I have a lot to talk about, but I didn't want to post anything political just before leaving for Gulf Wars, and I have more to talk about, but this just came up. ( Read more... )
What I really find rather irritating of the whole Wisconsin thing is, most of the people I have personally heard rallying to the support of the Unions are people who have never actually worked a Union Job.
They run off the party line, and the expectation of what a Union is supposed to do, while having zero experience with how Unions tend to actually operate with regards to their membership. Having spent ten years being screwed by a Union as hard and more often than by a big bad corporation, I'm a little less inclined to sympathy.
As a quick note, I worked a union job and never joined the union. (I never figured out why being a part of the union for a postal data entry person was important to me.)
On the other hand, my dad works on a railroad, and so did my grandfather. I'm a big fan of the UTU.
CWA. I could write a laundry list of things I witnessed, but that would just be dredging up things that are realistically of no consequence to the discussion. The one thing that does stick out was the instance about a year ago when the company was offering a very hefty incentive for early retirement and the Union refused to accept the offer. The official statement was that it was insufficient to support the needs of the membership. The only thing that we could figure that statement to mean was, the Union would be collecting $12.2million less in dues over the following year. After enough people complained, the Union re-entered negotiations for a incentivised separation and the company made a slightly less robust, but still tantalizing offer. Union Leadership accepted and there was much rejoicing.
There are those of us who generally suppport unions, have joined a union and worked a union job, and who've been indelicately handled by a big bad corporation.
And some of us have mixed opinions about what's going on in Wisconsin, have varied observations about work and unions garnered after nearly three decades of work, and are not being vocal about it.
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They run off the party line, and the expectation of what a Union is supposed to do, while having zero experience with how Unions tend to actually operate with regards to their membership. Having spent ten years being screwed by a Union as hard and more often than by a big bad corporation, I'm a little less inclined to sympathy.
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On the other hand, my dad works on a railroad, and so did my grandfather. I'm a big fan of the UTU.
As always, it depends on the union.
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I could write a laundry list of things I witnessed, but that would just be dredging up things that are realistically of no consequence to the discussion.
The one thing that does stick out was the instance about a year ago when the company was offering a very hefty incentive for early retirement and the Union refused to accept the offer. The official statement was that it was insufficient to support the needs of the membership. The only thing that we could figure that statement to mean was, the Union would be collecting $12.2million less in dues over the following year.
After enough people complained, the Union re-entered negotiations for a incentivised separation and the company made a slightly less robust, but still tantalizing offer. Union Leadership accepted and there was much rejoicing.
Reply
And some of us have mixed opinions about what's going on in Wisconsin, have varied observations about work and unions garnered after nearly three decades of work, and are not being vocal about it.
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