Throughout many of my working years I’ve been part of unions — for better or worse — and I’ve too often seen that union workers have about as much to fear from their union sisters and brothers as from the company.
It matters not whether it’s USW (steelworkers), UAW (autoworkers), CWA (communications workers), NEA (teachers), AFGE (government employees), or any of the other alphabet soup acronyms for unions, all are part of a governing group IGMFU (I got mine, f – – – you).
Companies sometimes use this union infighting to their advantage in negotiations. The two-tier pay scale is a familiar tactic, offering existing employees a raise and the opportunity to remain on the existing scale, but with the agreement that any additional employees come onboard on a lower rate of pay scale – permanently.
Too often current membership, with dollar signs in their eyes, take the money. Down the line, however, when newer employees on the lower scale outnumber those on the higher scale, companies love to propose a mammoth raise for those oppressed “new” employees if only they could get rid of the higher scale for the oldsters.
Traditionally these offers are accepted in a heartbeat. IGMFU, or karma is a female dog.
Seniority is a mainstay of unions, basically dictating long-term people have more job security in the event of layoffs than the recently hired. Nothing wrong with that.
However, seniority also very often is a cudgel used by me-first union types to get all they can at the expense and inconvenience of fellow members. A person hired literally one day before you can use seniority for preferred shifts, days off, holidays off, vacations, job descriptions, assignments, etc.
Ability, personal need, are not a part of this union calculus.
My union experience began early while at the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat. The business writer thought the newsroom should be union, as the composing room and press room were at that time. He began organizing, working with the USW since Johnstown still was a steelmaking town.
At the time, management gave the newsroom staff the same wages and benefits that the union types had negotiated, but there was no guarantee this would continue forever.
Customarily, newspaper editorial employees back then were represented by the Newspaper Guild, which since has been folded into the CWA (Communication Workers of America).
The International Typographical Union (ITU, also since merged with CWA), which represented composing room employees at the Tribune-Democrat, cried foul and demanded a chance to represent the newsroom since that union already was in the building.
The vote outcome, ironically, came down to me. I always was confident in my abilities and felt comfortable succeeding or failing on my merits. But union organizers lobbied me hard and, in the end, I felt although it might not necessarily benefit me, I’d vote yes for the good of all.
Not that long afterward, when the newspaper underwent its first sale to chain ownership (read: cutting costs to the bone, product be damned) I was glad I’d voted union, thereby avoiding arbitrary firings, pay cuts, and benefit losses.
We were protected by our existing contract. That’s held true through many, many ownership changes and contracts at the paper since I left in 1994.
And, in the end, that’s why unions were created in the first place, to give the employees the opportunity to negotiate on a united front for fair pay, benefits and working conditions.
But, too often unions are highjacked. Government employees and teachers unions increasingly are politics-first, dependent on the bottomless public purse to provide comparatively good pay and benefits, not to mention virtual lifelong job security.
By comparison, private companies – a good local example would be defunct Bethlehem Steel – must pay the economic piper eventually when they provide union employees with overly lucrative pay and benefits for the jobs performed. They can, and do, go bankrupt.
Governments and school systems do not have that economic reality weighing on them, which is why when I was younger there were not unions for public employees. The thinking was that the workers might make a bit less money than those in the private sector, but they more than made up for it in terms of generous benefits and job security.
President John F. Kennedy changed that with an executive order in 1962, beginning an inexorable, state-by-state march to our current politicized public employees unions, allowing these union members essentially the right to hold the taxpaying public hostage.
These public employees now tend to make more money than comparable private sector employees, have better benefits and better job security, all of which they can insure with their political activism, almost 100 percent for Democrats.
This is good for them, but bad for the rest of us. It also helps explain why overall union membership as a percentage of the workforce is in decline, falling to an overall 10.1 percent in 2022 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Also from the BLS, 33.1 percent of public sector employees are union, while just 6 percent of private-sector workers are in a union.
Karma is a female dog.
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