I know what's wrong with unions.

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digitalcb

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 23, 2007
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What is wrong with Unions? Mostly the fact that the radicals rise in the ranks; they get picked as job stewards; they run for office; they want to flex their muscle. Radicals, riff-raff and mobsters are often the face of the unions.

The average union member to me is an ordinary guy that you wouldn't mind fishing with.

I managed a union shop for 11 years and was on the Contractor's negotiating committees for Ironworkers, Carpenters/Millwights and Operating Engineers, then had my own non-union shop for 16 years.

Courtesy of the unions I've been picketed, sabotaged, threatened with assassination, and had one on the job shooting all because I wouldn't let someone else dictate how I ran my business.

Yet some of my best friends still are union members and I <u>do</u> fish with them, millwrights, plumbers, ironworkers, operators, carpenters, electricians: I have friends in almost every skilled trade there is (notice I left out the Teamsters).
 
A good friend of mine went to work for a company in TN a few years ago whose shop was union. All he wanted to do was work, draw his check and go home to his family. He exercised his right under TN law to NOT join the union. From day one at the job the union workers harrassed him. The cowards cut his tires put sugar in his gas tank and made threatening calls to his home. The union boys even told him they would have his legs broken if he did not join them. They crossed the line when they called his wife and tried to scare her. He went to work and at the time clock called each and every one of them out individually. NONE of them would go outside with him.
I said all that to ask this. If the union is such a great thing then why must it's members resort to extortion and cowardly acts to convince someone to join? I mean should the union not stand on it's own merits?
 
I was a Union Electrician for 7 years. I started as a helper out of High school and was accepted in the school program the next year. I served a 5 year apprenticeship and was topped out in 2004. The Union was great for me. I am now working at Heatec as an electrical tester. I don't make as much money per hour, but I do pretty good over a years time. I still pay Union dues and keep my ticket just in case. I pay into the death benefit fund which is three bucks for each member that passes on to help with funeral fees. The Union was good to me until work got too slow. I made the decision to just find a full-time job elsewhere. If I hadn't had the 5 yrs of school and the on-the-job training and my Journeymans License I might not have gotten this job so quick. I got all my experience and skill from the IBEW and NEVER heard of such rash behavior from its members. I got my ten year pen and plan on paying dues for quite a while yet.
 
I have never been a member of a union. However union wages put food on my table the entire time I was growing up. My dad was in the Carpenter's Local and my best friend is currently a fitter in local 43. I think for the most part unions have outlived their usefulness. In the 50s and 60s they were a good thing, today for the most part they are glorified temp agencies. I don't think the wages in this area are so out of line with non-union work as they are in other parts of the country, espeically the Northeast. 30 years ago you would know you were getting good, skilled, craftsmen when a job was built by union labor, today this is not the case with all of the "bought booK' journeymen out there of all trades.
 
rstewart - 12/17/2010 7:02 AM . I think for the most part unions have outlived their usefulness. In the 50s and 60s they were a good thing, today for the most part they are glorified temp agencies.
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<font size="4">A life long friend of mine and a lifelong member of Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 43 told me he had to leave the local because they had become nothing but a money handling service for TVA. He is a residential plumber. He said he could not survive in his business if he had to charge his customers based on TVA rates. </font>
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dhpro - 12/21/2010 8:01 PM God Bless the Unions!
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Amen.
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Just as long as they don't claim to "own" your profession and make you fear for your life just because you get up and drive to work in the morning.</p>

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