Unions suck, and one thing a lot of people don’t know is that if you’re in the minority of people who do NOT want a union, you get doubly screwed. Example:
I worked for county government in my last job, and there was an effort to unionize the county employees. The really heavy pro-union employees were the same ones that took long lunches, complained that the work week was 40 hours, and failed to meet even the minimum of expectations concerning thier work.
So in come the union reps. They’re a bunch of doubletalkers who tell us how powerful a union can be. Thier “Main Office” is a PO box at Post Office, Etc. in Orlando. They tell us what great benefits they can get us, because they are a kick ass union. They’re promising 7% pay raises immediately, better benefits, and longer vacations. Things they fail to point out:
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They suceeded in unionizing the Fire Department five years before. The FD wanted a 7.6% raise for thier employees. The county could only afford a blanket, across the board 4% raise. Negotiations begin for the union, the rest of the county gets a 4% raise. A year passes. The next COL increase is 4%. The union is still negotiating for a straight 7% for the year before. Another year passes. Again, the rest of the county gets a 4% COL raise. Midway through the year the firefighters finally settle for a 5% raise. In the time they’ve been negotiating, all of the non-union members got a 12% pay increase, they negotiated for 5%, which is not retroactive. Great job union!
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Two years after they get the FD, the union reps sucker in the Corrections Officers. The CO’s want better bennies, more money, lots more time off, etc. Since, technically, the corrections officers are law enforcement types, they’re required to meet a health standard. The county negotiates with the union, garnering the CO’s a whopping 4% raise after two years of negotiation, while over those two years the rest of the county got 8%. In addition, the county begins enforcing the health standards with an iron fist, and several CO’s are dismissed or transferred.
How did people get doubly screwed here? Well, a friend of mine who was a fire fighter and his wife, who was a CO were decidedly anti-union. They voted against it, declined to pay dues, and did not want to be represented by the union in any way. Turns out they had no choice. They didn’t have to pay the dues, and weren’t represented by the union officially, but since their co-workers wanted a union, the entire set of employees in the unionized area had no representation if they weren’t part of the union.
That meant that even though they were more than happy with a 4% raise, they didn’t get it. They had to wait for the union to negotiate a 5% raise 3 years later, even though they weren’t members of the union.
The funniest part of this is that so many of the idiots who wanted a union in my part of county government didn’t even understand that a union would have no power. The power of a union comes from the ability to cause a work slowdown or strike if the demands are not being met. Employees of the government are not allowed to strike. It’s against the law, punishable by jail time.
Though the county, of course, said it would negotiate in good faith, there was nothing requiring them to do so. Sure, the union can eventually force them to go to an arbitrator, which is what happened with the FD. But that process takes time, and the county played the game for all it was worth. Essentially, they saved an additonal 12% in cash by not having to give raises to the FF, an amount that more than paid thier legal bills associated with negotiations. And in the end, sensible people who wanted nothing to do with unionization got screwed.
Unions, for the most part, and bad things. Your opinion may vary, but it’s not right.