TLDR Unions work and I observe it every day from management’s POV.
My employer uses lots of IBEW union labor. I’m adjacent to HR functions.
EEs (employees) need things. My and adjacent departments handle their requests tied to annual insurance enrollment, wage discrepancies, leaves of absence (LOAs), employment verifications, etc. The first question my team asks of an EE task is “Are they union?”
Union = TOP priority
I have standing instructions from management to “do whatever it takes to keeps the unions off our backs”.
I stop other duties to procure a resolution within 3 hours. Whatever deliverables (answers to questions, arranging back pay, LOA paperwork) are put in the hands of union EEs practically the same day.
Non-union = diet priority My team works in good faith, with EEs’ interests genuinely at the forefront of our minds, to make everyone happy, with an imperfect but high success rate (thus the “diet”). Nevertheless, hearing/reading “non-union” immediately puts the request at the end of the queue. It’ll get done, but probably in 10 days or so. The legal time frame is often much longer, and we use that knowledge liberally. Non-union tasks are the first things I jettison if other priorities bottleneck.
Among my HR/adjacent coworkers are our share of smarmy middle class white women who scoff when a top priority union task hits their desk. They say shit like “Unions had their day and age, but…” and then shake their heads and literally not even complete that sentence, basking in solidarity with the same MAGA lady who asked everyone, video in hand, “(Elon’s) salute doesn’t look like that, does it?”
Our guy who represents the company in union negotiations is a MAGA propagandist who, in an informal interview with me about ideas to improve morale, answered my question “How could so many people see fit to elect a bona fide rapist as POTUS?” with a dubious anecdote about his elderly mother needing protection from all the trans talk at the dinner table.
People are so brain broken in this country (largely due to Reagan) that they see the obvious and direct benefits of unionization, and their reaction is “they don’t deserve it” rather than, “hey, why don’t we do that too?”
Our lax regulation on union busting is the reason unions have faded. When the butchers at a single Walmart location successfully unionized, Walmart immediately fired every butcher corporation-wide and changed to pre-packaged meats in a blatantly-illegal reaction designed to scare anyone else to from trying to unionize, and the government did nothing.
Mostly cuz those fuckin sparkies keep shoving the live wire in their mouth.
Source: machinist and mortal enemy of electricians. And welders. AND pipe fitters. And especially other machinists. Fucking machinists think they’re so much better than me. WHERE’S YOUR A AXIS NOW BUD?!
The union was pretty corrupt by the time I got there. We had one contract bargain period and one union election while I was there. Before I got there, the union had accepted a pay cut (because they did one in the office, too! But that one got walked back pretty much right after while the union was stuck with theirs until the next contract).
So at the next contract, we expected pay to improve. Not because management was nice but because we had them by the balls because the plant’s main contract involved something like a $10k per minute fine if a late delivery caused their line to shut down. They once hired a helicopter to carry a bin to avoid this in a close call. That one line also paid for the whole plant, all the other parts we produced were just pure profit.
The first contract they came back with was the first time that union had rejected a contract in the first vote. Because it was complete shit. Our union reps were arguing that some people couldn’t afford a strike while pushing for us to accept it. It was rejected then they came back with a slightly better one which was accepted.
Then the election came. Another guy I knew wanted to run and try to actually fix a bunch of the issues we had. He received an anonymous threat that his tires would be slashed and ended up dropping out.
So most of the fucks already in there got reelected. Then, pretty much immediately after, the corrupt piece of shit of a union president got hired for an engineering job (despite no engineering background or degree) and the other union execs moved up through the inheritance rules.
Anyways, all that to say that even with the corruption, it was still the best paying unskilled job I’ve ever had and I had to be picky about what career path I took out of there for it to not be a downgrade or sidegrade.
TLDR Unions work and I observe it every day from management’s POV.
My employer uses lots of IBEW union labor. I’m adjacent to HR functions.
EEs (employees) need things. My and adjacent departments handle their requests tied to annual insurance enrollment, wage discrepancies, leaves of absence (LOAs), employment verifications, etc. The first question my team asks of an EE task is “Are they union?”
Union = TOP priority
I have standing instructions from management to “do whatever it takes to keeps the unions off our backs”. I stop other duties to procure a resolution within 3 hours. Whatever deliverables (answers to questions, arranging back pay, LOA paperwork) are put in the hands of union EEs practically the same day.
Non-union = diet priority
My team works in good faith, with EEs’ interests genuinely at the forefront of our minds, to make everyone happy, with an imperfect but high success rate (thus the “diet”). Nevertheless, hearing/reading “non-union” immediately puts the request at the end of the queue. It’ll get done, but probably in 10 days or so. The legal time frame is often much longer, and we use that knowledge liberally. Non-union tasks are the first things I jettison if other priorities bottleneck.
Among my HR/adjacent coworkers are our share of smarmy middle class white women who scoff when a top priority union task hits their desk. They say shit like “Unions had their day and age, but…” and then shake their heads and literally not even complete that sentence, basking in solidarity with the same MAGA lady who asked everyone, video in hand, “(Elon’s) salute doesn’t look like that, does it?”
Our guy who represents the company in union negotiations is a MAGA propagandist who, in an informal interview with me about ideas to improve morale, answered my question “How could so many people see fit to elect a bona fide rapist as POTUS?” with a dubious anecdote about his elderly mother needing protection from all the trans talk at the dinner table.
I know this is a tangentious tangent. Apologies.
People are so brain broken in this country (largely due to Reagan) that they see the obvious and direct benefits of unionization, and their reaction is “they don’t deserve it” rather than, “hey, why don’t we do that too?”
Our lax regulation on union busting is the reason unions have faded. When the butchers at a single Walmart location successfully unionized, Walmart immediately fired every butcher corporation-wide and changed to pre-packaged meats in a blatantly-illegal reaction designed to scare anyone else to from trying to unionize, and the government did nothing.
Mostly cuz those fuckin sparkies keep shoving the live wire in their mouth.
Source: machinist and mortal enemy of electricians. And welders. AND pipe fitters. And especially other machinists. Fucking machinists think they’re so much better than me. WHERE’S YOUR A AXIS NOW BUD?!
I had a union job once, in an auto parts factory.
The union was pretty corrupt by the time I got there. We had one contract bargain period and one union election while I was there. Before I got there, the union had accepted a pay cut (because they did one in the office, too! But that one got walked back pretty much right after while the union was stuck with theirs until the next contract).
So at the next contract, we expected pay to improve. Not because management was nice but because we had them by the balls because the plant’s main contract involved something like a $10k per minute fine if a late delivery caused their line to shut down. They once hired a helicopter to carry a bin to avoid this in a close call. That one line also paid for the whole plant, all the other parts we produced were just pure profit.
The first contract they came back with was the first time that union had rejected a contract in the first vote. Because it was complete shit. Our union reps were arguing that some people couldn’t afford a strike while pushing for us to accept it. It was rejected then they came back with a slightly better one which was accepted.
Then the election came. Another guy I knew wanted to run and try to actually fix a bunch of the issues we had. He received an anonymous threat that his tires would be slashed and ended up dropping out.
So most of the fucks already in there got reelected. Then, pretty much immediately after, the corrupt piece of shit of a union president got hired for an engineering job (despite no engineering background or degree) and the other union execs moved up through the inheritance rules.
Anyways, all that to say that even with the corruption, it was still the best paying unskilled job I’ve ever had and I had to be picky about what career path I took out of there for it to not be a downgrade or sidegrade.