Over the past few weeks, as the events in Wisconsin unfold, I'm reminded of some of the things I was talking about 20 years ago when I was a shop steward in the union I was working in. One of the biggest problems unions face today is how they are perceived by the general public. Most people feel that unions only protect the bad workers, and rightfully so. The unions have done very little to change that perception over the past 20 years. One thing I learned when I was a shop steward was that management was lazy. I had dealings with numerous employees who played the system or continually messed up. But, my job as a shop steward was much like that of a defense attorney. My job was not to judge those employees, but to represent them as best I could. What I found time and time again was that foremen and supervisors usually let small things go until they built up and then would spew all this stuff that an employee did wrong.
When I would ask the foreman or supervisor to provide documentation to corroborate their side of the story, they generally didn't have any. And, if they did have some, it was usually inconsequential in manner. And of course, because of a lack of documentation, it was fairly easy for me to defend the employee and get them out of the trouble they were in. After I had left that job, I ran in to one of the foremen and we had a discussion on how often I defended some pretty shady employee's, and he felt that I really went above and beyond when I defended them, all the well knowing that they probably should have been fired. I reminded him that had he done his job better, and documented these cases thoroughly, I wouldn't have had such an easy time with defending them.
What about the adage that union workers are lazy? Well, I can tell you this from experience. I spent 10 years working in a factory setting, and since then have worked in numerous office settings. I can tell you this for a fact. I have found that there are more lazy people in the non-union work places than I had seen in the union place I worked at. I have also found that more people are protected by their buddies or relatives or for whatever the reason, than I had seen with union workers. Some I have seen that were so inept I could not for the life of me figure out how the hell they got a job in the first place. Not to say I didn't see lazy people in the mill, but I have seen some pretty lazy people in my years since then. Not so much at the insurance company I worked at, but more in the hospital I worked in and at my current place of employment. And I'm talking laziness to the tune of a six figure salary.
I know today that the benefits I have I owe largely to unions. They are the ones who pushed for decent working environments. The 5 day work week, overtime pay, paid vacation, sick pay, and workers compensation to name a few. It's time for the unions to start selling themselves again, and letting people know that it's the anti-union actions of congress over the past 30 years that have hurt the middle class, not the unions. NAFTA, and CAPTA come to mind right off the bat. People need to realize that during the 80's when unions started to really lose their power, that's when NAFTA was signed in to place. That one agreement alone allowed the floodgates to be opened for corporations to send work outside of the United States to be performed at a lower wage than here at home. But along with that lower wage came lower quality as well, as was proven with the quality issues that Ford, Chrysler, and GM had. Keep in mind, it's not the car companies that brought the quality back, it's the labor unions who helped do so. They were the ones who took the challenge to improve quality, and make the changes necessary to improve the product they were making.
Come on unions. It's time to start selling yourselves again. We need to get back to a time when people were proud to own union-made items. And yes, I'm guilty of not having done so, but I know that today, I'm more willing than ever to pay more for a quality product made by union labor versus something made overseas by slave labor, especially knowing that a portion of that money I paid was going to one of my neighbors or friends.
