some naive belief that the company will look out for you
The days of the company looking out for the employee are, sadly, nearly gone. It's rare to find, at best.
Dan, I meant no disrespect. Yes, what I wrote was a generality, and I didn't include a "present company excluded" or "I'm sure not everyone is like this" but I've found this bunch to generally assume that. I shouldn't have left it out.
I certainly know less than you about union membership, but isn't what I said about strikes and pay true? I don't think it warranted the "have no idea of what they're talking about" comment.
But, when I hear the stories my father would tell about some of the shennanigans at work, it was terrible. Most of the time, if you were skilled maintenance (sp?) like a pipe-fitter or electrician, you had it made. You'd have a heavy load on changeover, and a few heavy stretches otherwise, but most days you'd do about 2-or-so hours of work. And I see it first-hand when there are N-Star (utility), National Grid (utility) and Verizon (phone) trucks always parked on the side of the road with the occupants sitting doing nothingbut talking or sometimes napping. I'm sure plenty of non-union workers are doing the same thing, but they're not in highly-visible vehicles.
How about the new Verizon installer who was cornered by his fellow workers because he was working at a normal pace? IIRC, he was doing about 5 new installs a day. The average, at the Verizon-union-employee snail's pace was 2. 2 new installs in an 8 hour period! No wonder people were waiting weeks and then had to be home for an 8 hour window for installation! That's not just one bad worker; it's the whole group of installers!
I'm sure that there are MANY examples of good union workers, MANY more so than bad. However, when the bad ones are "protected" by the union, they get away with it. If they were pulling the same thing and weren't union, they'd have been fired... and rightly so.
And I know unions were instrumental in closing down a lot of sweat shops, getting better working conditions, hours, pay, benefits, etc. However, they've already done all that. I'm greatful, but believe their time is largely done. I also believe that it's probably the Fat-Cat's greed, as well as the worker's greed, fueled by unions, that has just about dropped this country's manufacturing in the shitter. Everyone's entitled. I'm not just talking about GM, or their advertising, or manufacturing. It's no wonder so many plants open across the border or outsource their support to other countries. Or, that international firms are setting up non-union shops here. Guaranteed they're filling them with workers who are paid a normal working wage.
I had a couple of union workers, out of work, picketing a store I managed in a mall because our remodeling was being done by a crew the company hired to travel store-to-store. The picketers were nice guys, and we had several good conversations in down time (I'd get them coffee; they'd grab my lunch if I was alone). One of them was brought about because of the flyers they had available for people to take. Something about the workers doing the construction were being paid a sub-standard wage and yada yada yada. When all was said and done, it was agreed that what that really meant was that these workers were being paid a normal wage, not an inflated union "standard" wage.
Again, Dan, I meant no malice toward you or any other hard-working union worker. I apologize for the generality.
Chuck
