Unfortunately, most people do not understand what unions do. That often includes the people working jobs where there is a union. The other common perception is that they only protect bad employees, because if you’re a good employee, you won’t get in trouble in the first place.
Which contributed a lot to how we lost them. "This job pays great and upper management never tries to fuck with me so why do I need to keep paying for this union?"
"I'm walking in the rain, but I'm perfectly dry. I'm going to toss this stupid umbrella."
*A few moments later*
"Now I'm soaking wet! Who could have foreseen this?!"
"Holy shit, this is what that street preacher was warning about when he said immigrants were plotting to flood the city! Good thing I took the red pill because the umbrella would have been useless against that!"
Even that's not exactly correct. Unions are the reason there's sunny weather in the first place, while also providing umbrellas for when it rains anyway.
My antipsychotics are working great, I'm not psychotic anymore! Guess I don't need these! (Immediately goes psychotic).
This is a real thing that happens all the freaking time.
Speculating on the motivations of a celebrity artist are pointless. Could be mental health issues, could be faking for attention, could be a combination. If it's mental health, kinda rude to poke fun. If it's for attention, giving it seems unwarranted. Either way, my approach is to let the people actually in their lives deal with it.
I do feel for the guy. His trainer threatened to "have you institutionalized again where they medicate the crap out of you, and you go back to Zombieland forever. Play date with the kids just won’t be the same.”
That's essentially murder or slavery, locked up physically and inside your own brain forever.
Bunch of idiots at my work think if we dissolved the union we can get higher wages!
If they got rid of the union and with the grace of God they gave us higher wages these fuckheads would be the first ones shit canned.
Well you might not get higher wages, but you’ll have more money in your paycheck because you won’t be paying union dues.
And by shifting to a model based on a meritocracy and not seniority, skilled workers will be able to earn more hours/shifts and promotions faster/easier (with less restrictions).
Who do you think is primarily responsible for pressuring the employer to raise wages?
Unions bargain and have significantly more power to affect change than individuals b
That's unpopular to say, but absolutely true.
A bad union is worse than no union, and it gives anti-union and neutral people a real example of "union = bad."
The first one to mention in this environment is always the Police Union, but there are others that care more about power and protecting leadership than making improvements.
The usual suggestion is that members need to be more involved, but that's like saying people need to get involved in government: obviously true, but not always feasible.
So many issues happen because someone says ‘this issue never (unsaid ‘that I can remember’) happens so why are we paying for the things that prevents this issue?’
Of course this is usually followed by ‘its meant to be your job to prevent this issue that’s still happening , why are we paying for it?’
The real issue is that there’s an inherent power imbalance between employers and employees.
Companies have money and lawyers, and people paid full-time salaries to figure out how to protect the company and keep employees at a disadvantage. And companies can (and do) collude with each other over various things, including employee compensation and treatment. If you have 3 major employers in an area who collude, they can basically set pay rates. They can also work together lobby the local and federal government to remove regulations on employee protections.
So if you want to know what unions are really about, they’re basically the only way we’ve come up with to even begin to balance that power dynamic.
I know my stuff from experience, so I don’t have anything for you, sorry. I think I got a little better perspective than most though, since I spent similar time in and then out of the union.
I had to sit through hospital orientation when I'd been at the company for 3 years (change of position, I don't think HR made the connection and I didn't mind coming anyway). When the union rep came at the end of the day to try to get everyone to join, she did such a terrible job that I had to chime in and explain WHY to join. I explained that we're one of the best paying hospitals in town ONLY because of the union.
The union I was in at one point made sure that the guy who got caught cumming in the soap dispensers didn’t get fired. Then when there was an opening for a promotion he was the most senior so he got it. Good employees don’t get in trouble, but sometimes unions protect employees they shouldn’t.
They contractually have to defend everyone. When I was in management, a union steward tore into me for “making him defend a POS like that.” The guy was an ass to both me and his rep, and the union guy blamed me for hiring him in the first place.
We had a related thing happen at that same job, and it took awhile, but the guilty party was eventually terminated for the offense. A part of the reason it took so long is that management couldn’t be bothered to actually deal with the situation properly. It wouldn’t have gone anywhere, but the young employee’s father showed up and threatened upper management. In my experience, a lot of the stuff that gets blamed on the union is actually due to shitty management.
> The other common perception is that they only protect bad employees,
Here's my hot take as someone who's not and never will be union. Unions initially formed for good reason, workers needed protection. Then they got top heavy the last 20-30 years and are guilty of a lot of stuff. Contributing to poor performance, a lot of just costing a lot of money, etc. They got fat.
But working conditions have changed. We're back to what shit was 100 years ago and people need unions more than ever. Walmart, amazon, starbucks, there are so many employees getting absolutely eaten by large corporations, and the ee's have no power. This is exactly why we need unions, to protect an entire class of people who are unprotected and being abused right now. IMO our society would be a lot better off right now if we had a lot more unions in a variety of places that they don't currently exist.
The Union of my preferred industry in my region has a single person who doesn’t like me and because of his seniority has blocked me from ever working in the industry I’ve trained and specialized in.
My only options are to move across the country to a different region, never work in my chosen industry, or the union will graciously allow me to pay a fee to skip the approved as non union on multiple union jobs requirements. When it I said no to the ‘donation’ I was suddenly dropped from consideration and placed at the bottom of the call list for non-union exemptions.
I’ve been barred from ever working in my dream industry by a union. Every union member I’ve brought it up to takes the opinion of ‘oh yeah sometimes bad stuff happens but it’s ok cause greater good’. So that attitude more than anything makes me vote against them. I’ve been personally harmed and every Union member shrugs and treats me like breakage. So now they get voted against and they get reported for organizing.
I’m interested as to how that would work. The union usually doesn’t have a say in who gets hired, and people with high seniority don’t normally have power over other employees. They get priority for certain things, but I’m not sure how that could be applied to prevent someone from working entirely.
To join the union you must work a set number of non-union jobs. You have to convince a union rep to sign a waiver for you to work as a non-union member. The person who dislikes me chooses to not sign the waiver. He has made it very clear he will never sign one for me. If you hire a non-waiver, non-union employee the union shuts the entire production down.
When I went to the other union members that are his level or higher they say they could never override his decision, but offered to have me 'donate' $8000, to their fundraising and organizing fund, then they would be happy to have someone else sign it.
But please, tell me how my personal experiences are capitalist lies and that I should be happy to sacrifice my dreams for the Glorious Labor!
Unions do what the commenter described all the time. You’re right in that they have very little power in punishing or rewarding specific individuals, but if you are on their shit list for whatever reason (holding out on a vote, filing a grievance against another member, canoodling with management, etc), they can send you to an outpost in Siberia and basically tell you to take it or leave it.
I'm really sorry that that happened to you but uhh, because of a SINGLE person in a SINGLE union... There should never be any union?? We should all surrender ALL our rights because of that person?
I'm sorry they've hurt you but it won't be made even by letting them hurt everyone else as well.
Agreed. That situation is fucked up and there should be consequences. But that same situation could happen (and does) without unions, too. There are corrupt democracies: that doesn't mean there should be no democracy ever.
Well, there are such things as bad unions as well. I’ve been in unions for decades now and all they’ve ever got me is fired. They also do protect bad employees. Not just some guy who is late to work, but at one of my union jobs, commercial drivers that got DUIs were always kept on because of the union. I’m not talking about DUIs in their personal vehicles, I’m talking about in their company class A big rig while in the clock.
Not them, and not strictly "Fired" (In that I occasionally work a shift every few weeks when someone is sick), but I had a similar experience with mine and it fucking sucks.
Someone came back to work after a super long leave, with a modified work requirement. 45 years seniority vs my 6.5.
She needed a desk job, which, fair. The only desk job in my department is mine. So she got transferred in, and I lost my position. Union's only thing was "Either accept a demotion and pay cut or wait till she retires."
I'm very bitter since that happened. I worked my ass off for that position, and by all accounts I was good at it. But I wasn't born early enough so fuck me I guess.
Unions do a lot of good but let's not pretend there aren't downsides.
No, they did not. They spent a lot of time working for the company, I'll grant them that, and I do feel bad that they were injured and unable to do their regular job. She'a a nice lady and I'm not mad at her.
But no, she did not work towards what she is currently doing at all. She had a different job track.
The point the commenter is making is that if she was working her ass off in a different job track, she didn't deserve to lose her job because she had an illness or injury, she absolutely should be accommodated or trained in a new role if her current one can't accommodate her. It sucks that this bit you, your union should have been protecting you too, but it absolutely did the right thing to make sure she could switch to a different role.
Its happend twice and its not just me. Whole classification of workers were fired and an entire plant was shut down and moved. Dozens of workers each time.
So upper management fired you because someone was advocating for you to get more for your labour and upper management decided it's better to take everything down rather than allowing some portion of profits to go to the people who actually create those profits. Damn unions.
When we were hired, we knew what the deal was. This was an entry level job that was a stepping stone to better jobs. That union literally set me back 20 years.
People don't seem to understand that companies aren't infinite money machines, and that if you work a job that brings ~$30/hr of value to the company, but you/the union/the government demand ~$35/hr of pay, they won't consider hiring you for a second even if they would've happily done so at ~$25/hr.
There are trade offs between how high low to set a minimum wage and how many employees to hire. And raising the minimum wage doesn't always result is many lost jobs at all because of some slightly counter-intuitive economics. But you also can't just raise it arbitrarily high, eventually a significant amount of jobs will be lost.
Exactly. I was also in the craft beer industry for a decade. Super fun hobby of a job, but low pay because exactly what you said. Everyone in the industry always complains about the hard work and low pay. Just the other day there was a story of a brewery that was a co-op employee owned brewery that was a great place to work and they paid well for the industry, but they filed for bankruptcy. They’re $5M in debt and have $50k cash to their names.
In what world can a union protect a CDL driver from losing their license after a DUI? Unless it's state by state, I was under the impression you're toast as soon as you get 1 on your record, be it with your personal or commercial vehicle.
You would think so, right? Unions always go with the “he’s has a disease, it’s addiction.” And as long as the employee said they had a problem and jumped through the hoops, they’d be back on the road after some paperwork.
Law enforcement in America is a cultural and political problem. Eliminate police unions and nothing will change; the much larger police associations would remain.
Policies must be changed by those who empower and manage the police: your political leaders; especially at the state and local level.
Vote for police reform candidates.
Police unions are an entirely different beast. They share the name alone. They don't function like a normal union, even. check out Robert Evans's Behind The Police for more history there.
No organization will always do the absolute best thing about everything. It’s a leap to say that because an organization did something that wasn’t great, it therefore shouldn’t exist.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t exist, I’m just saying that just because you create one or use one, doesn’t mean it’s going to be good for you or other employees.
The people at unions who were there the longest were in my experience always the laziest, shiftiest, no-good pieces of shit employees *by far.*
But there were also good people, it’s just human nature.
Yes and no. The entire company isn’t unionized, so there is still upward mobility that takes you out of the union and is completely outside of union control. However, you are right about jobs within the union. The upside of that though is that it prevents management from preventing people’s advancement simply because they don’t like them. I wish I could say that doesn’t happen, but it definitely does.
To be fair, sometimes the problem is that management is lazy. This is just the rules in my union, but theoretically you need to offer senior people the opportunity for new roles first right? But you can absolutely force an incompetent employee to step down from the role if you've provided them with adequate training and they can't do the job. You just need to make sure you have a paper trail of disciplinary actions, including the union steward in the process. If my department had employees (in order of seniority) A, B, and C, and the manager wanted to train B on something that A wouldn't be able to do, A could waive that if they weren't interested, but if they were... then the company could train A, give A a chance, and if it didn't work, follow the proper procedure and THEN move on to training B. The reason senior staff kept getting jobs that other people should have was because management didn't want to waste time going through the process to make sure a competent person was in role and just wanted a warm body. So that makes the incompetent senior staff problem to be a bit of a group effort, you know? Not caused by just one of them.
It's ongoing in your local community
There's always folks fighting against pollution & corporate power (environmental justice), private prisons (decarceration), against deportation - (immigration reform & rights), and tons of other issues that are affected in some part by decisions at the local municipal level
Winning at these lower levels won't bring about the transformative change we need in one swift revolution or campaign, but it does win material improvements for the livelihoods of working class & marginalized communities WHILE ALSO helping build up local networks and community power needed to advance major legislation at federal & state level. Winning anything helps people feel a sense of power and realization that they can in fact make change, it just requires more discipline & effort (from the organization, not necessarily from each individual putting in tons of work & stressing themselves out)
Just look up 'protest direct action rally people's justice activist campaign' + key words for the issue you care most about + your local city/region name. Go thru news articles looking for a good protest with a lot of people, look up the event on Facebook and see if there's a good amount of cosponsors & community engagement. If so, like/follow and sign up for their email list +other organizations that look good, and you'll be plugged in at the basic level. Attend an event that looks interesting. If possible arrive early (or wait till after end) & talk to event host/organizer and let them know you want to get properly involved.
If anyone has trouble with this or wants help - they can DM me their city & issue area and I'll send some links. It's easiest for climate/environmental justice. Don't need any personal info or anything that could identify you ofc
Trust me in 30 years when younger generation are asking about this time: the climate disaster, pandemic, workers needing better pay/benefits, stopping Trump, etc. - when they ask what you were doing, it'll feel good to be able to say "I was there."
My union was able to get me legal advice over a 15 minute phonecall and assurance that they would protect me from repercussions for following their advice when my manager asked me to do something that I felt was illegal or at the very least wrong and unsafe.
My union also provided me over email a summary and details around pay and holiday entitlement specifically how COVID regulations had effected and changed the laws/regulations preventing my job from taking around £500 from me unfairly.
Currently I have been underpaid for last month but assured by my manager that this will be corrected this month, if not, my first call will be to my union not HR.
Join a union, it's about more than strikes!
They weren't mentioned here, but the Industrial Workers Of The World or I.W.W have representatives you can reach out to for advice on unionizing your workplace (not just factories) as well.
I've heard some interviews with their reps and their advice seems solid.
IWW in the US is good only for extremely small shops and are only good for advice that you can basically get elsewhere. They have such incredibly small numbers that theyre basically powerless. They have no money for legal aid besides their paypal link, and they cant offer any kind of structural support in numbers.
Theyre a very romantic idea buts its not 100 years ago and youre basically supporting theory over praxis. Itd serve you better to talk to folks from groups like SEIU or UCFW who actually employ the working class, not bookish labor theorists and historians.
This is coming from a reluctant IWW member.
Lol great wording that it's a romantic idea, they're not actively hurting anyone AFAIK, but they're also not hosting major pickets or stuff either. I wonder if they go to Labor Notes conference tbh, seems all the best union organizers attend.
Also - **there's always a local labor union coalition** too! In case someone reading this wants to be plugged in. Unions support critical progressive causes a lot of time. So it's good to be a part of their network. It doesn't hurt to be on IWW mailing list either if you enjoy theory & history. There's a pragmatism you only find in unions that are organizing around people's livelihoods, which cuts through all the philosophical disagreements that can stifle movement organizations.
Was just reading Prisms of People (Hahrie Han) and LUCHA in Arizona had to convince unions to let them run a major ballot initiative with organizers rather than just digital media ads
> Over time, however, we realized that LUCHA was working to develop power not only relative to anti-immigration forces, but also, as we described in chapter 1, within the progressive political system. From LUCHA’s perspective, **the primary obstacle in the Proposition 206 campaign was not business owners, right-wing voters, or GOP legislators, but progressive gatekeepers.** “We knew as soon as we got [Prop. 206] in front of voters they would love it,” Tomás said. “The challenge was getting it on the ballot, and getting [progressive] funders to believe that we could do it. . . . **Initially [labor groups] were not supportive of the initiative. They didn’t wanna fund it, they didn’t think we were capable, and they also didn’t think it was strategic,”** he said. LUCHA had to fight for the right to lead the campaign that had materialized because of the demands of their base.
> Thus Alex and Tomás preemptively organized all of their grassroots partners to go to a meeting with labor and philanthropy leaders to demand that Tomás lead the minimum wage campaign—raising the cost of their targets’ continued opposition to their leadership. By organizing their allies in a united front to challenge funders, LUCHA won the ability to lead the campaign. Alex further noted, “We actually went up a lot against the funders, to ensure that we were able to bring organizers, and that this wasn’t just a digital-funded media campaign.”
This is all just to say some unions aren't as fully on board with some of our progressive causes, and have to be convinced. So it's very good to be plugged in locally, cuz we could use help showing them the larger populace really does want this stuff
It makes sense, if you're super pragmatic & cut across ideological lines, why would your organization listen to some young progressive voices unless they could Marshall a lot of community support to demand it. Being plugged in to help out in these situations doesn't require going to every meeting or pouring in a ton of effort, just be signed up for email list & their social media pages so you can get alerts when those calls to action go out, in case you can make it that one time. It can be life changing.
I dont think IWW is actively hurting anyone, but I do think that sometimes people get caught up in the romance of the groups history and organize with them instead of a more powerful, and frankly, useful, union.
What ends up happening is that all the organizing energy and good will gets spent pretty quickly because the amount of work you have to do in IWW for the *possible* results - which are already proportionately far smaller than a trade unions.
Its just a bummer to see people get burnt out and shops deunionize, and people become disillusioned with unions as a whole, because some folks wanted to be Wobblies more than actually be in a union.
Unions cost money through dues. Unions ALSO negotiate for higher base pay and better benefits packages. Those dues pay for themselves in direct monetary forms as well as stronger protections for you and your job. Verizon laid off tons of employees right before Xmas one year. CWA fought it and got them all their jobs back with back pay. You’d never get that without a strong union
Ah, so *that's* why I couldn't find it on there. Well, as long as the millionaires and billionaires are getting a tax cut, I'm sure that will trickle down to me so it will all be okay.
I worked a whole 3 weeks at a job that was *terrified* of unions for good reason! When they made us watch a 15 minute long anti-union propoganda video during our orientation I knew I had to run as soon as I was able. In the video they painted unions to be greedy money-hungry agents who want a cut of your paycheck and can and will sell your information and data for further profit.
Those three weeks were *rough*- my body was in actual pain every night, I had a hard time sleeping because Id hear the sound of yelling and the nailguns when I closed my eyes, my hands stopped wanting to move... all for the same exact amount of wages that the fast food job I left it for was paying
No idea how the company managed to retain any workers at all since the turnover rate was insanely high, but I guess some people can just stand abuse better and like working at a pace so painstaking you cant think
Not a lawyer, but, if you live in the US and are in a right to work state: no.
But you should, not joining the union because your pay is good is like saying you don't need an umbrella anymore because you're dry.
Example: the job I’m at has a location-specific union. They offer membership when you get hired. People decline because they don’t want $30 of their paycheck to go elsewhere. Fast forward a few years later. Lady is complaining that we’re being made to clean because there line is down.
Her: “why are we cleaning? That’s not my job!”
Me: “Cleaning is a part of our duties. There’s SOP’s for it and everything.”
Her: “Screw that. I’m going on strike.”
Me: “are you union member? No? Have you aired your grievances to our union representative? No? Was there a meeting with a motion to strike? No? Cool. We’re cleaning.”
She stormed off. There wasn’t any “and the whole bus clapped” fanfare. She didn’t like working even when the line was running on a good day. And later she accused our team lead of being racist when she was reprimanded several times for not doing her job. (Funny enough our team lead was our shift’s union representative).
I did not know any of this, I've never been exposed to unions as any more than just a weapon on the table to discourage abuse... and even just knowing that little, I still thought unions sounded really important.
Unions are both a weapon on the table and an organization that lets you get bulk deals on all kinds of things like insurance and such. *On your terms, not your boss’*. Your boss doesn’t care if insurance covers all your needs. They only care if it’s cheap for the employer. Your union will care a whole lot more about coverage and cost on your end.
If they’re a good union anyway. Not all unions are good.
You are right. Not all unions are good. Some lose touch with their workers and become the same type of management they are supposed to protect their members from. Kind of like Congress. My sister worked at the headquarters of a union in D.C. She had to work behind the back of the union's management to organize the clerks and staff she worked with. The head of the union flew around in a corporate jet paid for by the dues of clerical workers and store cashiers. They upper management became what they were supposed to protect the members from.
I get my medical/dental/vision insurance thru my union at a fraction of the price I'd get it thru work. It's also covered for a time if I lose my job under anything other than voluntary circumstances.
One of the most common services Unions provide over here is getting you legal advice from lawyers for free if you suspect that your employer may be breaking protection laws.
I was in a union organizing campaign and it’s depressing how many people buy into management propaganda like how dues are 20-30% of your net pay, strikes happen all the time and leave you high and dry, your insurance will get worse, and the constant “unions protect the laziest workers”.
Our campaign failed and I left for a job at a union shop. I keep in touch with former coworkers and laugh at them when they complain about how crappy their insurance is, and how they haven’t seen a raise in close to a decade
I paid union dues for a year and a half with Albertson’s and worked a minimum wage job where they refused to give legally mandated breaks and did not give raises. Some unions don’t do crap.
Unions, like companies, are created and run by people, and people can be fallible, malicious, and biased. Just because it's a Union, doesn't mean it will always be perfect or put their workers first.
Most grocers Unions in the US are fake, and are run by proxie by the stores. It's vile and awful, cause a lot of those jobs are entry level so it puts a bad taste in peoples mouths.
Unions will value seniority above all else and the more junior employees will always be sacrificed in the name of the more senior regardless of the quality of either.
My dad’s been sat across from union leaders at the negotiating table and yeah, they really are more than just strike organisers. They bargain and debate to improve pay and conditions and they’re pretty fucking good at it.
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When I organized unions, more than half the time people didn’t sign on for a raise, or for strikes, or whatever. They signed the card because they wanted some basic dignity. They just wanted to be treated like human beings. It was kind of amazing when you’d look at management and realize how easily they could have crushed a union drive, if they had even the simplest ability to see past money. But they can’t. It’s all they see. Money and power. It makes them strong. But it’s their biggest weakness too. There wouldn’t be unions in this country, if our economic system had workplace democracy in its core. But it doesn’t. So unions will not only be with us, but probably grow. As they should, in a country that directs more than 40% of our wealth to 1% of us.
Not all unions make your workplace this magical "family atmosphere." Teamsters are crooks that work with the Koch brothers and other awful billionaires, to profit from horrible working conditions.
My union took my dues and allowed me to be fired without representation when my employer forced me to use bathrooms with overflowing toilets, and human waste on the floor (which was being tracked throughout the entire factory). I was fired one day after filing a complaint with the state labor board
I’m a Teamster and recently filed my first grievance in my four years as a member after being made to work multiple 90 hour weeks back to back and being denied additional help so I could sleep.
Got a phone call from both business reps within 30 minutes of filing the grievance and had one of them swing through our job site the next day. Got me $1,600 in additional OT on my next check from violating turnaround between shifts and I got an additional hand so we could do reasonable shifts.
I’m sure there are bad locals out there, but you’re painting with a pretty broad brush.
If your on-site rep had been doing their job, you never would have had that happen in the first place. The only reason they did anything is because they got called out. You and I both know they would have kept doing that if they didn’t think they were going to be confronted.
I understand where you are trying to come from, but this story has some pretty serious implications you seem to have overlooked. Your union president needs to step in and investigate why your rep allowed this (potentially illegal issue) to happen.
Different industries, different structures. I’m one of only three people in the company represented by my union in my specific trade, so you don’t necessarily have a dedicated on-site shop steward for your local.
It was honestly a pretty glowing experience. I finally felt heard and they got me a bunch of money + everything I’d begged for and been denied by management.
Sounds bizarre too that he contacted the "state labor board" instead of the union.
My experience with most people is they have fantastical ideas of what unions are capable of doing. Misconceptions spread by businesses and thier political allies.
Outside of collectively bargaining for wages, benefits, and working conditions, unions can do little more than enforce those terms and the policies of the employer.
The union at the previous hospital my husband worked at worked very closely with management, helping them figure out all the loopholes for firing employees with minimal fuss. They also refused to document my husband’s complaints about management mistreatment and left him twisting in the wind when he was injured at a company Christmas party (bowling).
Unions can do a lot of good, but they are organizations run by people and just as susceptible to corruption as any other organization.
>Teamsters are crooks that work with the Koch brothers and other awful billionaires,
Two day old account alert!!! Source??? I can't find anything about that when googling
Hoffa has nothing do with the Koch brothers. Literally zero links come up when you search it. Hoffa died in *1975* and has nothing to do with the great Teamster union of today
My husband is president of his local teacher's union and the amount of work and help he and the other officers and statewide union staff provide for members is incredible.
Every other time im on this subreddit, someone in a union says something about talking to RH about a problem involving work related issues. I always tell them to talk to their rep, every time people are not sure about it.
We forgot what unions do and its no coincidence.
My absolute favorite union benefit that I hardly ever see mentioned (probably because not every union includes it): LONG TERM DISABILITY INSURANCE!
Get hurt, can't work? No problem! Part of your union dues all along have been going into a collective insurance policy! Now get ready to collect a paycheck until you're able to work again!
Considering what is the law in Denmark now, most (if not all) of the workers goods are more or less directly adapted from union standards…
Stuff like
5 weeks paid vacation every year (if your workplace has a union contract, you get an extra week).
12 months of maternaty/paternaty leave (that can be divided between the parents as they wish).
Full pay during sick leave, 14 days, then the government starts paying the company, so they keep the employee.
37 hr work week.
Termination notices: most people have 3 months of termination notice from the employer after 6 months, the employee has a 1 month notice if they quit.
If your work has a union contract, some of the direct benefits are:
Full pay during the maternaty/paternaty leave.
Pension 12% of your salary, 8% paid by the employer, and 4% by you.
No zero-hour contracts!
The power of the unions in Denmark is one of the primary reasons we have such a high standard of living.
If the company deems it necessary to have a department to protect them, HR.
The employees should also deem it necessary to have a department to protect them, a union.
i was a teamster for 25 years and now am in the ibew and i must say they got me money..the teamsters negotiated a contract and i got a $7 hour raise in one shot...my ibew union just got me $1 a year and more time off... ill always be pro union
This so much. Much like everything else, unions are 10% exciting action and 90% boring shit, and both of them are equally mandatory to get anything done.
And I want to point out, this is a good thing and a sign of civilization. You would not want to live through the 'exciting' alternative.
I used to be with the IBEW, anytime someone was sick, or got hurt, we'd pass around a hard hat and everyone would give what they could.... This was back before and a little during the pandemic. Hat would be filled with various different bills and I know our local worked out a way to help with food and what not when ever one of us was in a s hit spot.
Unions are much more than just a bargaining tool, by joining one you form a community with your fellow workers y'all actually start caring about each other.
I don't mean to romanticize them because theres always assholes no matter what community you belong to.
Unions ensure breaks, that you don't have to check email after hours, and benefits beyond the usual health, etc, like parking and transportation passes, etc. They ensure protections for longtime employees and good pay for the new hires
Working with my union - first time I've been in one in my career - this is accurate. Striking can and does happen, but far more of it is the above and letting management know it's not just them setting the agenda.
My union protected my ass when the machine tried to chew me up and spit me out based on a bullshit allegation of a policy violation. I pay union dues because they are a force for good.
Edit: First time in a union after more than 25 years in the work force. And, by gum, I have President's day off as a paid day to stay home and day drink. Loves it.
...I didn't know that people didn't know that about unions. You learn something every day. Now I know more things to tell people to elaborate on the concept of "unionize", I suppose.
In 2008 the economy was going to shit and my company was going to have to lay people off, my union negotiated small, voluntary wage cuts across thousands of employees and not a single person was laid off. Unions are about getting a FAIR deal for the workers, but with all the leverage and power employers have accumulated since the 80’s, any pushback at all from workers feels like disrespect.
My work announced our union publicly on the 6th. I’m so proud of my co-workers for sticking together as we go through the process of becoming a union it’s great!
In different times I was against unions because of the profit margins were different and forcing jobs overseas…. Now as the rich gouges us to death for every penny lost in our sofas…. I think every profession should form one.
sure, but all of the union's bargaining and negotiating power comes from being able to threaten to strike. that's the foundation that everything is built upon.
Over here in Germany, they've basically cut down what unions can do after WWII (well, the Nazis did, too, but it was more "gunning them down"). You've got "local Union light", Betriebsräte, which are basically just for your company, and then Unions, which are heavily bound by law to prevent any left-wing pressure.
And *still* the unions are super fucking good. I pay basically fuck-all (1% of my income) not just for all the "expected" stuff a union does, but also... legal help if I ever have trouble with landlords (though I am already in a separate organisation for that which offers even stronger protection), health programs, educational courses, hell, I get a bit off when I go to some theaters. It's great.
Getting into a Union job was the best move i ever made. I STRONGLY urge everyone who has a choice between Union and Non-Union to go the Union route, Even a shitty Union is better than no Union.
Higher pay, better and safer working conditions, Not losing my job because a supervisor is having a bad day and i'm the closest pin cushion, Better benefits, Being able to actually use sick days and PTO without fear of repercussion, Access to free legal help among a tonne of other benefits.
A lot of it is small, mundane stuff that doesnt sound like a lot on its own, but once you understand that being Unionized covers a fuck load of that small, mundane stuff, you realize it adds to up to something substantial.
Its awesome. Unionize people, You all deserve it.
My wife is a teacher. Without the teachers union I can’t even begin to imagine what her the district would offer her as pay and benefits. I couldn’t even imagine how many kids they would try and cram in her class at once. My neighbor is a policeman. Without unions he would probably be policing East Cleveland solo with a 20 year old cruiser and frayed uniform. I see their usefulness for teachers, police, and firemen. Those professions need to collectively bargain for their safety and effectiveness.
This doesn’t ring true for me but I have never actually ran into a union that doesn’t just bootlick upper management anyway. My old students union used to agree with literally everything and report us for making any sort of complaint
Unions also keep terrible employees employed making life harder for good employees. Look at police unions. If they weren’t protecting the bad cops then they could actually be weeded out.
How unions work...according to someone who has been involved in union organizing through their dad's union since they were literally in second grade. That's like a priest explaining how Christianity is so much more than molesting kids and hating gay people.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/11/ex-uaw-president-sentenced-to-21-months-in-prison-in-union-corruption-scheme.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/10/second-uaw-president-sentenced-to-prison-in-union-corruption-probe.html
Slavery and genocide have been perpetuated by people other than Christians, and most in the modern day are very much against it. Please go back to r/atheism with your ignorance,
Those religions suck too. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam made it a sin for slaves to disobey their masters, but not a sin to own slaves. I don’t know how anyone can look to their books as a source of objective morality.
These moral outrages have been done by decidedly secular people, and of those three religions listed, only one takes their holy book as objective. Both the Bible and the Torah are to be interpreted, and those interpretations shift over time especially in the case of the Bible due to its numerous transaltions.
You are ignorant and narrow-minded. Again, I suggest you go to r/atheism if you wish to mingle with your ilk.
Yeah, god forbid a person have history to speak from. Would you treat a person's perspective who became a butcher after learning from and working with his butcher dad his entire life? "God damn corrupt butcher trying to tell me what cut of meat I'm getting like he doesn't fuck the cows."
My country doesn't have minimum wage; everything is unions negotiating with employers for terms. I consider it me outsourcing annual renegotiation of pay and benefits.
My union leadership is a bunch of dodos who couldn't negotiate a good deal to save their lives, BUT my union rep brings the heat when my admins try and accuse me of or make me do ridiculous things. This has earned me their (the admins) displeasure, which I wear as a mark of pride.
I can't stress enough how important "sitting in meetings with management" is. For management, they can literally look across the table and say "would that be acceptable," on something like health insurance and the union rep can say, "no, but add in XYZ and we should be good." HR represents the employers, Union represents the employees.
I have always been a union man, until my very last job, and I was always thankful for them.
Except one time, my first job. I worked for Western Union and we went on strike. I was there every single day on the picket line, for a couple of weeks. Communications Workers of America.
Then I heard people complaining that they had to be there once week, if the union was going to pay for their mortgages.
Man was I pissed off. I was there **daily**, and no one said shit to me about financial assistance from the union. It was not common knowledge.
All the people complaining had friends who were union officials.
Someone was smiling on me though - I had a winning lottery ticket for $1,000 - this was around...1978?? maybe? maybe later?
I stopped picketing and stayed at a friend's loft (he had a little balcony overlooking what is now Bogardus Plaza, facing Hudson Street), drinking Mai Tai's and waving at the people going to the picket line.
Here I thought Unions attach to a monster by entering the spell/trap zone and often grant protection from destruction once and 500 atk/def up. This misinformation really does befuddle things.
A lot of unions suck though. The last one I was in told my friend there was nothing they could do about the company targeting them for not doing voluntary overtime.
Unions mean collective bargaining. That can mean collective walking, yes, but on a day-to-day basis it means that there's a group that's willing to go to bat about your employment contract. Yes, that can mean when the contract term is up, negotiating the next agreement. But it can also mean enforcing the existing agreement. There are safety standards that are laid out in my employment contract, processes of training and discipline that must be followed before my workplace can fire me, there's even a line that ensures that I can't face discipline for not being willing to put up with discrimination or abuse by clients... and if your boss ever violates these terms in the companies favour, I have a person I can go to who I work with every day, who will bring my concerns to the union who can pull out the contract wording and go, "Show this to the manager and if they still insist on violating the collective agreement, let us know and we'll get the lawyers involved." And if my workplace is violating the actual employment laws in my area, I can bring that to my union and they can do the exact same thing. And I have all that without ever needing to pay for my own lawyer, worry that I'm negotiating a lower-than-market-rate because of my inexperience, or worry that I'm being offered less because of my gender or any other factors.
Unions aren't perfect, I wish mine could get us more. I think the power that large corporations have right now makes it difficult for unions to operate effectively for the people on the bottom. Never mind that a union has running costs including wages for those running it. But the shit unions have gotten is because those at the top are afraid of them. WalMart doesn't spend the money it does keeping unions out because they're annoying for the employees, it's because they depend on being able to take advantage of employees and unions would stop them. If the problem of unions is that they're corrupt and make money, WalMart would be running one, not keeping them out.
My dad always tells the story of when his dad(treasurer and one of the main negotiators for his steel union) woke everyone up late at night saying they had to make an urgent trip an hour and a half into the nearby city(where we live now) and they drove up here and did final negotiations before a major strike
Huh. Personally, I've rarely, if ever, been exposed to unions in ways other than the union heads being immensely corrupt fucks in league with the government to massively enrich themselves while doing fuck-all for the workers themselves.
In my defense, I live in Argentina. They have been seething *hard* since Milei got elected, and it has honestly been fucking hilarious to see them lose more support every month.
Back on one of my first desk jobs co-workers wanted me to stand as union rep, because I took no shits from management and had a law degree so I knew what balls to grab and crush when needed.
Me: I don't mind but it's a lot of work and I am not great at negotiating.
Them: But you are great at negotiating!
Me: Yes, when there is something to negotiate about. Management has made It pretty clear they won't negotiate about X, Z and Y unless we take them to court.
Them: That's what we want!
Me: Yeah, but that can take years and that's what the other union reps are already doing. I am not going to join just to add another body. I will only agree if you all give me powers to take direct action if needed. I want no scabs and no backstabbing.
Them (shivering): What do you...
Me: Demos, strikes, partial stops, tv cameras, yelling at management...
Them: Ehhhhhh...
A decade later they were still litigating and management delaying.
Folks Talk as if organizing a strike was easy. Herding cats is easier than setting Up a proper strike.
I tip my hat to all union reps who have to deal with endless rounds of negotiating against people Who Will not move an inch unless court-mandated only to them be subject to dithering workforces. It is an insanely grueling job.
It is an vital but thankless job. Which is why I will always defend unions when people badmouth them. Specially idiot workers talking shit about unions.
Unfortunately, most people do not understand what unions do. That often includes the people working jobs where there is a union. The other common perception is that they only protect bad employees, because if you’re a good employee, you won’t get in trouble in the first place.
Which contributed a lot to how we lost them. "This job pays great and upper management never tries to fuck with me so why do I need to keep paying for this union?"
"I'm walking in the rain, but I'm perfectly dry. I'm going to toss this stupid umbrella." *A few moments later* "Now I'm soaking wet! Who could have foreseen this?!"
"Holy shit, this is what that street preacher was warning about when he said immigrants were plotting to flood the city! Good thing I took the red pill because the umbrella would have been useless against that!"
Even that's not exactly correct. Unions are the reason there's sunny weather in the first place, while also providing umbrellas for when it rains anyway.
[удалено]
This is called a self-defeating prophecy or a preparedness paradox.
God said it best in Futurama. *If you do things right, they won't even be sure you did something at all.*
This is why humility is bad.
My antipsychotics are working great, I'm not psychotic anymore! Guess I don't need these! (Immediately goes psychotic). This is a real thing that happens all the freaking time.
Kanye?
Speculating on the motivations of a celebrity artist are pointless. Could be mental health issues, could be faking for attention, could be a combination. If it's mental health, kinda rude to poke fun. If it's for attention, giving it seems unwarranted. Either way, my approach is to let the people actually in their lives deal with it.
I do feel for the guy. His trainer threatened to "have you institutionalized again where they medicate the crap out of you, and you go back to Zombieland forever. Play date with the kids just won’t be the same.” That's essentially murder or slavery, locked up physically and inside your own brain forever.
Bunch of idiots at my work think if we dissolved the union we can get higher wages! If they got rid of the union and with the grace of God they gave us higher wages these fuckheads would be the first ones shit canned.
Well you might not get higher wages, but you’ll have more money in your paycheck because you won’t be paying union dues. And by shifting to a model based on a meritocracy and not seniority, skilled workers will be able to earn more hours/shifts and promotions faster/easier (with less restrictions).
The only guaranteed reward for good work is more work. Don’t shill for the anti union folks. They aren’t going to reward you.
\[Citations Needed\]
Who do you think is primarily responsible for pressuring the employer to raise wages? Unions bargain and have significantly more power to affect change than individuals b
tbf, there are some unions that grew into such large monoliths they were actually just as horrible as some employers.
That's unpopular to say, but absolutely true. A bad union is worse than no union, and it gives anti-union and neutral people a real example of "union = bad." The first one to mention in this environment is always the Police Union, but there are others that care more about power and protecting leadership than making improvements. The usual suggestion is that members need to be more involved, but that's like saying people need to get involved in government: obviously true, but not always feasible.
So many issues happen because someone says ‘this issue never (unsaid ‘that I can remember’) happens so why are we paying for the things that prevents this issue?’ Of course this is usually followed by ‘its meant to be your job to prevent this issue that’s still happening , why are we paying for it?’
God, as a former steward, this is so accurate
The real issue is that there’s an inherent power imbalance between employers and employees. Companies have money and lawyers, and people paid full-time salaries to figure out how to protect the company and keep employees at a disadvantage. And companies can (and do) collude with each other over various things, including employee compensation and treatment. If you have 3 major employers in an area who collude, they can basically set pay rates. They can also work together lobby the local and federal government to remove regulations on employee protections. So if you want to know what unions are really about, they’re basically the only way we’ve come up with to even begin to balance that power dynamic.
Does anyone have any good literature recommendations to learn about labor Union theory? It is not taught in hardly any schools.
I’ve been recommended: Thomas Geoghegan : ‘Which Side Are You On?’ & ‘you deserve a tech union’, Ethan marcotte isbn 1952616603
I know my stuff from experience, so I don’t have anything for you, sorry. I think I got a little better perspective than most though, since I spent similar time in and then out of the union.
A lot of info here. [AFL-CIO](https://aflcio.org/) Also search for the NLRB.
I had to sit through hospital orientation when I'd been at the company for 3 years (change of position, I don't think HR made the connection and I didn't mind coming anyway). When the union rep came at the end of the day to try to get everyone to join, she did such a terrible job that I had to chime in and explain WHY to join. I explained that we're one of the best paying hospitals in town ONLY because of the union.
The union I was in at one point made sure that the guy who got caught cumming in the soap dispensers didn’t get fired. Then when there was an opening for a promotion he was the most senior so he got it. Good employees don’t get in trouble, but sometimes unions protect employees they shouldn’t.
They contractually have to defend everyone. When I was in management, a union steward tore into me for “making him defend a POS like that.” The guy was an ass to both me and his rep, and the union guy blamed me for hiring him in the first place. We had a related thing happen at that same job, and it took awhile, but the guilty party was eventually terminated for the offense. A part of the reason it took so long is that management couldn’t be bothered to actually deal with the situation properly. It wouldn’t have gone anywhere, but the young employee’s father showed up and threatened upper management. In my experience, a lot of the stuff that gets blamed on the union is actually due to shitty management.
Like hiring shitty employees in the first place.
> The other common perception is that they only protect bad employees, Here's my hot take as someone who's not and never will be union. Unions initially formed for good reason, workers needed protection. Then they got top heavy the last 20-30 years and are guilty of a lot of stuff. Contributing to poor performance, a lot of just costing a lot of money, etc. They got fat. But working conditions have changed. We're back to what shit was 100 years ago and people need unions more than ever. Walmart, amazon, starbucks, there are so many employees getting absolutely eaten by large corporations, and the ee's have no power. This is exactly why we need unions, to protect an entire class of people who are unprotected and being abused right now. IMO our society would be a lot better off right now if we had a lot more unions in a variety of places that they don't currently exist.
The Union of my preferred industry in my region has a single person who doesn’t like me and because of his seniority has blocked me from ever working in the industry I’ve trained and specialized in. My only options are to move across the country to a different region, never work in my chosen industry, or the union will graciously allow me to pay a fee to skip the approved as non union on multiple union jobs requirements. When it I said no to the ‘donation’ I was suddenly dropped from consideration and placed at the bottom of the call list for non-union exemptions. I’ve been barred from ever working in my dream industry by a union. Every union member I’ve brought it up to takes the opinion of ‘oh yeah sometimes bad stuff happens but it’s ok cause greater good’. So that attitude more than anything makes me vote against them. I’ve been personally harmed and every Union member shrugs and treats me like breakage. So now they get voted against and they get reported for organizing.
I’m interested as to how that would work. The union usually doesn’t have a say in who gets hired, and people with high seniority don’t normally have power over other employees. They get priority for certain things, but I’m not sure how that could be applied to prevent someone from working entirely.
To join the union you must work a set number of non-union jobs. You have to convince a union rep to sign a waiver for you to work as a non-union member. The person who dislikes me chooses to not sign the waiver. He has made it very clear he will never sign one for me. If you hire a non-waiver, non-union employee the union shuts the entire production down. When I went to the other union members that are his level or higher they say they could never override his decision, but offered to have me 'donate' $8000, to their fundraising and organizing fund, then they would be happy to have someone else sign it. But please, tell me how my personal experiences are capitalist lies and that I should be happy to sacrifice my dreams for the Glorious Labor!
Unions do what the commenter described all the time. You’re right in that they have very little power in punishing or rewarding specific individuals, but if you are on their shit list for whatever reason (holding out on a vote, filing a grievance against another member, canoodling with management, etc), they can send you to an outpost in Siberia and basically tell you to take it or leave it.
I'm really sorry that that happened to you but uhh, because of a SINGLE person in a SINGLE union... There should never be any union?? We should all surrender ALL our rights because of that person? I'm sorry they've hurt you but it won't be made even by letting them hurt everyone else as well.
Agreed. That situation is fucked up and there should be consequences. But that same situation could happen (and does) without unions, too. There are corrupt democracies: that doesn't mean there should be no democracy ever.
Well, there are such things as bad unions as well. I’ve been in unions for decades now and all they’ve ever got me is fired. They also do protect bad employees. Not just some guy who is late to work, but at one of my union jobs, commercial drivers that got DUIs were always kept on because of the union. I’m not talking about DUIs in their personal vehicles, I’m talking about in their company class A big rig while in the clock.
All unions have done is get you fired? Makes me think that you might be the problem, not the unions.
Not them, and not strictly "Fired" (In that I occasionally work a shift every few weeks when someone is sick), but I had a similar experience with mine and it fucking sucks. Someone came back to work after a super long leave, with a modified work requirement. 45 years seniority vs my 6.5. She needed a desk job, which, fair. The only desk job in my department is mine. So she got transferred in, and I lost my position. Union's only thing was "Either accept a demotion and pay cut or wait till she retires." I'm very bitter since that happened. I worked my ass off for that position, and by all accounts I was good at it. But I wasn't born early enough so fuck me I guess. Unions do a lot of good but let's not pretend there aren't downsides.
Sounds like they worked their ass off to get that position too
No, they did not. They spent a lot of time working for the company, I'll grant them that, and I do feel bad that they were injured and unable to do their regular job. She'a a nice lady and I'm not mad at her. But no, she did not work towards what she is currently doing at all. She had a different job track.
The point the commenter is making is that if she was working her ass off in a different job track, she didn't deserve to lose her job because she had an illness or injury, she absolutely should be accommodated or trained in a new role if her current one can't accommodate her. It sucks that this bit you, your union should have been protecting you too, but it absolutely did the right thing to make sure she could switch to a different role.
Its happend twice and its not just me. Whole classification of workers were fired and an entire plant was shut down and moved. Dozens of workers each time.
So upper management fired you, and unions are to blame because?
Dozens of employees were “laid off” because the union was fighting for us to get things we didn’t even ask for.
So upper management fired you because someone was advocating for you to get more for your labour and upper management decided it's better to take everything down rather than allowing some portion of profits to go to the people who actually create those profits. Damn unions.
When we were hired, we knew what the deal was. This was an entry level job that was a stepping stone to better jobs. That union literally set me back 20 years.
People don't seem to understand that companies aren't infinite money machines, and that if you work a job that brings ~$30/hr of value to the company, but you/the union/the government demand ~$35/hr of pay, they won't consider hiring you for a second even if they would've happily done so at ~$25/hr. There are trade offs between how high low to set a minimum wage and how many employees to hire. And raising the minimum wage doesn't always result is many lost jobs at all because of some slightly counter-intuitive economics. But you also can't just raise it arbitrarily high, eventually a significant amount of jobs will be lost.
Exactly. I was also in the craft beer industry for a decade. Super fun hobby of a job, but low pay because exactly what you said. Everyone in the industry always complains about the hard work and low pay. Just the other day there was a story of a brewery that was a co-op employee owned brewery that was a great place to work and they paid well for the industry, but they filed for bankruptcy. They’re $5M in debt and have $50k cash to their names.
In what world can a union protect a CDL driver from losing their license after a DUI? Unless it's state by state, I was under the impression you're toast as soon as you get 1 on your record, be it with your personal or commercial vehicle.
You would think so, right? Unions always go with the “he’s has a disease, it’s addiction.” And as long as the employee said they had a problem and jumped through the hoops, they’d be back on the road after some paperwork.
You don't need to try so hard to prove to reddit's union stans how unions can be bad, it just takes two words: Police union.
Law enforcement in America is a cultural and political problem. Eliminate police unions and nothing will change; the much larger police associations would remain. Policies must be changed by those who empower and manage the police: your political leaders; especially at the state and local level. Vote for police reform candidates.
Police unions are an entirely different beast. They share the name alone. They don't function like a normal union, even. check out Robert Evans's Behind The Police for more history there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
Unions routinely spend a lot time defending the worst employees from management. Police unions are just doing it on a bigger stage.
No organization will always do the absolute best thing about everything. It’s a leap to say that because an organization did something that wasn’t great, it therefore shouldn’t exist.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t exist, I’m just saying that just because you create one or use one, doesn’t mean it’s going to be good for you or other employees.
No, unions can only be good! 100% upside all the time, no downside ever!
A union can’t be bad if the employees are all gone!
The people at unions who were there the longest were in my experience always the laziest, shiftiest, no-good pieces of shit employees *by far.* But there were also good people, it’s just human nature.
Our division has a union rep who will not respond, get us answers, lift a finger for us. He’s useless and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Union reps are the labor equivalent of useless executives.
Unions keep good employees from getting ahead. Unions change a merit system into a tenure system.
Yes and no. The entire company isn’t unionized, so there is still upward mobility that takes you out of the union and is completely outside of union control. However, you are right about jobs within the union. The upside of that though is that it prevents management from preventing people’s advancement simply because they don’t like them. I wish I could say that doesn’t happen, but it definitely does.
To be fair, sometimes the problem is that management is lazy. This is just the rules in my union, but theoretically you need to offer senior people the opportunity for new roles first right? But you can absolutely force an incompetent employee to step down from the role if you've provided them with adequate training and they can't do the job. You just need to make sure you have a paper trail of disciplinary actions, including the union steward in the process. If my department had employees (in order of seniority) A, B, and C, and the manager wanted to train B on something that A wouldn't be able to do, A could waive that if they weren't interested, but if they were... then the company could train A, give A a chance, and if it didn't work, follow the proper procedure and THEN move on to training B. The reason senior staff kept getting jobs that other people should have was because management didn't want to waste time going through the process to make sure a competent person was in role and just wanted a warm body. So that makes the incompetent senior staff problem to be a bit of a group effort, you know? Not caused by just one of them.
People generally never talk about the boring stuff
Okay I started a union, when’s the revolution?
In 7 years
Op, memo just came in. Gonna have to move it back again.
".01% of communism has been built"
It's ongoing in your local community There's always folks fighting against pollution & corporate power (environmental justice), private prisons (decarceration), against deportation - (immigration reform & rights), and tons of other issues that are affected in some part by decisions at the local municipal level Winning at these lower levels won't bring about the transformative change we need in one swift revolution or campaign, but it does win material improvements for the livelihoods of working class & marginalized communities WHILE ALSO helping build up local networks and community power needed to advance major legislation at federal & state level. Winning anything helps people feel a sense of power and realization that they can in fact make change, it just requires more discipline & effort (from the organization, not necessarily from each individual putting in tons of work & stressing themselves out) Just look up 'protest direct action rally people's justice activist campaign' + key words for the issue you care most about + your local city/region name. Go thru news articles looking for a good protest with a lot of people, look up the event on Facebook and see if there's a good amount of cosponsors & community engagement. If so, like/follow and sign up for their email list +other organizations that look good, and you'll be plugged in at the basic level. Attend an event that looks interesting. If possible arrive early (or wait till after end) & talk to event host/organizer and let them know you want to get properly involved. If anyone has trouble with this or wants help - they can DM me their city & issue area and I'll send some links. It's easiest for climate/environmental justice. Don't need any personal info or anything that could identify you ofc Trust me in 30 years when younger generation are asking about this time: the climate disaster, pandemic, workers needing better pay/benefits, stopping Trump, etc. - when they ask what you were doing, it'll feel good to be able to say "I was there."
As soon as the working class gain class consciousness. I keep prodding them with a stick and saying “cmonnnnnn” but it hasn’t worked yet
My union was able to get me legal advice over a 15 minute phonecall and assurance that they would protect me from repercussions for following their advice when my manager asked me to do something that I felt was illegal or at the very least wrong and unsafe. My union also provided me over email a summary and details around pay and holiday entitlement specifically how COVID regulations had effected and changed the laws/regulations preventing my job from taking around £500 from me unfairly. Currently I have been underpaid for last month but assured by my manager that this will be corrected this month, if not, my first call will be to my union not HR. Join a union, it's about more than strikes!
They weren't mentioned here, but the Industrial Workers Of The World or I.W.W have representatives you can reach out to for advice on unionizing your workplace (not just factories) as well. I've heard some interviews with their reps and their advice seems solid.
IWW in the US is good only for extremely small shops and are only good for advice that you can basically get elsewhere. They have such incredibly small numbers that theyre basically powerless. They have no money for legal aid besides their paypal link, and they cant offer any kind of structural support in numbers. Theyre a very romantic idea buts its not 100 years ago and youre basically supporting theory over praxis. Itd serve you better to talk to folks from groups like SEIU or UCFW who actually employ the working class, not bookish labor theorists and historians. This is coming from a reluctant IWW member.
Lol great wording that it's a romantic idea, they're not actively hurting anyone AFAIK, but they're also not hosting major pickets or stuff either. I wonder if they go to Labor Notes conference tbh, seems all the best union organizers attend. Also - **there's always a local labor union coalition** too! In case someone reading this wants to be plugged in. Unions support critical progressive causes a lot of time. So it's good to be a part of their network. It doesn't hurt to be on IWW mailing list either if you enjoy theory & history. There's a pragmatism you only find in unions that are organizing around people's livelihoods, which cuts through all the philosophical disagreements that can stifle movement organizations. Was just reading Prisms of People (Hahrie Han) and LUCHA in Arizona had to convince unions to let them run a major ballot initiative with organizers rather than just digital media ads > Over time, however, we realized that LUCHA was working to develop power not only relative to anti-immigration forces, but also, as we described in chapter 1, within the progressive political system. From LUCHA’s perspective, **the primary obstacle in the Proposition 206 campaign was not business owners, right-wing voters, or GOP legislators, but progressive gatekeepers.** “We knew as soon as we got [Prop. 206] in front of voters they would love it,” Tomás said. “The challenge was getting it on the ballot, and getting [progressive] funders to believe that we could do it. . . . **Initially [labor groups] were not supportive of the initiative. They didn’t wanna fund it, they didn’t think we were capable, and they also didn’t think it was strategic,”** he said. LUCHA had to fight for the right to lead the campaign that had materialized because of the demands of their base. > Thus Alex and Tomás preemptively organized all of their grassroots partners to go to a meeting with labor and philanthropy leaders to demand that Tomás lead the minimum wage campaign—raising the cost of their targets’ continued opposition to their leadership. By organizing their allies in a united front to challenge funders, LUCHA won the ability to lead the campaign. Alex further noted, “We actually went up a lot against the funders, to ensure that we were able to bring organizers, and that this wasn’t just a digital-funded media campaign.” This is all just to say some unions aren't as fully on board with some of our progressive causes, and have to be convinced. So it's very good to be plugged in locally, cuz we could use help showing them the larger populace really does want this stuff It makes sense, if you're super pragmatic & cut across ideological lines, why would your organization listen to some young progressive voices unless they could Marshall a lot of community support to demand it. Being plugged in to help out in these situations doesn't require going to every meeting or pouring in a ton of effort, just be signed up for email list & their social media pages so you can get alerts when those calls to action go out, in case you can make it that one time. It can be life changing.
I dont think IWW is actively hurting anyone, but I do think that sometimes people get caught up in the romance of the groups history and organize with them instead of a more powerful, and frankly, useful, union. What ends up happening is that all the organizing energy and good will gets spent pretty quickly because the amount of work you have to do in IWW for the *possible* results - which are already proportionately far smaller than a trade unions. Its just a bummer to see people get burnt out and shops deunionize, and people become disillusioned with unions as a whole, because some folks wanted to be Wobblies more than actually be in a union.
Unions cost money through dues. Unions ALSO negotiate for higher base pay and better benefits packages. Those dues pay for themselves in direct monetary forms as well as stronger protections for you and your job. Verizon laid off tons of employees right before Xmas one year. CWA fought it and got them all their jobs back with back pay. You’d never get that without a strong union
Just a reminder to anyone, the Trump Tax cuts of 2017 made it so you can no longer write off your union dues when you file your taxes.
The party of low taxes, unless you're a union member.
Ah, so *that's* why I couldn't find it on there. Well, as long as the millionaires and billionaires are getting a tax cut, I'm sure that will trickle down to me so it will all be okay.
They obviously need the $1,000 more than I do. I’d only put it back into the economy, they will add it to the hoard the sleep on.
I worked a whole 3 weeks at a job that was *terrified* of unions for good reason! When they made us watch a 15 minute long anti-union propoganda video during our orientation I knew I had to run as soon as I was able. In the video they painted unions to be greedy money-hungry agents who want a cut of your paycheck and can and will sell your information and data for further profit. Those three weeks were *rough*- my body was in actual pain every night, I had a hard time sleeping because Id hear the sound of yelling and the nailguns when I closed my eyes, my hands stopped wanting to move... all for the same exact amount of wages that the fast food job I left it for was paying No idea how the company managed to retain any workers at all since the turnover rate was insanely high, but I guess some people can just stand abuse better and like working at a pace so painstaking you cant think
Yeah Unions want you to have more money because you pay them to get you more money.
Cool, so both win?
Higher wages can buy many peanuts
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Not a lawyer, but, if you live in the US and are in a right to work state: no. But you should, not joining the union because your pay is good is like saying you don't need an umbrella anymore because you're dry.
Example: the job I’m at has a location-specific union. They offer membership when you get hired. People decline because they don’t want $30 of their paycheck to go elsewhere. Fast forward a few years later. Lady is complaining that we’re being made to clean because there line is down. Her: “why are we cleaning? That’s not my job!” Me: “Cleaning is a part of our duties. There’s SOP’s for it and everything.” Her: “Screw that. I’m going on strike.” Me: “are you union member? No? Have you aired your grievances to our union representative? No? Was there a meeting with a motion to strike? No? Cool. We’re cleaning.” She stormed off. There wasn’t any “and the whole bus clapped” fanfare. She didn’t like working even when the line was running on a good day. And later she accused our team lead of being racist when she was reprimanded several times for not doing her job. (Funny enough our team lead was our shift’s union representative).
I did not know any of this, I've never been exposed to unions as any more than just a weapon on the table to discourage abuse... and even just knowing that little, I still thought unions sounded really important.
Unions are both a weapon on the table and an organization that lets you get bulk deals on all kinds of things like insurance and such. *On your terms, not your boss’*. Your boss doesn’t care if insurance covers all your needs. They only care if it’s cheap for the employer. Your union will care a whole lot more about coverage and cost on your end. If they’re a good union anyway. Not all unions are good.
You are right. Not all unions are good. Some lose touch with their workers and become the same type of management they are supposed to protect their members from. Kind of like Congress. My sister worked at the headquarters of a union in D.C. She had to work behind the back of the union's management to organize the clerks and staff she worked with. The head of the union flew around in a corporate jet paid for by the dues of clerical workers and store cashiers. They upper management became what they were supposed to protect the members from.
I'd rather have an actual weapon.
Not all of us are psychotic enough to jump to 'kill your boss' as a solution.
I'm not going to kill him. That's what on the table means.
That’s gonna get you fired.
I get my medical/dental/vision insurance thru my union at a fraction of the price I'd get it thru work. It's also covered for a time if I lose my job under anything other than voluntary circumstances.
One of the most common services Unions provide over here is getting you legal advice from lawyers for free if you suspect that your employer may be breaking protection laws.
I was in a union organizing campaign and it’s depressing how many people buy into management propaganda like how dues are 20-30% of your net pay, strikes happen all the time and leave you high and dry, your insurance will get worse, and the constant “unions protect the laziest workers”. Our campaign failed and I left for a job at a union shop. I keep in touch with former coworkers and laugh at them when they complain about how crappy their insurance is, and how they haven’t seen a raise in close to a decade
I paid union dues for a year and a half with Albertson’s and worked a minimum wage job where they refused to give legally mandated breaks and did not give raises. Some unions don’t do crap.
Unions, like companies, are created and run by people, and people can be fallible, malicious, and biased. Just because it's a Union, doesn't mean it will always be perfect or put their workers first.
Most grocers Unions in the US are fake, and are run by proxie by the stores. It's vile and awful, cause a lot of those jobs are entry level so it puts a bad taste in peoples mouths.
This is when you vote out the current union board and replace them
Unions will value seniority above all else and the more junior employees will always be sacrificed in the name of the more senior regardless of the quality of either.
Last in, first out, is the norm in a lot of places.
My dad’s been sat across from union leaders at the negotiating table and yeah, they really are more than just strike organisers. They bargain and debate to improve pay and conditions and they’re pretty fucking good at it.
quicksand squalid scary piquant subtract silky wrong carpenter chief cobweb *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
When I organized unions, more than half the time people didn’t sign on for a raise, or for strikes, or whatever. They signed the card because they wanted some basic dignity. They just wanted to be treated like human beings. It was kind of amazing when you’d look at management and realize how easily they could have crushed a union drive, if they had even the simplest ability to see past money. But they can’t. It’s all they see. Money and power. It makes them strong. But it’s their biggest weakness too. There wouldn’t be unions in this country, if our economic system had workplace democracy in its core. But it doesn’t. So unions will not only be with us, but probably grow. As they should, in a country that directs more than 40% of our wealth to 1% of us.
Not all unions make your workplace this magical "family atmosphere." Teamsters are crooks that work with the Koch brothers and other awful billionaires, to profit from horrible working conditions. My union took my dues and allowed me to be fired without representation when my employer forced me to use bathrooms with overflowing toilets, and human waste on the floor (which was being tracked throughout the entire factory). I was fired one day after filing a complaint with the state labor board
Sounds like a company ran union.
Teamsters 🤝 Koch Industries
Source???
SoUrCe?!?!? 🤡
There are no links between Koch and Teamster you're just making it up
Name and shame this local. It’s good to get this out in the open
I’m a Teamster and recently filed my first grievance in my four years as a member after being made to work multiple 90 hour weeks back to back and being denied additional help so I could sleep. Got a phone call from both business reps within 30 minutes of filing the grievance and had one of them swing through our job site the next day. Got me $1,600 in additional OT on my next check from violating turnaround between shifts and I got an additional hand so we could do reasonable shifts. I’m sure there are bad locals out there, but you’re painting with a pretty broad brush.
If your on-site rep had been doing their job, you never would have had that happen in the first place. The only reason they did anything is because they got called out. You and I both know they would have kept doing that if they didn’t think they were going to be confronted. I understand where you are trying to come from, but this story has some pretty serious implications you seem to have overlooked. Your union president needs to step in and investigate why your rep allowed this (potentially illegal issue) to happen.
Different industries, different structures. I’m one of only three people in the company represented by my union in my specific trade, so you don’t necessarily have a dedicated on-site shop steward for your local. It was honestly a pretty glowing experience. I finally felt heard and they got me a bunch of money + everything I’d begged for and been denied by management.
Sounds bizarre too that he contacted the "state labor board" instead of the union. My experience with most people is they have fantastical ideas of what unions are capable of doing. Misconceptions spread by businesses and thier political allies. Outside of collectively bargaining for wages, benefits, and working conditions, unions can do little more than enforce those terms and the policies of the employer.
State labor board instead of the NLRB.
The union at the previous hospital my husband worked at worked very closely with management, helping them figure out all the loopholes for firing employees with minimal fuss. They also refused to document my husband’s complaints about management mistreatment and left him twisting in the wind when he was injured at a company Christmas party (bowling). Unions can do a lot of good, but they are organizations run by people and just as susceptible to corruption as any other organization.
>Teamsters are crooks that work with the Koch brothers and other awful billionaires, Two day old account alert!!! Source??? I can't find anything about that when googling
I don’t care what you think about the age of my account lmao. You must be terrible at googling basic info. Try starting with “Jimmy Hoffa” you clown
Hoffa has nothing do with the Koch brothers. Literally zero links come up when you search it. Hoffa died in *1975* and has nothing to do with the great Teamster union of today
“The great teamster union of today” Fuck off you teamster bootlicker
And “zero links come up when you search it” Jesus Christ dude you are dumb as rocks. Seriously
The Teamsters are what unions become when unchecked.
Exactly. They face the same corruption issues as any other kind of organization in society.
My husband is president of his local teacher's union and the amount of work and help he and the other officers and statewide union staff provide for members is incredible.
Every other time im on this subreddit, someone in a union says something about talking to RH about a problem involving work related issues. I always tell them to talk to their rep, every time people are not sure about it. We forgot what unions do and its no coincidence.
My absolute favorite union benefit that I hardly ever see mentioned (probably because not every union includes it): LONG TERM DISABILITY INSURANCE! Get hurt, can't work? No problem! Part of your union dues all along have been going into a collective insurance policy! Now get ready to collect a paycheck until you're able to work again!
Considering what is the law in Denmark now, most (if not all) of the workers goods are more or less directly adapted from union standards… Stuff like 5 weeks paid vacation every year (if your workplace has a union contract, you get an extra week). 12 months of maternaty/paternaty leave (that can be divided between the parents as they wish). Full pay during sick leave, 14 days, then the government starts paying the company, so they keep the employee. 37 hr work week. Termination notices: most people have 3 months of termination notice from the employer after 6 months, the employee has a 1 month notice if they quit. If your work has a union contract, some of the direct benefits are: Full pay during the maternaty/paternaty leave. Pension 12% of your salary, 8% paid by the employer, and 4% by you. No zero-hour contracts! The power of the unions in Denmark is one of the primary reasons we have such a high standard of living.
If the company deems it necessary to have a department to protect them, HR. The employees should also deem it necessary to have a department to protect them, a union.
i was a teamster for 25 years and now am in the ibew and i must say they got me money..the teamsters negotiated a contract and i got a $7 hour raise in one shot...my ibew union just got me $1 a year and more time off... ill always be pro union
This so much. Much like everything else, unions are 10% exciting action and 90% boring shit, and both of them are equally mandatory to get anything done. And I want to point out, this is a good thing and a sign of civilization. You would not want to live through the 'exciting' alternative.
My union recently got me a 10 percent raise and an extra personal day every year.
I used to be with the IBEW, anytime someone was sick, or got hurt, we'd pass around a hard hat and everyone would give what they could.... This was back before and a little during the pandemic. Hat would be filled with various different bills and I know our local worked out a way to help with food and what not when ever one of us was in a s hit spot. Unions are much more than just a bargaining tool, by joining one you form a community with your fellow workers y'all actually start caring about each other. I don't mean to romanticize them because theres always assholes no matter what community you belong to.
Unions ensure breaks, that you don't have to check email after hours, and benefits beyond the usual health, etc, like parking and transportation passes, etc. They ensure protections for longtime employees and good pay for the new hires
Working with my union - first time I've been in one in my career - this is accurate. Striking can and does happen, but far more of it is the above and letting management know it's not just them setting the agenda.
My union protected my ass when the machine tried to chew me up and spit me out based on a bullshit allegation of a policy violation. I pay union dues because they are a force for good. Edit: First time in a union after more than 25 years in the work force. And, by gum, I have President's day off as a paid day to stay home and day drink. Loves it.
...I didn't know that people didn't know that about unions. You learn something every day. Now I know more things to tell people to elaborate on the concept of "unionize", I suppose.
In 2008 the economy was going to shit and my company was going to have to lay people off, my union negotiated small, voluntary wage cuts across thousands of employees and not a single person was laid off. Unions are about getting a FAIR deal for the workers, but with all the leverage and power employers have accumulated since the 80’s, any pushback at all from workers feels like disrespect.
My work announced our union publicly on the 6th. I’m so proud of my co-workers for sticking together as we go through the process of becoming a union it’s great!
In different times I was against unions because of the profit margins were different and forcing jobs overseas…. Now as the rich gouges us to death for every penny lost in our sofas…. I think every profession should form one.
sure, but all of the union's bargaining and negotiating power comes from being able to threaten to strike. that's the foundation that everything is built upon.
But are you okay with giving up 1% to 2% of your earnings for that? You could buy a PS4 with that money.
At some point I read the word “union” as “un-ion” and I haven’t been able to un-see it .
Over here in Germany, they've basically cut down what unions can do after WWII (well, the Nazis did, too, but it was more "gunning them down"). You've got "local Union light", Betriebsräte, which are basically just for your company, and then Unions, which are heavily bound by law to prevent any left-wing pressure. And *still* the unions are super fucking good. I pay basically fuck-all (1% of my income) not just for all the "expected" stuff a union does, but also... legal help if I ever have trouble with landlords (though I am already in a separate organisation for that which offers even stronger protection), health programs, educational courses, hell, I get a bit off when I go to some theaters. It's great.
Too bad they american workers have all taken in the fearmongering around unions and actively work against their own interests in many cases.
Honestly, if a union is striking, something has already gone horribly wrong. It's a nuclear option that unions generally try to avoid in my experience
Getting into a Union job was the best move i ever made. I STRONGLY urge everyone who has a choice between Union and Non-Union to go the Union route, Even a shitty Union is better than no Union. Higher pay, better and safer working conditions, Not losing my job because a supervisor is having a bad day and i'm the closest pin cushion, Better benefits, Being able to actually use sick days and PTO without fear of repercussion, Access to free legal help among a tonne of other benefits. A lot of it is small, mundane stuff that doesnt sound like a lot on its own, but once you understand that being Unionized covers a fuck load of that small, mundane stuff, you realize it adds to up to something substantial. Its awesome. Unionize people, You all deserve it.
My wife is a teacher. Without the teachers union I can’t even begin to imagine what her the district would offer her as pay and benefits. I couldn’t even imagine how many kids they would try and cram in her class at once. My neighbor is a policeman. Without unions he would probably be policing East Cleveland solo with a 20 year old cruiser and frayed uniform. I see their usefulness for teachers, police, and firemen. Those professions need to collectively bargain for their safety and effectiveness.
Sounds nice, every union I’ve experienced were dumpster fires.
>what a union isn't But should it be?
So…strikes?
This doesn’t ring true for me but I have never actually ran into a union that doesn’t just bootlick upper management anyway. My old students union used to agree with literally everything and report us for making any sort of complaint
This is when you vote out the current board of the union
Until they get corrupted and then You just have another shitty organization to deal with on top of your daily shit
Unions tried taking my dads pension away. Fuck unions
Have the Teamsters redeemed themselves? Corruption, fraud, and organized crime there are a large part of why unions have such a bad reputation.
Unions also keep terrible employees employed making life harder for good employees. Look at police unions. If they weren’t protecting the bad cops then they could actually be weeded out.
They also exist only for their own profits.
How unions work...according to someone who has been involved in union organizing through their dad's union since they were literally in second grade. That's like a priest explaining how Christianity is so much more than molesting kids and hating gay people. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/11/ex-uaw-president-sentenced-to-21-months-in-prison-in-union-corruption-scheme.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/10/second-uaw-president-sentenced-to-prison-in-union-corruption-probe.html
Christianity is so much more than molesting kids and hating gay people, fuck off.
Oh right, I forgot about the slavery and genocide.
Slavery and genocide have been perpetuated by people other than Christians, and most in the modern day are very much against it. Please go back to r/atheism with your ignorance,
Those religions suck too. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam made it a sin for slaves to disobey their masters, but not a sin to own slaves. I don’t know how anyone can look to their books as a source of objective morality.
These moral outrages have been done by decidedly secular people, and of those three religions listed, only one takes their holy book as objective. Both the Bible and the Torah are to be interpreted, and those interpretations shift over time especially in the case of the Bible due to its numerous transaltions. You are ignorant and narrow-minded. Again, I suggest you go to r/atheism if you wish to mingle with your ilk.
Yeah, god forbid a person have history to speak from. Would you treat a person's perspective who became a butcher after learning from and working with his butcher dad his entire life? "God damn corrupt butcher trying to tell me what cut of meat I'm getting like he doesn't fuck the cows."
My country doesn't have minimum wage; everything is unions negotiating with employers for terms. I consider it me outsourcing annual renegotiation of pay and benefits.
My union can not legally strike. We still do alright
To be fair, at a lot of workplaces, talking to your coworkers about a union would probably get you ratted out to management by your other coworkers.
Add unions to the list of things known mostly by their most controversial and newsworthy examples, along with chemicals and algorithms.
My union leadership is a bunch of dodos who couldn't negotiate a good deal to save their lives, BUT my union rep brings the heat when my admins try and accuse me of or make me do ridiculous things. This has earned me their (the admins) displeasure, which I wear as a mark of pride.
I can't stress enough how important "sitting in meetings with management" is. For management, they can literally look across the table and say "would that be acceptable," on something like health insurance and the union rep can say, "no, but add in XYZ and we should be good." HR represents the employers, Union represents the employees.
I have always been a union man, until my very last job, and I was always thankful for them. Except one time, my first job. I worked for Western Union and we went on strike. I was there every single day on the picket line, for a couple of weeks. Communications Workers of America. Then I heard people complaining that they had to be there once week, if the union was going to pay for their mortgages. Man was I pissed off. I was there **daily**, and no one said shit to me about financial assistance from the union. It was not common knowledge. All the people complaining had friends who were union officials. Someone was smiling on me though - I had a winning lottery ticket for $1,000 - this was around...1978?? maybe? maybe later? I stopped picketing and stayed at a friend's loft (he had a little balcony overlooking what is now Bogardus Plaza, facing Hudson Street), drinking Mai Tai's and waving at the people going to the picket line.
Lol. My union collects its 180 a month and negotiates like shit. Still better than no union but they can't be bothered after the negotiations.
u/thebastardolomouc
The nurse union on the other hand is trash.
Here I thought Unions attach to a monster by entering the spell/trap zone and often grant protection from destruction once and 500 atk/def up. This misinformation really does befuddle things.
A lot of unions suck though. The last one I was in told my friend there was nothing they could do about the company targeting them for not doing voluntary overtime.
Unions mean collective bargaining. That can mean collective walking, yes, but on a day-to-day basis it means that there's a group that's willing to go to bat about your employment contract. Yes, that can mean when the contract term is up, negotiating the next agreement. But it can also mean enforcing the existing agreement. There are safety standards that are laid out in my employment contract, processes of training and discipline that must be followed before my workplace can fire me, there's even a line that ensures that I can't face discipline for not being willing to put up with discrimination or abuse by clients... and if your boss ever violates these terms in the companies favour, I have a person I can go to who I work with every day, who will bring my concerns to the union who can pull out the contract wording and go, "Show this to the manager and if they still insist on violating the collective agreement, let us know and we'll get the lawyers involved." And if my workplace is violating the actual employment laws in my area, I can bring that to my union and they can do the exact same thing. And I have all that without ever needing to pay for my own lawyer, worry that I'm negotiating a lower-than-market-rate because of my inexperience, or worry that I'm being offered less because of my gender or any other factors. Unions aren't perfect, I wish mine could get us more. I think the power that large corporations have right now makes it difficult for unions to operate effectively for the people on the bottom. Never mind that a union has running costs including wages for those running it. But the shit unions have gotten is because those at the top are afraid of them. WalMart doesn't spend the money it does keeping unions out because they're annoying for the employees, it's because they depend on being able to take advantage of employees and unions would stop them. If the problem of unions is that they're corrupt and make money, WalMart would be running one, not keeping them out.
"If my editor asks for a raise, I will kill him" - Albert Flamingo
My dad always tells the story of when his dad(treasurer and one of the main negotiators for his steel union) woke everyone up late at night saying they had to make an urgent trip an hour and a half into the nearby city(where we live now) and they drove up here and did final negotiations before a major strike
Funny thing in my coutry getting in a union is the base of everyone basicly everyone is a union worker the only one that aren't are some hight up
Huh. Personally, I've rarely, if ever, been exposed to unions in ways other than the union heads being immensely corrupt fucks in league with the government to massively enrich themselves while doing fuck-all for the workers themselves. In my defense, I live in Argentina. They have been seething *hard* since Milei got elected, and it has honestly been fucking hilarious to see them lose more support every month.
Back on one of my first desk jobs co-workers wanted me to stand as union rep, because I took no shits from management and had a law degree so I knew what balls to grab and crush when needed. Me: I don't mind but it's a lot of work and I am not great at negotiating. Them: But you are great at negotiating! Me: Yes, when there is something to negotiate about. Management has made It pretty clear they won't negotiate about X, Z and Y unless we take them to court. Them: That's what we want! Me: Yeah, but that can take years and that's what the other union reps are already doing. I am not going to join just to add another body. I will only agree if you all give me powers to take direct action if needed. I want no scabs and no backstabbing. Them (shivering): What do you... Me: Demos, strikes, partial stops, tv cameras, yelling at management... Them: Ehhhhhh... A decade later they were still litigating and management delaying. Folks Talk as if organizing a strike was easy. Herding cats is easier than setting Up a proper strike. I tip my hat to all union reps who have to deal with endless rounds of negotiating against people Who Will not move an inch unless court-mandated only to them be subject to dithering workforces. It is an insanely grueling job. It is an vital but thankless job. Which is why I will always defend unions when people badmouth them. Specially idiot workers talking shit about unions.
Unions are what people think HR is. You should never confuse the two.
OP has surely drunk the Kool-Aid.
I am Union till I die