[TheForge] OT Union Rant (Was Re: concrete)

[theforge@mailman.qth.net]

In a message dated 3/17/2004 12:55:25 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
dann@netins.net writes:
"Being an Anti-Union is an easy thing.  We all have heard of the excesses 
that Unions are accused.  However let us not forget the  heavy handed 
factory management excesses that caused Unions to form in the first place"
The problem is that those excesses were so long ago that no one alive was 
there to witness them. The unions are still trying to get mileage out of events 
close to a century old, instead of evolving... here is a question to union 
supporters... Nurses, teachers and professional sports figures all make a nice 
living.... high wages compared to other jobs.... high benefit levels etc... in 
the case of teachers absolute protection from incompetence and in the case of 
sports... absolutely obscene wages... yet we are told how much they need their 
respective unions. By what objective standard is this true????

   "In my opinion, Unions are not about keeping substandard 
   workers  working"

Yet this is precisely what they do! They fight harder to save the sorry butts 
of the their biggest sleaze balls and then say "but that is not what we are 
about". My wife was the first female union steward in General Dynamics Electric 
Boats Painters Union. She went away and came back after the kids were older, 
as she was going back into the union there was a strike. As a good member she 
abided by the union strike even though it was killing her financially and I 
was on a deployment in the Mediterranean. She went to ask for the ability to 
picket and get some picket pay and was told she was not entitled as she was not a 
member of the union. She went back to work and the strike was declared 
illegal 3 days later. This was due to the union being idiots and not filing the 
paperwork. To make this all better they then declared that she had broken union 
rules and would have to repay her 450 dollar initiation...we won the lawsuit and 
they had to pay her and many other mid initiation members back this money. 
She was then harassed non-stop after this point by the union neandethals and 
eventually had to leave the job. As far as I can tell unions are as useful as 
United Nations is.....

   To contrast this I spent two years in Electric Boat with the Navy and the 
union kept saving the behinds of dozens of workers who regularly showed up 
under the influence at work and slept most of thier respective shifts away (thank 
god). I personally turned several in... one of them ended up dead after 
falling into a drydock... no doubt under the influence as he always was.


    Ok I feel better now....

           Ted Jones


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