DarrenBarefoot.com

As a daughter of union employees who belong(ed) to a union that is frequently reviled by the general populace (ie, Translink)… what is published about job action is rarely what’s actually going on. For example, the transit strike of a few years ago had very little to do with wages, and everything to do with the company attempting to screw the employees over as much as humanly possible, without even asking nicely or using lube.

At the same time, I’ve also worked in management for a heavily unionized company (ie, Telus) and found it laughable the sorts of things that I could/coudln’t do. I was considered management because my job couldn’t be defined easily on paper, and because I had decision making powers. I didn’t manage anybody, but I was still considered management. Well, whatever, I got awesome benefits so I didn’t complain.

In my office, about 90% of us were management, with only clerks, reception, and some data entry people in the union. I wasn’t allowed to use the photocopier. Only the clerks could do that. Which made me feel awfully silly, because my clerk was MUCH more senior than I was, probably made more than I did — and deserved it — and it felt akin asking my mother to bring me coffee and rub my feet. But, if I didn’t and got caught photocopying my own papers, I would run the risk of getting written up by the union.

Silly, but… on the other hand, I just finished a class in Sociology tonight. And while I frequently think that unions have gone WAY too far, the appalling work conditions that people used to tolerate are vomit-inducing. Considering that I just wrote an essay comparing the alienated workforce of the early 20th century to today, and found way more comparisons than really necessary. Well, demonstrators no longer get shot for complaining about crappy work conditions, so there have been some improvements — no, I’m not kidding, workers who demonstrated in front of Ford in the 30’s actually got shot at. By the police. Yikes. Unions were illegal then, too.

That said… I really can’t see anything wrong with getting paid more. I think a lot of the times when people complain that X person gets paid too much, it’s frequently a case of sour grapes. “Bus drivers get paid $22/h? Lucky bastards, *I* don’t get paid that much! They should get paid less.” Or, “I have no idea what’s actually involved in being a nurse, but I’m *sure* that I do more work than that, and so they should make less.”

Or something, anyway.

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I think the problem is that many unions have gone from their original purpose (keep our members from being completely screwed, make things better for our members) to the greedy (We want MOOOOORRRRREEEEE!). There ARE jobs that desperately need to have union representation (in the US at least). And teachers are a big one, in my mind. Remember that (at least here in the US) there is really no good way to measure how well a teacher does their job. Thus, without a union, what is to prevent the school district from simply dropping teachers with experience (who make a bit more money, and probably are better at teaching) in favor of those fresh out of school?
As evidence that this sort of thing could happen, I offer the following contrast:
My wife works in a district near Philadelphia, PA. She made quite good money, even when starting out.
Her cousin taught in Blacksburg, VA. At equivalent points in her career, she was making HALF what my wife made. (She has since gotten married and moved, and is now teaching in a different district). She was able to keep herself in necessities, but had very little left for savings or anything else.

The difference? Blacksburg doesn’t have a teachers union, my wife does.

This isn’t to say there aren’t problems with unions (the sort of thing you saw is endemic in many places), but please don’t discount them - there are many fields where a union is the difference between sane working conditions and total hell.

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I’m more socialist than capitalist but I’m jaded towards Unions from my personal experiences.

I too am a former Union (HEU) member.

For the 5 years that I was a member of HEU, I never once witnessed a situation of employees getting screwed over by the management, indeed the Union had the management over a barrel..

..But there was major screwage from the Union itself.

I agree with Donna when she says that what is published is often not the same as the situation, but my conclusions may diff. Unions in this province have MUCH more sway with the media than mere employers.

When I was with HEU, that situation was worsened due to the fact that the president of HEU at the time was gearing up for political office. During the closing of Shaughnessy Hospital, jobs were shuffled in a way that looked best in the newspapers, IE: “HEU saves hundreds of jobs at Shaughnessy” was the type of headline I saw while the real situation was that they bumped people working in other hospitals regardless of seniority.

After 5 years at Vancouver General Hospital, I was replaced by someone with far less seniority and experience. It had nothing to do with my own performance, but simply because I was in a position that someone else held at Shaughnessy. Seniority of transfering employees was conveniently pro-rated to make it all look good on the books and in the newspapers.

You wouldn’t believe how many people I’ve told that to that have called me a liar or discounted my experience as an anomoly.

When People are religious about their support of Unions I start to feel bullied. I suppose I shouldn’t take it so personally, but after losing my job I found that everywhere I went to try to get some form of recognition/compensation for the situation, I would run into a pro-Union person who thought I was just anti-Union. A clerk at UI even warned me that if I spent too much time pursuing the politic aspect of my job-loss that they would count that time against my benefits.

I’m not anti-Union, I’m not anti-socialist. I consider myself a ‘tempered’ socialist. I actually feel that I have a better balance due to my experience and most of the bitterness with it has now gone.

Different Unions are different, some are good, some are bad. I lose a great deal of respect for people who blindly support Unions, just as I would for people who are blindly anti-Union.

I also remind myself that my experiences were based on some of the largest and most powerful of BC’s Unions (the other was CUPE, that’s a different and indirect story). The corruption that I witnessed.. well we all know the saying about power and corruption.

The unfortunate part is that for a Union to be effective in the good benefits (job protection, equality for wages, etc.) it has to be large and powerful, that’s the whole point. This to me says that if Unions are to be a good thing overall some sort of paradox has to occur. I think it’s possible, I just wonder if it’s very common.

I’ll temper with this: I think Unions are best served in this province in two situations:

1. Where the management has already proven to be abusive. I think I’d probably applaud if McDonalds got unionized.

2. In the transition of recently privatized companies that still wield a good deal of political/civic power (IE Donna’s examples: Translink, Telus). That kind of power tends to naturally get abused and I think a Union works as bit of a counterbalance. I don’t know much about the details of the current ferry situation, but my first guess is that it just falls under this category.

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Incidentally… with the bad press that unions usually get, I don’t think that they have as much influence with the media as they’d like. I can’t remember the last time I read something pro-union regarding any job action.

The thing that surprises me is that the unions rarely fully explain themselves. I found out stuff through my parents about the Translink job action that was never made public, and it made them look so much better… so why DIDN’T they publicize it?

Well, other than the fact that the Liberal government has most of the BC media in their back pocket, and anything anti-union is good for them — pro-union media might make people think back to the good things the NDP did, and heaven forbid THAT happen. Bah.

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I’ve worked in a union before, even as a “shop steward,” and I’ve also worked in (and currently consult for) union places where I am not a member of the union.

I believe the original intent of unions was good: to protect individuals from being manipulated or abused by their employers, in cases where individuals cannot protect their own rights because they lack education or collective power. I’ve been a part of defending union workers on grievances where management was overpenalizing a worker for a mistake, and I think the value of unions holds to this day. On the other hand, we need to ensure that the workplace is fair to both employer and employee, and doesn’t protect bad workers or bad practices simply because they are the status quo.

This, however, gets bastardized so frequently and horribly that people do not like unions anymore; even the people in them are frustrated by their own “representatives.” I agree with the comment above: power corrupts. However, I know there are people on both sides of the table in union and management in many industries who see a future for that relationship that is more moderate and less adversarial than it has been in the past.

To sum up my position on unions: they are wonderful tools if only they are used correctly. That will take some time, and some changes in attitudes.

(Oh, and I believe as of around 1999, an average cafeteria worker on a ferry was earning $19.35 per hour).

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My comment is quite long, but you can read it here: http://www.web-goddess.net/peechie/002877.html (yes, this is also a shameless ploy to increase my traffic).

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I also posted my comments to Donna’s blog, but here they are for completeness:

Thanks for this. While this is useful information, it doesn’t equip me with enough data to assess whether ferry workers are overpaid or not. That is, what does “heavily trained” or “specifically trained in survival skills” practically mean? How many hours of training per quarter do they do? Is there some unpaid certification that they must complete? What are the analogous positions in a non-unionized sector, and how much do they earn?

For example (and I’m not saying these are comparable, just citing a data point), I used to work (in a unionized position) as a receptionist at a rec centre. I was expected and trained to complete certain ‘back-up lifeguard’ duties, meaning I was directly responsible for the safety of the public. In this particular, unionized setting, I earned $13-17/hour.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any non-union examples to compare to.

Incidentally, the writer you quote goes on to describe all ferry jobs as “hard, difficult and dangerous”. He loses some credibility in my book right there. He also doesn’t provide any evidence to back up his assertion that BC Ferries are the safest fleet in the world. In fact, my Google search suggests that Washington State operates the safest fleet in the world. So, there goes another chunk of his credibility. Plus, of course, when he’s an NDP supporter, he’s got no right to cite “the financial incompetence of the BC Liberal government”, particularly when it comes to ocean-bound vessels.

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