Your thoughts on Unions

Presuming the guys (or ladies) you’re talking about aren’t red-sealed or formal apprentices, are they even eligible to join unions?
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Probably not. That's a source of a LOT of hostility towards unions among construction guys around me (including, to a certain degree, DH). It doesn't matter how long you've been practicing your trade or how good you are - if you want to get into the union, you have to step back to $8/hr for their official internship program to start. So once someone gets started on the non-union residential "track", there's usually no switching over and tapping into the better wages and benefits of doing the same work in a union. And there are MASSIVE wage and benefit differences (often to the tune of twice the hourly wage and full benefits rather than none), but because of the narrow pathway into the union, it doesn't really work as competition for employees and as such has less spillover benefit than unionization in fields where becoming union is as simple as getting hired in a union shop.

I've found any pastor/priest/reverend/rabbi willing to inject politics into his sermon to be far more aggressive than a union notifying its members of who supports positions in line with their job.

Yeah, I've never had a union tell me my immortal soul was in danger if I didn't vote the way they told me to...

Definitely. Other Unions may do things differently, but mine just sends us a postcard about 2 weeks before election day with the candidates they endorse.

I used to get more than one post card, but not so much that I'd call it "aggressive". And I was UAW, which I think is usually considered one of the more politically active unions. If they were aggressive, so are the colleges trying to get my daughter's attention, the lawn services that would like us to sign up, and several local real estate agents. I get more junk mail from all of those than I ever did union election mailings.
 
Cashiers who might not get a break, be forced to work overtime, or just have their pay cut if it weren't for unions.

Or not be able to get even basic accommodations for health concerns. DS's SO is a union grocery cashier. He had to get the union involved to get a stool for his register, even though he has a well-documented mobility issue that frequently requires the use of a cane or walker. It has no bearing on his ability to do his job, but store management's default position was "all cashiers have to stand all shift, no exceptions". The union literally made the difference between being able to keep the job, which he's good at and which is unusually accommodating of his college schedule for our area, or having to quit.
 
Now you've made me have memories!!! Historically where I live, grocery stores have been unionized. I grew up in the 60s and 70s and remember the same grocery store clerks working in the same store for their whole lives. While I believe they were making a lower wage, they got benefits and a pension from the union. While most of our grocery stores are still unionized, I believe their benefits have eroded and basically the union keeps their wages up. I think the last grocery store cashier "lifer" that I know here locally retired about 5 years ago after about 40 years of working the checkout.

Now I don't think it was enough to live on by herself, but it certainly was a worthy job in her mind and better than a regular run-of-the-mill minimum wage job.

I think even though unionized, those cashier jobs were relatively lower paid, you have to factor in that the minimum wage has not kept up with inflation so that's why people don't live well enough on them to begin with.

I still know several grocery "lifers", all at a unionized store. The two non-union stores around me don't tend to keep employees long, and the one cashier I know well at one of them had been working 4 years for the exact same wage before the state minimum wage finally surpassed what she started at and she got a small raise.

That book was written well over 100 years ago. Life was very, very different for everyone...regardless of job.

Look at the American auto industry for a great example of union effects. The "Big 3" were strangled by their unions and will be paying the price for many years to come. Chrysler is basically dead at this point.

The unions weren't the ones who decided to embrace "planned obsolescence" as a business strategy, or go all-in on gas-guzzlers at times when geopolitics pointed clearly to rising oil prices (not once but *twice*). They didn't have anything to do with the screeching halt of auto financing during the recession either. And Chrysler? They've gotten mostly below-average reliability ratings for 30 years! I'm pretty sure that can't be laid at the feet of the unions either.
 
The unions weren't the ones who decided to embrace "planned obsolescence" as a business strategy, or go all-in on gas-guzzlers at times when geopolitics pointed clearly to rising oil prices (not once but *twice*). They didn't have anything to do with the screeching halt of auto financing during the recession either. And Chrysler? They've gotten mostly below-average reliability ratings for 30 years! I'm pretty sure that can't be laid at the feet of the unions either.

Roughly $4,000 from every “Big 3” car sold is required to cover legacy costs. Costs the import brands don’t incur. Money those companies can use for profit during lean times or innovation during times of plenty. When 2008 hit, GM had fewer than 90,000 full time employees but more than 600,000 retirees collecting pensions and health benefits. The UAW fought innovation & forced (with threat of strike) the car companies to maintain 1940’s staffing levels despite advances in manufacturing efficiency and automation. Every single one of the dozens of people I know who’ve worked in UAW plants has a leg-long list of stories of waste, inefficiency, and outright fraud perpetrated by the UAW, and I’ve personally witnessed it in my own plant visits. And if all that weren’t bad enough, the old timers absolutely sold the new guys out with the current contracts that protected all THEIR benefits & wages while allowing the car companies to dramatically reduce pay & benefits for younger workers. The UAW is THE example most anti-union people immediately think of and reference as their reason for that stance.
 

The skilled-worker unions have definitely perpetrated some abuses that led to companies losing money in ridiculous ways (such as the UAW in some plants requiring that senior workers not needed on the line be provided a "workplace" to go to on plant property, but not allowing them to do any work other than assembly, so that they sat at folding tables staring at the walls for 5 shifts a week on full pay and benefits.) However, I'm not willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater entirely. In many cases unions are still truly needed to prevent employers from taking unfair advantage of workers, especially in industries such as meatpacking or lumber processing, where unsafe practices still contribute to large numbers of serious injuries. Healthcare settings also tend to need unions to protect workers (and patients) from unsafe working conditions.

My definition of a living wage is probably different from that of the average UAW or IBEW member, but I do support the 40 hour work week and proper enforcement of industrial safety standards.

As the manager of a public library, I was once reported by a union painter to the Teamsters Local because I had adjusted the height of children's reading tables in a new building when the furniture movers had incorrectly set them to full height. (The painter wasn't a Teamster; he reported me to the Teamsters in a show of solidarity.) We were one day from opening and the painters were the only trade workers still onsite. It took me all of 10 minutes to lower the 4 tables, but I later had to spend a total of 3 hours arguing with the Teamster's Union rep AND the painter's union rep over why I hadn't called the delivery guys back in to lower them, from their location 90 miles away (and for which we would have to pay mileage and travel time, because my boss had failed to specify in the delivery orders that the tables in the children's room were supposed to be (surprise!!!) the proper height to be used by children. (Because apparently the 8-inch high chairs that were delivered with the tables didn't provide enough of a clue.) It is THAT kind of silliness that gives some unions a bad name.

FTR, my Dad was a master carpenter, and when he immigrated to the US he refused to join the Carpenter's Union because they required all members to work by the hour. Dad preferred to work by the job and charge a flat fee, which gave him much more autonomy over the quality of his work. A large part of his work was building furniture, which required a lot of cure time, and working by the job allowed him to juggle multiple projects without having to do a ton of paperwork to justify which time was spent on which. He did work some jobs that were bid out by the unions at first, but he said that the general contractors pushed to cut the cure time so as to minimize the workdays that they had to include in the bid. He didn't like being pushed to compromise on work quality if something took a bit longer than initially expected.
 
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My mom worked a long time for a company in a salaried role working in an office building. She was there over 20 years. However, the company itself had a ton of blue-collar workers and as a result they had a ton of benefits that the entire company got because the unions negotiated for them on behalf of the entire company workforce, such as defined pensions.

However, my mom hated unions to no end, even though she personally benefitted from that pension and retiree health benefits. Go fig.
 
Or not be able to get even basic accommodations for health concerns. DS's SO is a union grocery cashier. He had to get the union involved to get a stool for his register, even though he has a well-documented mobility issue that frequently requires the use of a cane or walker. It has no bearing on his ability to do his job, but store management's default position was "all cashiers have to stand all shift, no exceptions". The union literally made the difference between being able to keep the job, which he's good at and which is unusually accommodating of his college schedule for our area, or having to quit.

All depends on the company though. I know of one long-time cashier at a Costco in the San Francisco Bay Area who I believe has cerebral palsy, although it could be another condition. He looks kind of awkward in his movements, and his speech is kind of slurred, but he doesn't make mistakes. A lot of customers get in line just for him (and address him by name), as he's really cheerful despite his condition. I'm not even sure a union shop would be able to manage to keep him in a similar position, but Costco management loves him.
 
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Roughly $4,000 from every “Big 3” car sold is required to cover legacy costs. Costs the import brands don’t incur. Money those companies can use for profit during lean times or innovation during times of plenty. When 2008 hit, GM had fewer than 90,000 full time employees but more than 600,000 retirees collecting pensions and health benefits. The UAW fought innovation & forced (with threat of strike) the car companies to maintain 1940’s staffing levels despite advances in manufacturing efficiency and automation. Every single one of the dozens of people I know who’ve worked in UAW plants has a leg-long list of stories of waste, inefficiency, and outright fraud perpetrated by the UAW, and I’ve personally witnessed it in my own plant visits. And if all that weren’t bad enough, the old timers absolutely sold the new guys out with the current contracts that protected all THEIR benefits & wages while allowing the car companies to dramatically reduce pay & benefits for younger workers. The UAW is THE example most anti-union people immediately think of and reference as their reason for that stance.

Yup.

Sure, there were poor management decisions and some other factors, but far and away the biggest reason for the implosion of the Big 3 (which started long before 2008) is the UAW. They demanded, protested and striked their way to things that are unsustainable and put a complete choke hold on the very people who pay them. And yes, Chrysler quality has a lot to do with the union, a whole lot. I agree with Gumbo4x4, the UAW is the poster child for why I feel the way I do about unions.
 
Then they aren't that smart which is not the union's fault. That's no different than someone saying they voted that way because the rabbi told them to or because Trump told him to.

That's not my point. The Union had such control over their lives that they came across as that's what they "had" to do.

And, no, it's not the same. When Union leadership tells people they're going to lose their benefits, pay, etc if they vote for x, then you better believe, there are plenty that fall for it and will vote against x.

My grandfather believed the Union was there for him, which they weren't once the railroad pension fund went bellyup, but you better believe the union leadership didn't lose anything.

Unions once served a purpose, but the labor laws have made them a lot less necessary. I think too many in Unions think they're there for them, but just as with any hierarchy, those at the top benefit more.
 
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Roughly $4,000 from every “Big 3” car sold is required to cover legacy costs. Costs the import brands don’t incur. Money those companies can use for profit during lean times or innovation during times of plenty. When 2008 hit, GM had fewer than 90,000 full time employees but more than 600,000 retirees collecting pensions and health benefits. The UAW fought innovation & forced (with threat of strike) the car companies to maintain 1940’s staffing levels despite advances in manufacturing efficiency and automation. Every single one of the dozens of people I know who’ve worked in UAW plants has a leg-long list of stories of waste, inefficiency, and outright fraud perpetrated by the UAW, and I’ve personally witnessed it in my own plant visits. And if all that weren’t bad enough, the old timers absolutely sold the new guys out with the current contracts that protected all THEIR benefits & wages while allowing the car companies to dramatically reduce pay & benefits for younger workers. The UAW is THE example most anti-union people immediately think of and reference as their reason for that stance.

I don't disagree about the legacy costs. They fought hard to resist the direction the economy has gone, and I don't view that as an entirely bad thing - forty years of productivity being uncoupled from wages, along with the great risk-shift from pensions to 401ks certainly haven't done our country as a whole any favors. But I do believe they were unrealistic and arrogant in thinking they alone could resist those tides, and when it didn't work, union leadership made the decision to sacrifice their future in defense of the past.

Then again, two of the Big Three are right back to posting record profits while continuing to resist giving workers pay increases...

All depends on the company though. I know of one long-time cashier at a Costco in the San Francisco Bay Area who I believe has cerebral palsy, although it could be another condition. He looks kind of awkward in his movements, and his speech is kind of slurred, but he doesn't make mistakes. A lot of customers get in line just for him (and address him by name), as he's really cheerful despite his condition. I'm not even sure a union shop would be able to manage to keep him in a similar position, but Costco management loves him.

I think Costco is a pretty well established exception to the rule in retail, though. They constantly make lists of best places to work, have a much higher starting wage than their competitors, and have an all-around reputation for treating their people very well.
 
I agree that unions once were a badly needed thing. Have heard horror stories like Hoover Dam, people used to wait in line and wait for workers to fall off and die so they could move up one place in the line. Management didn't care, since if you die or don't like it, we got plenty of people to take your place.
However, in the modern era, lots of unions lost their way. Take Eastern Airlines. It warned the unions that their demands would bankrupt the company. Guess what. It did.
 














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