Labor unions - The good, the bad, and the ugly

[Ed62]

Have you ever belonged to a labor union (please answer this question)? What do you find good or bad about unions (Warning - Do Not Get Political please)?

Ed

[dbhost]

No I have never been involved in a Union.

The good that I can see... When they do as they were intended to do, they stand up for workers rights, wages, fair treatment, benefits such as health care and retirement.

The bad that I see with the union folks around me. It's next to impossible to fire a Union guy no matter how much of an idiot he is. Seniority is king even if that means the guy that has been around for 20 years simply stops working... Unions are also not exactly flexible when hard times come, like now, and I feel that holding the line too hard on issues like pay and benefits in an effort to keep things up for their members means that in more than a few cases, their members lose their jobs entirely... Take International Harvester Light Line circa 1981. How many post 1981 International Harvester Scouts, Travelalls, and light duty pickups do you see on the road? The strike from the UAW over wages put that line out of business. IH couldn't afford to do it...

Just like any other organization that has power, it is unfortunate that the unions have so much corruption. I truly respect the good they do, but I hope for the sake of our national economy, BOTH the Unions, and Management, in this case of the U.S. Auto industry, get their collective heads out of their rumps and do what is best for the company, their jobs, and the customers.

I should note that I for one, am not even trying to claim I am smart enough to know what that is...

[crokett]

When I was 17 I worked for a grocery store and had to join a union. After 3 months I quit. My boss asked me to stay and wanted to know why I was leaving. I said I didn't want to pay union dues and if he could arrange so I didn't have to I'd stay. Even then I recognized there were a lot of folks who weren't motivated to work too hard, mostly because of the union.

[LCHIEN]

I'm sure unions came into existance because of abuses by big corporations bullying workers using their near monopoly on providing jobs in some locations/trades. Shame on them.

OTOH I wonder if the unions were allowed to go too far in the 70's 80's 90's and have in fact killed the golden goose. Or, lets be charitable and say the goose was committing suicide but the unions were content to collect the eggs but do nothing to help or improve the goose.

The adversarial positions of the unions and industry perhaps would have benefitted the nation more by cooperation, but the union strove to protect jobs, restrict layoffs, rather than make the corporations more profitable and share the rewards.

My limited experience with unions has shown them to cause high inefficiency. If there's a wire involved, the mechanic must call for an electrician. Etc. Etc. So a simple repair job can take 4 guys, all of whom wait around for the last guy to show up before they start. Bang, then its break time they all take off. Finally 16 higly paid man hours later, the job is done... one that would have taken one man 30 minutes to do, if he was equipped with rudimentary electrical, plumbing, mechanical and lifting equipment skills.

My other complaint is that unions try to turn workers into identical commodities with uniform pay and benefits. The truth is that people are not commodities, they have personalities (e.g on time, accurate, conscientious about work quality, safety etc, learns fast, adaptable) and skills. The ones with better personalities and skill should be paid better. Unions fundamentally are against that.

[jackellis]

Caution: Long monologue follows.

I have not worked for a union, though I did work at a utility power plant where the operators and maintenance people were unionized. I was a college student at the time and my first two weeks there were spent with a journeyman mechanic in an orientation. I wasn't allowed to touch tools, even if only to hand my mentor of the moment whatever he might need. Later on, I worked during a strike that got the union guys an extra nickel an hour after being out of work for several months. Don't ask me for my home address - I know what it means to work through a strike

Now perhaps it was because all of their competitors were unionized but my model for how labor-management relations should have worked was Delta Airlines, where the employees were almost all non-union. Delta took good care of its people and they took good care of Delta. When I lived in Atlanta, I stopped flying Eastern because the experience on Delta was so much better. I realize things have changed over the last 25 years, but during the 1970s and 1980s, I gave Delta as much business as I possibly could.

While I think there are instances where unions do their members some good, in many cases the union leaders are driven by the imperative to keep their jobs, which means they have to ensure each contract is better than the last one, economic conditions notwithstanding. I think that's why the UAW is in the shape its in. It's also why many state and local governments are facing a tidal wave of retiree obligations they will be unable to afford as government workers start retiring in large numbers. You and I are unlikely to remain quiet while government employees get fat pension and health benefits that have to be paid for by raising taxes.

Unions used to be extraordinarily powerful in the UK until Margaret Thatcher essentially broke them. I believe that market a turning point for the UK, which had earned a reputation as the "sick man of Europe". Of course, there are places where unions and management cooperate and do well, as in Germany, where exports account for 1/3rd of the country's GDP.

For unions to work well, it seems to me that union leaders have to be prepared to look out for the long-term health of the companies that employ their members as much as company managements need to be looking out for the long-term good of their workers. In other words, the relationships have to be a lot less adversarial and a lot more cooperative than they tend to be in the US, until, that is, the stuff hits the fan as it is now.

Union leaders and their members also need to realize that what they've come to think of as job security is a myth. The world changes and all of us need to be flexible enough to change with it. Few people these days join a company as a young person and stay with it throughout their careers, whether they're a union member or not. Better to allow companies some flexibility to hire and fire and then create funds for retraining workers instead of setting up the dumb job bank idea that saps motivation to work at all.

Y'all have probably seen enough

[MikeMcCoy]

I've only been involved with one union (the UAW) but it was back in the early 70's. I had a tendency to do whatever it took to help keep the line I worked on going and as a result, I had 12 grievances files against me by the time I quit working for Ford. Little things like resetting a tripped breaker would get me written up by the shop steward. You were supposed to call an electrician (who didn't check anything out and only came to reset the breaker). The specialty trades had 45 minutes to show up and usually took right around 40 minutes. The list goes on and on but that was pretty typical of the mentality at that plant.

[LCHIEN]

...For unions to work well, it seems to me that union leaders have to be prepared to look out for the long-term health of the companies that employ their members as much as company managements need to be looking out for the long-term good of their workers. In other words, the relationships have to be a lot less adversarial and a lot more cooperative than they tend to be in the US, until, that is, the stuff hits the fan as it is now...Y'all have probably seen enough

I agree but the union leaders are old school and brought up to look out for Union #1. They will not easily give in to ensure the survival of thier employers. They're going to end up killing their hosts.

[RAFlorida]

IBEW in Kansas City, Mo.

That was way back in the early 70's. The first and only time with the union. Never again. The rank and file system was broke and upper management would not fix it. (broke as in no corrective measurements, grievances worked on, etc., not financially broke.) Corruption was wide spread. Generally the rank and file suffered from loss of contracts. At that time Missouri was a closed shop state, as it still may be. The company I worked for tried their best to keep customer cost down to a minimum but because of the union's control, it cost job losts. The next forty some years I worked with ANY non-union company only. Yes I know,we didn't have the high wages paid to us like our brothers in the union, but we had jobs year round. And we did have the other benifits such as insurance and other things most unions gave.

[tung tied]

I was raised in suburban Detroit, worked on the Corvette brake line. Saw a lot of the same stuff noted above. The department was full of alcoholics, a heroin addict, and a Korean guy that couldn't speak English. One woman was caught bringing a handgun into the plant. Was fired, but the union got her back within two days.
Unemployment in Detroit area over 20%. Over 70% for minorities. The UAW workers loved it!! Got ~90% of their income for months doing nothing. They saw it as getting something back for the 10 - 15% of their weekly paycheck that went to union dues. Easy to get political here but I won't, 'cause I'm tung tied.

[just started]

.....snip..... They're going to end up killing their hosts.

Isn't that what parasites always do eventually?

When I got out of high school ('65) and got a job in a shop the union was trying to take over. No one working there wanted to be in a union and kept voting it down, but the union didn't care and the level of attempted intimidation was unbelievable. If the unions get the change they are after to do away with secret ballot for deciding if the union takes over then it won't be long before there won't be ANY non-union job anywhere.

[dkerfoot]

I have always considered the THREAT of a Union to be a positive thing. It helps keep the management honest and fair.

The reality of a union is something else. I am glad they exist and I'd say they have done more good than harm, but they have still done plenty of harm...

[herb fellows]

Your first sentence is right on the money, Loring. Labor unions would never have come to be if management had been fair with employees. I can't imagine a bunch of guys sitting around saying 'Hey, let's create a union so we can screw the boss'. Their creation was a reaction, not an action.
Unfortunately, these days, many of the unions consider themselves as businesses and only do what it takes to preserve the status quo, the jobs of the union officials. It's a shame when it goes like that, it makes all of them look bad when in fact it's just enough of them doing enough damage to have the spotlight put on them.
Most recently, the long island RR in New York was revealed as just such a situation. 97% of all retirees went off the job with a disability, for which they got additional bucks! Truly disgusting. In my opinion, they should be criminally prosecuted, but that's not likely to happen.

[jackellis]

the level of attempted intimidation was unbelievable.

A friend of our works for the Bay Area Rapid Transit district in what should be a non-union, white collar job. Several years ago the union threatened to strike and it was made clear to him that he needed to stay home like everyone else.

One of my brothers (cancer victim) was a police officer and he used to be a big union man to the point I stopped talking with him about it. Over time that changed and by the end of his career, he disliked the union.

I think it's fair to say that union leaders are as human as corporate executives. they respond to incentives the same way, they have ambitions to be in leadership roles that pay well, and they succumb to the temptation of corruption in the same way.

I don't ever expect to be part of a union but I agree that doing away with the secret ballot for union elections is not going to be a good thing for workers because it will make them highly susceptible to intimidation.

[ironhat]

I belonged to the Transport Workers Union in the '70's while working on Penn Central Railroad as a RR car mechanic and inspector. The union in our little shop was pretty innocuous. When someone filed a grievance with the shop steward they usually got a little lecture on how nice we had it and that it wasn't worth upsetting the General Foreman for what amounted to a pimple on a fly. No problems between us and management. It was in the cities where the power of that union was vested and a few dozen guys in the hills of PA rolling in the grease wasn't enough clout for them to be bothered. Personally, I thought that we were well paid for turning wrenches. I would have like to have had a roof over our heads, though.

[smchange01]

I was a union member back in '84. Worked for a company that made signalling devices for the railroad. We had about 20 techs and 60 "board stuffers". The union was CWA. Our company had a very good year and offered a 5% raise across the board. The tachs were making about $12.00/hr and the others were making about $6.00/hr. Both good wages for that time. The union said "NO." Our stewards were in the lower pay ranges and didn't like the techs getting 60 cents while tehy got 30 cents. After about a month of negotiation the union settled on 5 cents/hr for everyone.

The techs all protested and we somehow got into a different union. The really dumb thing was that the union leaders were happy because they kept the status quo with the board stuffers who magde up the majority of the group. The management later negotiated a $1.00 raise for the rechs after we switched unions.

Who lost? The board stuffers who lost 25 cents an hour so that there wouldn't be an increasing gap between them and the techs. By the way, I worked there for two more years and the management never offered the CWA members another percentage raise and they never got more that 5 cent per hour, while the techs were always offered and recieved 3-5% each year.