Unions? Your thoughts?

[Julie Marie]

  My opion is that there is a place for unions in some of the industries and not in others.  It depends on the job description.  I worked in a repair facility for an electronics retailer.  A union would not fit in my shop due to the high demands put on us and the multi-tasking we commissioned workers had to do.  Not only we did the repairs, we also had to answer the phone or go up front and answer the questions the customer had.  We also had to clean the shop, including the lavatories, do inventory and other things needed to keep the shop operating.  A union in that place will place limits on the amount of work I can do and stifle customer relations plus the shop would lose money in the process and close.  A happy customer will buy more products from our retail end.

I can only speak from personal experience but with that I'd have to disagree with a lot of what you said above.

Besides all the things that fall within the IBEW working agreement, I have been a project manager, estimator, CAD designer and PR person.  I've created Power Point presentations that were sent out to other locals in both the Chicago area and other states.  I've managed jobs in excess of $100 million and designed complex electrical systems.  I've worked with other trades in coordinating manpower and I've steered the direction of the work for every trade on the job.  And I've swept the floors and dug ditches too.  None of THAT was within our working agreement.  Not once did my union or any other union object.

Unions that I've been involved with do not place limits on productivity.  Rather, they encourage productivity AND they insist on quality and professionalism.  Customers will come back when the product they buy is well built, has minimal failure and is backed by the company that puts the product out.  Too often non-union labor is pressured to put productivity and bottom line costs before quality.  The US auto manufacturers almost failed because they cut those corners back in the 70's.

I've been all about quality since I entered the trade in 1974 and never once did anyone in my union ever question that.  But I got a lot of compliments for my work, for my management and for my ideas.  And because of that I moved up the ladder quite well. 

All that under the union umbrella and with union blessings. 

Now if you want to talk about gays, lesbians and trans people, well that's another story.

[Jennifer]

Well said Julie Marie, I have all the same experiences and I couldn't agree more. All of those things apply to my trade as well. The only people I ever hear dissing unions are people who have never been in one and have no knowledge of what they are about. As for LGBT issues, yes, the macho men of the construction industry are cruel and unsympathetic for the same reasons. I often wonder what I could do to change that...

Jennifer

[tekla]

to the high demands put on us and the multi-tasking we commissioned workers had to do.  Not only we did the repairs, we also had to answer the phone or go up front and answer the questions the customer had.  We also had to clean the shop, including the lavatories, do inventory and other things needed to keep the shop operating.  A union in that place will place limits on the amount of work I can do and stifle customer relations plus the shop would lose money in the process and close.  A happy customer will buy more products from our retail end.

That's not true at all.  The stage crew where I work does a hella lot more than stage work.  If there is a john backing up during a show it's us going up there to fix it, not the security staff, ushers or the box office people.  Pretty much if it requires tools, or any basic skill, we're doing it.  That's because not only do we have the skill, we're required to have the tools on us too.  We pretty much have to, it's a commercial structure and all work has to be done to code, and that takes trained people.  So worry not, I've spend several totally glamorous nights tripping the light fantastic standing in crap and pee trying to fix a toilet.  Sometime let me tell you how much I hate Kotex pads.

Some times we do full union, by the book stuff, movies mostly.  Who does what is carefully outlined.  Some of that is not some sort of anti-multi tasking, it's experts doing expert work in a very expensive situation. 

All a union contract is is an agreement for us (the people we choose to admit and the people we personally train) to do things x,y & z for X amount.  That's all.  Rock shows run pretty small and very fast crews, so it's not all divided up like a huge convention or a movie is.  You are not going to walk into a rock concert and say "Hey, I don't do that, I'm an electrician, or I'm audio, or I'm a rigger" - round these parts we're all electricians, we all can rig, we all can do audio and we all ALL, unload the trucks at the beginning and load them up at the end.  And I'm not going to lie to you, there are people in our union who don't like doing the rock shows for just that reason - they figure they are electricians or carps and they ain't going to be loading/unloading no trucks.  Fine, I don't like working dentist conventions so that all balances out. 

And we have radically different contracts for running the conventions at Moscone and the Cow Palace then we do for the rock concerts, then we do for movies and TV stuff - it's all crafted to the situation, very flexible.  Union contracts are not monolithic with one pay rate for everyone always and one set of work rules for everybody, it's really done on a shop by shop basis.  What we do get though is that we're all paid the same rate for the same work.  Nothing done by favoritism, the people I like get a quarter more this year, the ones I don't get a nickel crap.  After doing shows for 40 years I work for exactly the same rate as the kid next to me who's doing this for the first time.  And that's cool, it creates a feeling of all being in it together.  And, it's my rate the kid's being paid - not me getting paid the kid rate, as the other people in the food chain would like.  Besides we abuse them.

And it has to be that way, just like there are different union rules for small town firefighters then there are for ones in Manhattan.  You don't have to know anything about making movies or running a Broadway play to understand that those are two different things entirely.  You obviously can't jump up from running a spotlight or sets in the middle of the show and say "Hey, it's break time".  Movies are endless set up for what amount frequently to about a half-hour to an hour of the most frenzied work ever for what amounts to less than 5 minutes on the screen.  That's a whole different set of work rules.

And our customer service, with the traveling crews, with the band itself, and with the fans who buy tickets and pay our bills, our customer service is second to none.  We're a big stop - a huge stop (sometimes even a legendary career defining stop^*)- in a major entertainment market and we're here to play the game on that level.  It's like playing baseball in Yankee Stadium.  That has nothing to do with unions so much as it has to do with all of us who work there and how we feel about doing it.

And, never forget - the best customer service is doing the job well and doing it right the first time.  No amount of being nice ever makes up for incompetence. 

But the real reason we're in the union is because pretty much from our first show on we've been the first people to get there, the last people to leave, the people who are the easiest to ignore (because we're busy doing stuff) and far too often the last to get paid - if we get paid.  The party is long gone by the time we're done, everyone's gone, the band got paid before they left, how 'bout us?

It's because if anyone had to do anything dangerous it was going to be one of us and we got tired of our friends getting hurt only to be told: "That's such a shame." 

It's because everybody else - who mostly for the life of me I can't figure out what they are doing there, but I'm sure they only got here 10 minutes ago - is standing around and eating, and we're starving because we're really physically working (in the warm California sun), and we've been there for 10 hours already and we're being told that there really is no time for us to take a dinner break and hey that food wasn't for you anyway.

We got tired of working to 2:20 every night and only getting paid till 2:00.  If the check cleared.  When at long last we actually got it.

We got tired of getting put off the job by some prick with a splinter rammed up his ass by someone else who decided to take it out on one of us because we happened to be standing there totally disinterested in absorbing any of his crap because it has nothing to do with what we have to get done.

But mostly we were tired of standing around being poor while everyone around us was awash - and in show biz, swimming - in money while we were doing this for ten bucks and a t-shirt.


yes, the macho men of the construction industry are cruel and unsympathetic for the same reasons.
Interestingly enough, as the trades have expanded to include more and more women the level of cruel and unsympathetic behavior has remained unchanged.  It's more the nature of the work, the internal dialog of the crew doing it's job, that leads to that, it's not a male deal as much as its turning out to be a human quality.


* - We don't care about the Filmore more or less because of the union, only the stage crew there is union in the first place, we care about it because we've poured a lot of our lives out in there and it's returned the favor to us over and over. We care about it because it's the Filmore in San Francisco, and it's one of the places that rock (at least the kind most of us like, a lot) was invented, and we are the people who were able to get to work to keep all of that going.  It's not like we used to have a lot of famous shows here, we have famous shows still, night after night.  And we're always mindful of what the place is to us, and what the place is to other people too.  I can go to any rock club/nightclub in any city in the world and tell them where I work, and they not only know exactly where I work(they've been there, they have DVDs shot there, live performances recorded there), they let me in for free because I work there.  And then they all want to talk to me about nightclubs and shows.  That's pretty cool.

[Julie Marie]

yes, the macho men of the construction industry are cruel and unsympathetic for the same reasons.
Interestingly enough, as the trades have expanded to include more and more women the level of cruel and unsympathetic behavior has remained unchanged.  It's more the nature of the work, the internal dialog of the crew doing it's job, that leads to that, it's not a male deal as much as its turning out to be a human quality.

Before the first woman came on site and sat with us during breaks and lunch, the talk at those times would burn the ears of even the most tolerant woman.  Guys would bitch about their wives, their ex-wives and their girlfriends.  Women were seen as inferior and good only when you needed a piece.

That was the general tone, not an all encompassing attitude.  I often cringed, often asked "why are you still married?" and sometimes just walked away.  As I was often the lead foreman, I rarely was challenged for my actions but some of the other guys were chided if they didn't participate in the rant.  Misogyny ruled.

When the women started appearing on the jobsites, that kind of talk pretty much vanished when they were present.  In a very strange way, I sensed it was out of respect or maybe fear.  But after a while, when it wasn't so uncommon to see a woman on the job, the guys loosened up and there was even times when it returned to its old form.  The toughest women would counter it but I think they all knew filing a harassment complaint would get them blackballed.

My ex was a UFCW member for over 30 years, until she joined management, and that's a whole different story.

[Princess Rachel]

unions are only as strong as its members, if the members won't support any activity then they have no right to complain about a weak union, because they are as much the union as their elected reps.

[Jennifer]

Tekla, when you say, "it's a human quality", I think, as usual, you hit the nail on the head (carpenter speak).

Julie Marie, everything you said here has been my experience exactly in my 34 years of being in the carpenters union.

Princess Rachel, very idealistic. But who is complaining about a weak union?

Jennifer

[Katrina_Reann]

 I am not big on Unions at all and here is why. When settlements are not reached and Unions strike it often takes time to come to an agreement. I have seen it where some Unions have been out for months. But Union strikes don't just affect the Union worker but it reaches out to all the little companies the Unionized company outsources to. And in turn that affects economies. I have seen this firsthand living in Caterpillar country and back when I was able to work was laid off from my job on more than one occasion because of strikes. I even lost everything once because in an already bad economy the Union striked and the company I worked for closed it's doors.

I feel it is because of Unions that many US companies are moving to non union states or out of the country. In my opinion Unions have grown to big for their britches and need to lower their expectations a tad.  The demands of Unions have drove wages so high that in turn it has also drove inflation up. Because everybody wants a piece of the money they bargained for. Look where we are at now as a nation. Broke and in debt, even the government is struggling to stay running.

Maybe non union workers don't make as much as union workers. And maybe the non union worker doesn't have all the nice luxuries of life...but sometimes less is more in my opinion.