So I worked in the Grainworker’s Union for seven years in the late Nineties, and let me tell you… WORTH EVERY PENNY. I have worked so many jobs where my boss tried to pull some stupid fucking shit, from pulling me in every day off I had because they were “so short-staffed!!” (but then not paying me overtime even); to changing the schedule after it was up and yelling at me for not realizing I now worked on my day off when they changed it after I left on my Friday; to not giving me time for lunches; to having less than eight hours between my night shift the evening before and my opening shift the next morning; to mopping in fucking mandatory 2″ minimum high heels. And the union job was the only one where, when they tried to pull shit (because they still do and always will), I could just say “Okay,” and call up our Shop Steward, and say, “He wants me to take my lunch break “in between” changing out the heavy sacks I’ve been emptying every ten minutes all morning, and I need to sit down for thirty goddamned minutes and eat and rest,” and they go, “Okay,” and call my boss back, and then the boss calls you up and goes, “Okay, yeah, just shut down the machines and take your lunch.”
Unions are fucking awesome. The union got us bumped up to danger pay when the job (in a highly explosive environment) used to be minimum wage, in a business where I have literally had a supervisor tell us that if we could keep everything running smoothly with no delays that shift and get everything scheduled loaded up onto the boat, that we’d pull in a full million. For that one shift. Fuck yes, pay us fairly to risk our lives for you!
Back in the Eighties, it wasn’t just government and public sector workers that were unionized, it was around 60% of most jobs in the US (and I believe similar numbers here in Canada), and things were on track to have pretty much everyone unionized when Reagan took over and did everything he could to kill them off. Remember “trickle-down economics”? The idea that if you allow individuals and corporations to make obscene amounts of money, they’d turn around and pump that money back into their businesses and the local economies and benefit everyone, and not just fill out their own bank accounts? How well did that work out?
Thanks to our union, our income was tied to inflation. When inflation rose, so did our hourly wage, by the same amount. Recalculated annually. Afternoon shift? Extra dollar an hour. Night shift? $1.50. Boss tries to make you do something stupidly unsafe? Or make you work through your break? Forget it.
Unions have your back; unions make them behave; unions would stop Jeff Bezos from forcing his employees to pee in goddamned jars rather than taking breaks. Unions are what made the minimum wage a living wage. Union-busting is why it isn’t a living wage anymore, why you have to work two or more full-time jobs to break even in the city, let alone get ahead.
Unions are worth a hell of a lot more than the price of an Xbox paid out over twenty-one paycheques a year at no interest.
Unions or guillotines, Jeff, Delta. You choose. Or we will. And we are getting angry.
gummygunk
prguitarman
yousharknotpass
pixelskylines
tangentwithtanner
