Unions: The Journey to me hating mine
I have always been a pro-union person. I see how they help people and I know the history of how they have changed labor in the United States.That being said, I am now living their downsides. Money taken from checks each pay period to subsidize large expenses not voted on by union members. A union president who doesn’t show for a press filled Town Hall meeting. Shop stewards who are either entirely negligent or simply so incompetent that they don’t realize that the union bulletin board is theirs to update.
These faults wouldn’t be so bad individually if we weren’t also going into negotiations. Our last contract is a joke and the rising poverty rate is proof of that. A recent survey revealed that large numbers of the works in the unions are homeless and/or food insecure it is of utmost importance that they have things together. And they don’t.
The Union bulletin boards haven’t been updated in ten years and our union rep was surprised that the responsibility was his and is now searching for the keys, after a month of not finding them. The shop stewards are all older and have seniority with the company and have expressed a number of times that they will be fighting for the cast members with tenure. Which again would not be a problem except that they are a small percentage of the overall union.
That isn’t even my biggest issue. So far it’s the lack of respect and transparency. We’re already dealing with a company that has showed an open ambivalence to our well being, a public who thinks we all just need to move on and get better jobs if we don’t like the pay so now we must deal with a Union that acts like sharing information with us would be the biggest hardship and brushes questions aside with not well thought out lies or misinformation they spread because they don’t even know what’s going on.
I don’t know.
I really don’t.
I just know that I’m not at all confident that the future will bring anything resembling fairness or respect, not to mention courtesy, efficiency, safety, or enough morale for show.