jodi sez:
The employees held a vote and overwhelmingly said “no, thanks.” So the union organized a strike against the store, bussing in union people from out of town, to force the store to become unionized over the objections of the workers. Because the workers “didn’t know what they were giving up” and they “were intimidated by the store into saying no.” So the workers, of their own initiative, took out a full-page ad in the paper reiterating that (a) they had been given the option of signing up; (b) they had overwhelmingly decided they didn’t want to; © now the union was attempting to make them do so anyway, despite their vote; and (d) the so-called “strikers” parading around outside the store didn’t work for the store, they worked for the union.
The UNION came into my town years ago to unionize the city and county workers, who were then making good pay, good raises, usually kept their jobs in lean times and had good benefits and bonuses.
They had their problems or flaws, like you might rise through the ranks until you reached Old Joe, who had been head of the department for 20 years and you weren’t going to rise anymore until he retired or died. A lot of family members of some upper level management and even lower level employees were hired on. If you went out to clean ditches and worked too well and too fast, you got told by the straw boss to slow it down 'cause there were plenty of ditches yet to clean. For lunch, the bosses might take you to a store and let you buy stuff or let you select a fast food place to go to. City drivers even often grabbed a beer or two while cruising at 25 mph down roads, looking for damaged signs to replace, road kill to bury, dumpsters to replace, meters to read or pot holes to mark for repair.
All in all, it was a pleasant job, even if most of the first level employees were not exactly real smart, but their work required strong backs most of the time, with little thinking.
In came the Union, chatted with folks and met resistance. Very few wanted to join. In came the Propaganda Squad. They cleverly located the most disliked man in the shops, some old guy who had been there probably since the city was built, who was cantankerous and near retirement but hurt no one. Out came the smear campaigns of the 1940s!
They savaged this guy in pamphlets, crudely drawn characterizations, suggested that he was involved in improbable, illegal, management related activities designed to cheat hard working folks out of their pay and was a general all round Nazi/Commie/slavemaster/racist beast!!
Then, once people started signing up, after being promised glorious increases in pay, time off, benefits and so on, out went the Intimidators: the hulking employees lead by the soon-to-be shop steward who intimidated the nonunion employees into signing up. (The shop steward was carefully selected. He had to be fairly bright, gullible towards the Union, have a beef with management and nearly everyone else, and a low self image which the position of Steward would boost him up to over confidence.)
People were threatened with all forms of intimidation. Friends of mine working there were stunned! Friends turned against friends! People were threatened with being beaten up, others were assured that when the UNION took over, they would be among the first nonunion people to be up against the wall!!
The basically laid back City management, Old Boy style, suddenly became corrupt slave drivers. One department head was accused of taking off and going fishing on company time! Abuse of power! He was taking the raises out of the families of the working man by doing this. (He really did, but he was in charge of a warehouse, that, from time to time, had nothing going into it for most of the day. So, instead of sitting around, doing nothing, he would go fishing and take his crew with him! Everyone loved it. No one cared. The work was always done, and he figured it was better to take his guys fishing than have them sit around, doing nothing.
Well, the UNION got in.
This is what everyone got: A shop Steward who is lazy, corrupt, impressed with his own power and reluctant to file employee complaints with the Union or really do anything except collect his bigger pay check. They lost their frequent raises, but got bigger salaries, with annual increases, which actually even out to making less per year than they would have being nonunion. To pay for the increased benefits, people were laid off. Out of their pay, they have to hand over Union Dues.
The good bonuses are all but gone.
The Union requires two people to do one person’s job, which pissed off a lot of loners who liked roaming around in their trucks doing their work alone. The Union also requires these small trucks have a Loader, who loads their trucks with supplies in the morning, then sits around all day.
Management eliminated the beer breaks, the fishing trips, the trips to restaurants, and started pushing the casual work schedule.
Every Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas the city gave the employees big, expensive hams and turkeys, but that stopped when the place went Union.
The city eventually eliminated the department section which had crews going out to read water and power meters and hired in subcontractors in order to meet the increased Union pay and demands for more people. Subcontractors are not Union.
It takes longer now to get pot holes patched and where one used to see two guys out doing it quickly, now there are 4 and it still takes longer. (Two are usually leaning on shovels looking with interest at the hole as one dumps in the bag of cold pack and another tamps it down.)
The great Union promises never came through, mostly. Unknown to the new union employees, the Union made a deal with the management. The employees are not allowed to strike. When the city started hiring in tough, cost cutting managers who treated the employees like dirt, the Union ignored their complaints.
The city employees almost voted the union out, but when they started getting up people for the vote, the UNION professionals dropped by and threats started going around.
The vote never took place.
In the long run, the city employees lost. They lost a whole lot. The only time the Union gets involved with them is when they start trying to vote them out.
Any new hire is given the opportunity to join the Union. If he refuses, then he is intimidated, called a scab and harassed until he either resigns or joins – even if his starting pay cannot handle the sizable chunk of Union dues taken out.
As a result of the City and the County going Union, our taxes went up, the rapidity and quality of the work went down. Like instead of sending a crew out to chop down the over growth in ditches, which would shortly green up again and look nice until it grew too wild, they sent out two guys in a truck loaded with poisonous weed killer. They spray the ditches.
The ditches look like something after a nuclear blast for months and months, with dead, erect trees, leafless bushes, exposed, gray sand, dry, dead brown grasses and are prone to erosion. Instead of chopping down the tall brush and overgrowth and carting it away, now, the bare remains stay until they rot.
The Union, by the way, is the all powerful, Teamsters.
