Mike Marion wrote:
Quoting Robert Donovan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
political contributions with which I disagreed. I was never able to get
a straight answer as to where the rest of it went. They were listed as
"administrative costs." I wouldn't be surprised to find that much of
that translated to salaries of those who work directly for the Union. In
Like those people some unions pay to stand out there with signs that say
things like "<random company> is a bad neighbor" and such. They did
that to
Qualcomm a few years ago. They handed out papers saying how the
company was
un-american for hiring a non-union construction company (ROEL I think)
and
how we're helping to erode the American dream, yadda yadda. Nice pic
of a
rat eating a US flag on there too. I'm sure there are plenty of
people out
there that just love having their dues go towards that crap.
Oh no, that fell under the market share protection fund at the UFCW, and
we were all admonished to "help fight the greedy big corporations(other
than our own, I imagine)..." "help our worker brethren...", "our jobs
were at stake, you know..."(BS^10).
fact, in all my time with the union, the only time the shop
stewards(went through three of them) were ever interested in talking to
me was the two or three time a year they came to ask for more money in
some way. Strike fund, market share protection fund, etc, all of these
Same type of experience I had at my first job, which required us to
join the
Teamsters... loads of fun that was. I never really had an opinion on
unions
until after having to join one... I will _never_ do it again.
to pay for actual benefits. Personnally, I wouldn't have had a problem
with paying for that portion of my dues that went to real benefits, but
I see no reason that I or anyone else should be forced to adopt a
political agenda in the process. It's a free speech thing. If California
In my case, at my first job... we didn't get any benefits from what I
saw. As
an extremely hard worker (who regularly had food-stand leads fighting
over
getting me, especially for closing) I couldn't get any recognition of
said
hard work because of the contract. I couldn't get any bonus, and raise,
etc.. because all such things were spelled out in the contract and based
purely on time worked. Kinda makes one not want to put out that extra
effort
after awhile.. and boy did I see a hell of a lot of slackers that did
just the
bare minimum required of them.
I couldn't ever find out what percentage, if any, of our dues went to
our benefits versus to the union itself, but given that the listed admin
cost ate up most of what was left after political contributions, it
couldn't have been much. I know for a fact that most of the retirement
pension was funded by the company, not the union.
The only arguement that anyone ever made to me that the union did was
to get
us more money. Even that, I think was crap... I'm pretty sure that,
as hard
a worker, and as good at the job as I was, I could've gotten myself more
money if I could've negotiated for myself. As it was, we only made
something
like $6.13 when minimum wage was $5.25 or so.. so that huge union benefit
wasn't even a $1/hour.
Same expeience here. Unions don't reward good work. As a result of that,
there isn't as much incentive to do good work, and, as a result of that,
you tend to get an environment in which those who do mediocre or bad
work can thrive and yell for a living wage.
RD
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