I have never been in a Union (with exception of a couple months in the Teamsters for a side job, but that doesn’t count) so my knowledge is from the “outside”, meaning I am completely ignorant. The company I work for is unionized in some areas, but not our particular division, but the union, specifically SPEEA, has come into our area and looks like we may be voting on joining it or not. I am only seeing one real benefit of it, which is better retirement benefits for the older folks. We have very good hours with great flexibility, decent pay and good benefits. I’m seeing a few downsides though, one of which is strike (which seems to happen fairly often, and recently did with the union side of our house). That scares the hell out of me as even a two week strike would be a bad bad thing for my bank account. I guess I’m having trouble with the “why” do we need a union part. I get it for factories and smaller companies, but…
My question is, is there anybody in here who is familiar with SPEEA, and/or unions in general? I’ve seen more printed and online info than I actually cared to so I don’t need links to their websites. Already been to all of them and read the proposed contract proposal several times. I’m interested in first-hand knowledge and experience/opinions about SPEEA/Unions, strikes, etc. Anyone wear a union label?
I don’t think is particularly a GQ, but the main reasons to have a union are to have someone engage in collective bargaining for you and to represent you in grievances against your boss.
If you have a boss that tends to irrational or illogical decisions regarding employees, then you might want to consider union organization.
Maybe you should look beyond just what small short term benifits you may recieve from union membership. You may not be able to see what the union can do for you right now, but in the long run I think they help a great deal. My union is great, I know what I will be paid, overtime and working hours. These can not be changed by the company without working it out with my union. The union is stronger than just me.
In a “right to work” state, such as my present one, the government and companys can do what ever they like. It should be called “right to work for low pay” The state gov. gets new companies to move here, giving them tax breaks and great incentives. The companies come to SC for the low cost of labor. It is keeping wages low here that is keeping us with poor schools and poverty. What opinion do you have of South Carolina?
Who brought you the weekend? Who brought you the 8 hour day? Paid holidays? Not the generosity of the employer. Unless they were trying to keep a union out. This came from labor movements.
Look deeper into this. It is worth it.
I’m required to belong to a union in my current job, which I greatly resent.
I dislike it in the extreme for a number of reasons:
Hard work is not rewarded - everyone gets the same rate of pay for their position, irrespective of their ability or commitment to doing a good job.
Poor performance is not grounds for losing your job - its referred to, by my union, as “Innocent Incompetence”. Unfortunately, this means at least some of the people I work with are “Innocently Incompetent”. Innocent or not, they’re still a huge pain in the ass to work with.
Stupidity is rewarded. In my Faculty, some of the Profs were letting lab staff/admin staff leave early on Boxing Day, or the 23rd of Dec. or whatever. (Last day before X-mas vacation). Some of the other Profs were not. Employees of the “were not” Profs complained to the union and the union decreed that NO ONE was aloud to leave early on these days from that point on.
The list goes on and on.
Admittedly, there are a few perks - I have and EXCELLENT benefit package - better than ones currently offered in the private sector. I get tonnes of paid holidays, and these increase regularly. I get paid for overtime that I work. (Or get paid time off.)
However, at the end of the day, I would rather work hard for these things, rather than just be rewarded for them simply for breathing.
The National Association of Letter Carriers has proved to be a superb hammer to hold over the heads of U.S. Postal Service supervisors, protecting the rights of both union and non-union letter carriers not to deliver mail to blocks where there are large, vicious dogs running loose; not to deliver mail far into the night; not to deliver mail the day after you get out of the hospital for surgery; and not to work extra unpaid hours delivering mail, late, that a supervisor’s screwup left in the mail handling cart. “Oh, wait, this stuff needs to go out today, too…”
“Sorry, Jack, I’ve already got my 8 hours, so if you want that delivered, I get double time…”
“Um, well, never mind, it can go tomorrow…”
These are all actual abuses, and only the presence of the NALC Union Steward standing there, glowering, keeps it from getting worse.
Don’t knock the unions–a lot of people had their heads bashed by management enforcers over the last 100 years to get those unions for you.
Understandable. The problem I see is that I don’t trust any corporation to do anything even remotely generous. For me, unions are the guarantee that those things I’m working hard for are given to me.
It really all depends on the company and the union; a generic “unions are cool” or “unions suck” approach is ignorant and silly.
I’m not a member of a union in my current position and I have a tremendous benefit package and terrific working conditions. On the other hand, at the previous job when I WAS in a union, the union was a bigger hassle than the company was. But then, I know people who are in helpful, productive unions or who work for shitty companies. There’s really no general rule.
I’m an unfortunate draftee into SPEEA after their minority representative members used their votes to make the decision for all of us non-union folks. I voted a strong NO when SPEEA came knocking to us in Everett.
Why? Simply because SPEEA is historically a very weak negotiating body, and are purely motivated by the “small equal raises over time” and “equality for all” that make it impossible for someone to advance themselves in career and salary. Like many unions, the sub-par performers and workers are protected at the expense of those who excel and put in drive and effort into their career. In my position, I can be the finest performer in my group, or a motionless lump that fills a chair, and the only discretion that my superviser is allowed to reward me for my efforts by SPEEA’s contract is at most 2 percent over the lowest performer in my group. Our company that I won’t name (a big one that makes big flying things that carry lots of people) is unfortunately already not terribly flexible or generous with salaries. Becoming SPEEA represented has removed even what little flexibility I once had to control my salary and career.
Interestingly, when SPEEA had a strike a year or so ago up in the Pacific NW, the pay that the strikers lost in their 30+ day walkout was greater than the hold-out signing bonus that they were holding out for…
You really answered your own question in your original post. You are happy with your job now, things are content and stable. What could they possibly bring you if you unionize?
I’ve belonged to three unions. One was very good, one was useless, and the current one is okay.The main difference between the very good union and the okay union is in how the bargaining is done.Both were in government agencies. In the very good one, there was a contract for the whole union for those issues that affect everyone, such as pay,workweeks,holidays vacations etc. Each unit then bargained separately for issues that only affected their members (social workers would have different concerns than nurses,who would have different concerns than clerks). In the okay union, there is no separate bargaining by local,so issues that concern a relatively small number of members tend to be ignored(can you tell only 40 people in the state do my job?).
I’ve never heard of “innocent incompetence” as a reason to be protected from firing. I do know of a few cases where the union was blamed for protecting incompetent people when that really wasn’t the whole story. Yes, the people were incompetent, yes, the union helped them keep their jobs, but the only reason the union was able to do that was because management didn’t do its job. I know someone right now who’s totally incapable of doing his job properly. His original supervisor was going to recommend that he be fired before the end of his probation. Why didn’t she? He was transferred to another supervisor and it wasn’t her problem anymore.Rather than go through the steps contractually necessary to fire someone for incompetence (giving warnings,writing them up,etc) they simply transfer the problem away. Then ,when someone eventually decides to try to fire the person,the union is able to protect the person, because the firing appears to have come out of the blue.It didn’t really, but there’s no record of what led up to it.
They stand up for the rights of their students, for one thing. They are groups of professional educators who are organized enough to fight when politicians use the school system to get votes instead of working for our kids.
They stand up for our right to make a decent wage and be treated like professionals, even when the newspaper is full of complaints that teachers make far too much money (in the letters page) and are mostly incompetant (in the news section).
They provide me with legal protection and malpractice insurance, since I’m in one of the most-sued professions there is, and a few parents are notorious for filing frivolous lawsuits with barely an attempt at negotiation, mostly in hopes of getting the state to pay for little Billy’s college education.
And they give me strength to keep from being overloaded in the workplace- I worked in a nonunion school once, and teachers had to spend many hours coaching sports, leading drama, giving up their lunch periods to monitor student lunches (usually, that meant not eating), cleaning their own classrooms- all with no choice and no additional pay, and several times people were fired for very small offenses with very little warning.
Now, I make a wage which allows me to pay the rent on my little apartment and still buy food. I don’t have to do any work that isn’t in my contract. I can’t be fired without cause or warning. And I don’t have to be bankrupted trying to defend myself the first time someone sues me for giving their child an ‘F’ or sending him to the office.
My experience with my union has been much like Gargoyle’s and alice’s, though I want to say right off that doreen makes a very good point about management’s unwillingness to deal with problems being a large part of the reason incompetents don’t get fired.
I’m especially sensitive to this right now because our contract ends in just over a month, and it’s seeming like the union wants to strike. I don’t know how I’ll pay my rent if I have to strike (I live alone, unlike most of my co-workers) and I’m scared. They kicked off negotiations with a rally featuring chanting, marching and a giant inflatable rat representing management, and at a meeting I went to a guy who asked about merit pay was shouted down via a chant of “Merit pay, no way!” At a meeting, not a rally, at which we were supposed to be able to voice our concerns.
The merit pay thing is a sticking point for me. The union is against it, as well as performance evaluations for union staff. I asked someone on the negotiating committee why “we” are opposed to merit based raises, and she explained that if management has enough money to give people raises based on merit, then they should spread it around so everyone gets some, to be fair.
This means no matter how great a job I do-- attention to detail, meeting all my deadlines, being able to work without constant instruction or supervision-- I can’t be given a bigger raise than my officemate, who despite having been there twice as long as me can’t get through the day without asking me for help three or four times. When she’s actually working, that is, as opposed to chatting on the phone with friends or taking a two-hour lunch so she can go shopping. Though that part does go back to the idea of management needing to deal with stuff.
I don’t believe that all unions are Big Bad Things. I’m just not happy with the way my chapter of my union operates, especially since my life could become really hellish this fall if there’s a strike. Can’t afford not to go to work and don’t agree with the anti-merit pay stance, but crossing the line… ugh.
How about a different perspective. I’m required to work in a Union. (I think it’s Grocery or retail workers…) But I’m a teenager, and I get hardly any benifits from it. I don’t need insurance, I get money taken out of my paycheck that really isn’t doing me any good. About the only good I get is paid holidays and a vacation week since I’ve been there a year. And my break of course. I’ll work 7 hours…but gosh darn it, I get a 15 minute break.
It is impossible to get fired from my job however. I have only known one person-he cussed out one of our best managers. He was gone that night.
Thanks for the replies everyone. Gargoyle, I work on the St. Louis end of the same nameless company as you. You are right, there isn’t very much room for pay negotiations as it is, but I really enjoy the end year bonuses and the paid week and a half off over xmas. That will end with Union. The driving force behind this is, as I’ve mentioned, to get medical benefits for retirees (a good thing). I guess I really just don’t like the idea of strike, and the fact that layoffs will only affect the junior workers regardless of performance. I have long decided on my vote, but was looking to see if there was some sort of beneficial area that I missed in the big picture. Something like a “Union did this for me, and I’m thankful”. I understand why they came to be, and in some cases, I think they are required still. But with all the human rights, civil rights, gender rights, etc… these days, and the 500 ways to sue anybody, it seems to me that unions are over-rated (?). This is, again, only due to my own ignorance and lack of experience with unions. And I don’t understand strikes. When the union people here did it a couple months ago, it seemed that everyone lost money for what they won, and were happy about it. Does a union pay you if you strike?
It may depend on the union, TurboDog, but AFAIK mine doesn’t. I’ve heard of a “strike fund” but no one seems to want to say what it’s for. During the last strike (I was on the “casual payroll” then, filling in for someone on maternity leave and not expected to strike), a friend of mine who was having trouble paying her bills asked if the fund was available to her, and she was told no.
I also want to add that, IMO, the usefulness of a union will depend on the quality of the union’s relationship with management-- or rather, the relationship of the key union reps with management. Where I am, a lot of antagonism and animosity has developed and I honestly don’t know why. I’ve had union people drop by my desk to ask me stuff or give me information, and if I’m not there they refuse to tell my boss who they are, as if it’s some covert operation and she’s the enemy. This attitude doesn’t make for open-minded negotiations and I fail to see how it’s in the average staffers best interest.
To throw in an bright side comment since I do feel like I’m sounding very anti-union here-- my dad was part of a union for most of his career, and without it would surely have been fired long before he retired voluntarily. He did a good job but had to use his sick days to their fullest thanks to health problems. It was clear that his supervisors thought he was faking it. The fact that he was union, and the union required proof of such accusations, was the only reason they didn’t boot him.
I work at the same place/location as you. Why do you say the Christmas break will disappear? The current CBU folks have it. Do you think that they will lose it?
I am not particularly fond of the union I have to belong to in my current lousy (low-wage) job. I particularly resent being required to pay most of the dues even if I don’t actually “join”; if this was a right-to-work state I might still be a member, but I automatically distrust anyone else who has the legal right to my wallet and says it’s for my own good.
-The job I have is a low-wage unskilled one (grocery store) though and any unskilled labor job is probably going to suck eggs. The union does offer reasonably good health insurance cheap, but what they mainly do in the way of HR is keep lazy people from getting fired, and raises are given almost totally based on a total-hours-worked basis. Where I work, we have lots of “semi-workers”. - MC
I have never belonged to a union, but my wife does and it stinks. They negotiated a 7 year contract with a 5% raise in pay and no worthwhile benefits that the employees didn’t have to begin with. It was so bad that the management had a party the day the contract was signed. My wife was one of the few that voted against the contract. I mention this so that I can bitch to someone, but also as a warning about how bad it can get. There are cases where the union is needed and does a good job, but it isn’t something one should count on happening.
I teach on two different college campuses, and one has a CTA local that makes everyone pay dues even if they’re not members (it’s called agency fee); I guess they do okay by the full timers but they don’t do much of anything for the part timers, who outnumber the fts two to one.
At the other campus, we p/ts had no union for a long time, though the fts did; they didn’t want us in theirs, so we went with a different group (AFT) and formed a separate unit. We do not yet have agency fee because we haven’t had time to build up a track record (we only formed a few months ago), so not everyone has to pay dues.
Fortunately, I am on the executive board and get to see what goes on from the inside out, and we’re trying our best to serve everyone whether they join us as full members or not.
It’s similar to what others have said already: it can be a good local, a bad one (of which there are many at the college level), or a so-so one. We want to negotiate for things like a health benefits group plan, office hours and pay, better pay, more use of facilities, priority for those who have been around a long time so they can get classes for the next semester, etc.
We are negotiating these things according to what people have told us they want. And since we are pts just like they are, we understand their/our interests.
Just a commentary.
Unions and corporations, like everything else, display a marked difference between their ideal state and their real world existence. A good union enables its members to receive the rewards they deserve for doing a good job and protects them from arbitrary attacks; a bad union is indifferent to the wishes of its membership and prevents bad employees from receiving the punishment they deserve. A good corporation recognizes the value of good workers and does everything it can to attract, train, and reward them; a bad corporation views its workers as interchangeable pieces of machinery which should be used up as rapidly as possible and replaced.
Overall, I favor unions; a union theoretically serves the interests of the workers while even the best corporation puts the interests of its owners first. I will concede that there are workers who don’t need a union or even benefit form not being in a union. But these workers are fortunate enough to 1. be above average workers, 2. be recognized as above average workers, 3. be employed in a business that chooses to reward its above average workers, 4. not be subject to arbitrary firings, demotions, reassignments, disciplinary action, etc., and 5. be in a stable enough position to assume none of the above will change.
