.

I an near the bottom of the 'totem pole' where I am, but I benefit from the fact that the older guys where I work know EVERYTHING about what we do, and they show you how to do it - they earned the right to point & show vs. doing, and some day I will be there too. For now, the best way to learn is to do - so I might work my balls off while an older guy points & shows - but I call it fair. I earn my way to be where they are some day. Honestly, when I'm that age I hope I have it that well too. Out where I am the higher seniority guys are the crane operators too - which I rather have as well since they aren't out drinking the night before like a lot of the newer/younger guys.

Unions paved the way to safe working condition in early modernization of the USA, and they still defend the workers from the possibility of being taken advantage of by companies. The 'lazy sloth' union guy is a stereotype - in reality hiring is done by the company & at least at the 3 places I've been I've had nothing but good things to say about being union myself.

I'll answer any questions you have either here publicly or PM me if you want. I don't have any agenda, so I won't blow smoke up your ass.

How is your company right now? Do you feel you have a bunch of lazy workers as is? How were those workers hired if so (family members, etc.?)

If there is just cause to fire someone, a union will support it - they don't just defend everyone that gets their butt in a sling. Normally it's just a matter of documenting the reason for dismissal, and personally I've seen a few people let go - and every last one of them deserved it.

IDK, I've never once thought I'd have a better working environment if we got rid of the union there. I've always thought I was treated fairly & thought my pay & benefits were def worth my union dues & membership. Just my opinion.

Feel free to ask me whatever you like.

[Tangent]

Awesome. I should have known this wouldn't be productive.

If anyone has any reasonable advice regarding where I can find unbiased union information, ...

That information probably doesn't exist. You can search for the rest of the year and all you'll find is one side telling you that it makes life wonderful, and the other telling you it sucks. The best information you'll be able to find is people relating their own experience with them. That's exactly what you're getting here. Unions might have started out with noble goals and done much good, but now they're just another business.

The biggest thing to think about: Do you have any reason to want a union to begin with? Are you treated unfairly, do you get far below industry standard wages, etc?

Here are a few things I've observed in the union jobs I've worked. Other unions might be different, but I can only speak from my personal experience:

- They will do everything in their power to make sure nobody gets fired which is good if your company likes unnaturally high turnover so they pay the lowest wages, bad if they only fire the dregs.

- If you have an employee that really needs to go you might come up with scenarios similar to one of the two I've dealt with personally:
- Management will have to meticulously document everything the employee does that violates rules and follow an extremely convoluted process. In my job that means x number of verbal warnings, then x number of written. The problem child is then put on a Performance Improvement Plan and babysat. If performance doesn't improve they get sent to extra training. If it still doesn't improve they have to try to find a different position. If it still doesn't improve they get sent to counseling. If it still doesn't improve, termination proceedings can be started, but that doesn't even guarantee that they're gone. If at any point in this process the problem child's performance improves to acceptable levels for a 6 week period, the process will need to start from scratch with all new documentation. This process resulted in 1 person being let go from my workplace, and it took close to 5 years.
- The second, and much more common option management has: They make the workplace as miserable a place to be as possible without violating any written rules and hope the problem child leaves on their own. In my job's case that meant that every single move you made was carefully scrutinized, new rules and procedures were a daily occurence and changed nearly as often, and supervisors were the biggest pricks I'd ever dealt with. We had people getting written up for miscommunications with customers 6 months after the fact, or for mistakes that a short investigation revealed to be the supervisor's doing.

- They will put in just enough work to make sure your wages don't suck so bad that all employees get mad enough to quit the union.

- Since they want to maximize their profits, they will have the smallest staff possible, so expect to have one person as the rep for an unreasonably large membership. Even with their best intentions, those representatives do not have enough hours in the day to handle all legitimate complaints.

- They will spend alot of your dues money to promote political goals that might not match yours, and very often don't match the huge majority of the union's members if they're even vaguely related to your job.

- There's a good chance they'll spend your dues money like drunken sailors. My wife's dues money got to pay for the union to hold its conference in Hawaii last year. They were not there to meet with any other state's unions, it was just them. They had zero reason to hold it out of state except that they could.

- If your business unionizes expect rules that force you to pay whether you actually personally join or not. I could quit my union, but then my dues would go to some charity. I have no choice in the matter, I pay whether I'm a member or not.

- There is no mechanism in my job for me to get a bigger raise than the next guy, no matter how great my work is and how crappy his is. Raises are time based, period.

- If business falls to a low enough level that people can be laid off, it's based on seniority alone. The incompetent nimrod that shows up late every day and screws up everything he touches gets to stay while the extremely talented hard-working guy that started after him loses his job.

[Jean]

On the plus side they prevent arbitrary firings. On the minus side they also prevent fully justified firings. Consequently we have a pretty significant group of people who at best just get shuffled to less damaging positions. Poeple with an actual work ethic end up having to pick up the slack. Another "benefit" of the union is that the great employees and slackers all get paid the same.

[JGood]

Linus and Tangent, thanks for all of the information.

My company offers a wealth of "rewards" as they are called: tons of sick days, vacation days, personal days, awesome health care, high 401k matching, etc... My department pays very well both for new and senior employees. There's no issues as far as workplace safety (I sit behind a computer, lol). But even the overall atmosphere in general doesn't bring any concern of needing to be reevaluated, and maybe it's due to the fact that the company is so large, and the union has taken over other departments - so the company has adopted procedures and standards across the board.

I've never seen anyone fired from my department - but I don't think there was a need. Sure, some people work harder then others, but I don't think anyone really needs fired. There's not a lot of pressure from management because we never get behind on work. It kind of seems like we have too big of a budget or something - they allow us to work as much overtime as we want, but don't really push for production.

The senior employees are expected to do more showing then doing, and get much greater "rewards" as well. So it's not a downhill slope of a job. There is also a database of other positions available in the company that is updated everyday. The company really promotes career change for people not happy where they are, and will help you get to where you want to be.

I started as a contractor, and when my contract was almost up they told me they'd like to hire me (for roughly 2x what I was getting paid as a contractor). I then got a review/raise a few months later. They have set pay scales and stuck to them. There are no issues with underpaying/unfair pay IMO.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm pretty happy with my work environment as it is. Unfortunately, I haven't even been there a year yet as an employee, so my opinion could change down the road.

[LINUS]

I guess if you've been there a year maybe it would be good to talk to a longtime employee about where things have been before you were hired. Nobody less than 10 years if it's been there that long would be preferrable. If there's a consensus between most of the older employees, I'd ask why they feel whatever way they do, either for union or not. Maybe use their longer term perspective to help you form your opinion.

I've watched as one particular oil refinery I was an operator in took advantage of employees by assigning mandatory overtime & shorting the available number of workers, causing more overtime.
I eventually quit which wasn't in my long term idea of what my life was going to be - but it was for the best. I did see a few guys who took advantage of the system of equal pay, but in real world terms since the company did the hiring they did a decent job of screening out the lazy applicants. I think we all policed each other pretty well, and we would talk informally between us if we felt someone had slacked off or if they simply forgot to do a particular task. Most times simply confronting the person directly was the simple cure for whatever was going wrong, so we never got into the whole firing process with anyone on our unit.

As for the concept of squandering of union dues - the books are open and any union member has the right to go to the union headquarters & see how the money is spent. I've seen so many stereotypes & misconceptions here I am amazed. I think people know more about Area 51 than they do about present day unions.

On the backside, the nice thing about being union I see is where our local was faced with the company wanting to lower our health care & raise our co-pay to what salaried had. I'm in a unique position, as my Dad is a salary employee - so I get his side of things too. My Dad is a great guy & to get him to say anything bad about anyone takes real facts. Long story short, he's glad he retires in less than 5 years because the company shits on their salaried folks. They froze the salary pension. They raped the health & dental plan & they give chump raises that don't even make up for what they have taken in the last 10 years.

There's a lot of murky water to why this all is what it is, but the bottom line seems to be shareholder profit. I know the company is doing what it can to keep up with offshored jobs & products - but maybe that's the root evil.

Bottom line - I just don't trust management far more than I distrust my union, so even though I am soon going to just go back to school since getting hurt I still was happy as a union guy.

Tangent - Would you please tell us what union your wife was/is in as well as what ones you were in?

There's a lot of embellishing as far as I've seen of my local - not to say yours wasn't like that - but ours was straight forward & honestly, if a guy did something bad enough that the comapany wanted to take action - then in our case 7 elected people voted on what if any backing the guy would get. 2 things that would get you immediate firing was stealing or direct insubordination to management. You could be late 2 times in a year, but if it was your 3rd time in a year - yep, if the company wanted they could fire you.

As for the union backing everyone who might get into trouble - our union used that council to pick their battles. And if it was a touchy deal, the council would hold a sealed ballot vote that you could see the ballots counted for - if you couldn't attend there were absentee ballots.

I was quite impressed as a new union member coming into the outfit - it was well run & all facts were made public.

I know I sound like a total union guy, but at least where I was it worked well & we all benefitted from the membership.

Also, there were some who weren't "forced to join" - I think we had ~400 union guys in the refinery I worked & I would estimate there were 8-12 people who chose not to join. We treated them fairly & there was nothing about them we didn't like, they just chose not to join. That was their right. The only distinction now is that if they are in a situation that calls them into question they aren't going to get union representation. Also, if there was a labor strike I believe they would still be expected to report to work.

I think that the "old union" myths don't apply anymore - unions, like businesses have adapted & changed.

Bottom line - talk to those around you JGood - if the older guys there see a clear reason to go either direction I would use that as part of your decision making process.

What union would you become a member of, if you don't mind me asking?

[JGood]

Thanks for the additional insight Linus.

Bottom line - talk to those around you JGood - if the older guys there see a clear reason to go either direction I would use that as part of your decision making process.

What union would you become a member of, if you don't mind me asking?

Will do, there is several 25+ year guys I can go to

I don't know what union - I haven't even been contacted. Some people in our department were, apparently. I don't even know how it works - is there like a physical location, or is it a known entity, what the hell is a union? I understand it's made up of the people, but I wouldn't know how to go about contacting them or getting more information.

[LINUS]

Sounds like how I've heard how the unions look at companies - they are normally made aware of a particular company by relatives who work there, then once a union knows just how happy/how well treated the workers are, then they either stop asking or persue seeing if there's interest in unionizing the workers.

So you'll notice a lack of paper for a while, as really a union doesn't want to 'rock the boat' for the employees in case the management would take it out on a few individuals if unionizing doesn't come to be. This happened at a local small specialty gas company that was French owned, so I saw the process 1st hand as well as having a friend who worked there.

The French are notoriously anti-union, and in this case the reason the company they were running showed a total lack of respect of personnal there. My buddy had to wear a pager on the weekends and was on-call if there was an emergency, but they didn't pay him unless they called him.

So in his case it sucked, because we couldn't go out for a beer because if they called he had to show up & industry won't allow you in plant with ANY alchohol in your system (duh) - but they didn't pay him. Union hospital workers get paid 50% of their hourly wage (at least my brother-in-law's mom does) to do what he does, but he got nothing. After unionizing (they voted to unionize, but those against would be free to stay independant) all employees who were on-call got 50% of their wage while on call. Needless to say, management cut the number of people on call by 2/3, so that just shows how they were taking advantage of the guys on an individual basis.

Really at basic levels, a union is like taking all your fellow employees & standing together and bargaining as a collective vs. individual job reviews - if you get a great % pay raise, you all get it - if you all get screwed & there's a deduction in what the company is willing to give, you either all suffer or you band together & bargain to find some middle ground.

As for the "you all get the same wage" thing, it's true. But companies are free to recognise individuals with bonuses, and I've gotten a few myself. You are still noticed when it comes to the work you do.

Granted I work in an environment where we don't bring in much of any outside labor, so we always have the same guys around. I hear some of the short term jobs have guys who slack off, but we don't. Like I said - if we have a problem we talk to each other 1st, then worry about going further. But we don't have to, as we all take what the others say seriously.

Unions are kind of a "check & balance" system so companies don't take advantage of their workers on an individual level.

Also, at future hirings, upper level union guys come to the interviews and chime in with their views on new hires. They don't have any say, but they are there in some companies.

Deadbeats are normally easy to spot, and no company or union wants them. Think about it, a union knows that a bad employee reflects badly on the union. So once again, the days of deadbeat union workers are drawing to an end, as most of the career deadbeats are pretty close to retiring.

I know most people still hold onto the stereotype - but it really has changed, especially in the last decade.

If you want to PM me - I might be able to help you more to find what union you would become affiliated with, or to give you my take on any question involving your trade/company you don't want to have as public info.

Like I said, I'm union by choice because they have made my quality of life better. I work just as hard with a union sticker on my hard hat as I do if it didn't. One benefit I'm using right now is since my spine is quite heavily damaged, is that they hold my position for 1 year from the date I last was there as a worker. That's nice to have, and without the union I wouldn't know if my company would do that. I am a great worker & my plant manager says he will hold a spot for me as long as upper corperate allows, so that says something of my work ethic.

Nobody wants a deadbeat, company or union. It's just a bad reflection all the way around.

Being union doesn't change anything about your day to day work, it just helps when you get to the time to bargain for health benefits & pay increases. Sure, you might be able to get a few bucks more than some guy there on your own, but when it comes to health/dental insurance it really helps to have a dedicated person (union lawyer) who can tell you if you're getting a square deal or chumped. Since benefits are what make/break a job, it's one heck of a bonus to be union. My $.02

PM me, I promise to not tell you any lies or try & stuff the union thing down your throat. I'll just give you facts from my own 1st hand experiences.

Dang, all my responses run long, just a lot to say when it comes to the union & how it works.

[JGood]

Thanks man, I'll be in touch. I'm reading every word, I appreciate the time your putting into helping me out. It's a lot to swallow, so like I said, I'll be in touch eventually.

[LINUS]

Cool.