Let's have an intelligent discussion about unions

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Anyone got any good Labor Union Posters? Both old & new would be nice. Need some for my collection.

I wholeheartedly support unions on a national level befcause they are one of the few tools we have to fight against capitalists, but it is true that unions vary wildly from state to state and county to county.

Some unions are genuinely good and try to help their workers by constantly pushing for new deals and not being afraid to strike (like my local union which has been going strong for a long time now), but other unions I know of in nearby counties are massive good ole boys club that are very cliquey/exclusionary and will bend over for corporate interests at the drop of a hat.

Was about to make a thread like this. Right now I work an unionized asbestos job when not attending college. I'd like to join the asbestos removal branch of the local insulation union just because I'm a. majoring in Philosophy so would only be able to teach and dont want to get jerked around for like 15 years before getting a stable job with any kind of decent pay and benefits b. would rather work a trade than in the cesspit of academia c. would probably be able to do more to advance the cause of poor and workers in a union than in a classroom. But I dont know yet, of course people will tell me I'm wasting my time since I'm le ebin college graduate but it seems liks a union job is the better option by far.

I met a Canadian plumber while I was studying in Ghana and he said every few years he would just take off a year to travel and tho the union wasnt required to take him back when he returned they always had. Idk if thats an exceptional situation he had set up but it sounded really incredible. $50/hour, full benefits, and being able to leave for long periods with a reasonable expectation of being rehired sounds too good to be true for this burger that gets $10 an hour doing miserable labor and acquiring mesothelioma

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I'd love to, please peg me with any and all questions.

Largely my gripe is that they don't seem to have much for work and consistently lie to their member base about what they have so won't jump ship during slow periods. My local has a bad reputation tho it's possible things are better in other parts of the country.

Among other things they seem incapable of negotiating with their contractors, there's zero reciprocity on that end, we man their jobs, work half the year, aren't eligible for pension benefits and these guys make off with millions. It's a broken system.

I think the pay rate for journeymen where I am is like 28, the full package is 46. Most jobs don't give full rate however our contractors like to dick us around.

mine literally told me that they exist to make money for their contractors.

A few questions:
1. How racially integrated is your union? Historically, a lot of unions have had trouble with this.
2. How political are the union's members? I assume the leadership is almost exclusively liberal, but do the rank and file adhere to that line?
3. What do you think could feasibly be changed within the union to improve it?

you'll like this user

1. racist af and getting sued for sexual harrassment. they make an effort to bring in some diversity but these guys get harrassed and exposed to harsher, differential treatment for sure. to be clear electricians are good in terms that they're fairly rational and the focus is to get the job done but there's still a lot of bullshit.

2. full of trump supporters, so they are shit. the leadership makes a nod here and there towards idpol issues but it's largely nominal, because of the closed incestuous work environment bad attitudes seem to get amplified.

3. everything, burn it to the ground and start over, complete cesspit, literally the reason unions get a bad name.

this man is a fucking hero and his presence in this life gives me some hope for this world.

How does that work, just normal price of service negotiations and the union agrees to charge less?

Sorry user im retarded, is the full package just what gets paid into pension and union dues and taxes? Whats the difference between pay rate and package?

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how does a union make money for contractors?

by acquiring a large labor pool and only putting them to work half the year as needed and then lying about the upcoming work situation the other six months.

Not sure I assume they go thru the hall, when jmen call the jobline they are informed of whether or not a job is going to be full rate. It was originally a concession to contractors to keep men working but is massively abused, like anything.

I wish our leaders weren't suck cucks and stood up to this shit, the whole trade is underpaid as a whole and union jobsites are the most high pressure of all. You have to be a highly skilled craftsman to join the club they give people tests and everything. Due to the competition from the nonunion sector is all industrial work which can be fairly technical. There are a lot of smart people being worked very hard and not being compensated appropriately for it, no wonder they're all bailing.

the working class is getting fucked in the ass and the unions are an instrument of the abuse, what a world we live in.

full package is bennies including retirement. there's a decent pension which keeps people paying their dues, but you actually have to work.

we pay dues regardless of are personally benefitting from it, it's like forty a month, there really isn't any accountability for where this money goes either, or at least not enough.

Fucking hell, to think I saw a chance to get paid fairly and live a decent life, knew it was too good to be true. Thanks for the detailed response.

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it's just LU 490 which is a steaming cesspit of shit, I can't speak for other unions, if you're a bro you make out alright tho. I'm not cool enough to stay on jobs so I temp out with nonunion contractors, which is much, much better because in the real world there are consequences for being an outrageous asshole.

I dont understand what youre saying exactly. I work non union contracting right now, why is it better than union contracting? Do you mean you just need to be a sociable normie to get along in a union? Because I can do that sometimes but I have a feeling that unions are mostly full of Racist White Professionals Who Smugly Vote Democrat And Look Down On White Trash who I do not get along with at all. I guess it really depends on the local but seeing the pics of my local union it looks like that, especially because I live in majority black city its strange that everyone in this local seems white.

Either way I'll just ask around and talk to some people in the locals I'm interested in and try to find out which are best. I prefer asbestos because ripping toxic shit out and setting it up for the people who finish the job is lower pressure and I'm not very technically minded so trades that involve actually building shit intimidate me, but I have heard great things about the carpenters local. Know a guy who is like 40 and just takes Summers off.

except that they vote fucking republican, and very smugly indeed.

it's not strange if you consider that it might be on purpose.

I can't really speak to outside the electrical trade, my state has a really shitty union and all the assholes reinforce one another so it's just a race to the bottom. the non-union is less centralized so there's more room for variation, tho sadly seems there's nowhere to go but up.

there's a lot of political crap that goes on, in the bad way, I dated a brother and he was fairly manipulative and controlling not so far beneath the surface. it seems to be a type, everyone in the organization absorbs that culture and personality after a time. I thought it would be cool to visit a meeting but I just felt uncomfortable the entire time, I don't understand male power rituals.

a brother? like a union member? but

I do feel you on this. I can fake it especially because I'm very traditionally masculine in presentation but I feel like theres so much posturing and vanity, trying to signal how much of a Real Man you are but also getting offended and bitching at the slightest provocations. Then turning around and talking about how petty women are/sensitive people are these days. Doesnt surprise me to hear that a lot of unions are basically like college frats in that regard.

actually got into a debate with an apprentice re: whether egging your buddies on to make moves on unsuspecting strangers was rape culture. i am informed that this is a guy thing, I think it is sexist to paint all men as desperate horndogs who want to fuck at the first provocation. my bud from the other side was a whisteblower for this crap, good to know there's some sanity in this world.

Well OP, it seems like your union is pretty irredeemable. I wonder if any other American union members (or union members from any country really) are here; the impression I get from Zig Forums is that most posters are students, NEETs, or trapped in shit-tier wagecuck jobs that have no chance of unionization.

What do you mean egging on? How is it encouraging rape to try and prod your buddy to hit on a girl, if it's just flirting with them of course not talking about going up and grabbing them

i think that's what they're talking about

too bad because it really degrades the caliber of discussion here, all academics and no pertinent, real world insight.

with that in mind becoming a union member isn't hard rn, trades are screaming out for people, just avoid the shit out of IBEW 490, unless your dad's a contractor or something.

uaw here, nobody at my work knows were part of the uaw and the conditions are pretty shit. The only reason I know is because I was there when we were bought by a union company but nothing changed and the work environment is still toxic and greedy.

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My grandfather loved being a part of the UAW—he never regretted it. Every UAW union member I’ve met seems pretty satisfied with it. Granted, I’ve never really worked in a UAW shop and I take it most of the guys I’ve met in it are apoliticals just looking for good pay/benefits etc.

The working class as you put it does not have a voice, because in order to formulate a single cohesive argument, they'd have to be capable of thinking in the first place.

Failing this, there's unions, where someone else will think and talk for you as long as you show up and do the bare minimum and don't make anyone look bad.

Oh and you are literally trading your vote for an easy job. You think $76,000 a year is a lot of money to buy a vote? Compare this to the billions these companies are making off of you.

Its ok, people sell our country out all the time. Not everyone is sophisticated enough to arrange that level of corruption so we've made it simple for you.

Pay your dues, vote for who we tell you to, do the favors, and look the other way, and we promise you burgerbear you'll have a nice comfy life in front of the TV and all the booze you could drink.

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oh ok where im from hitting on just means flirting with not anything inherently sexual

*Sip*
Unions are just neo liberals action smart kid… Wow, did you like even read lmao?

Unions undermine the third world securing the stability of first world middle classes. This is everything we DON'T want as communists. Like for every white guy that gets a livable wage,a black kid in New Gini coughs up their liver. I know this because I watch at least one Jason Unruhe video a day.

Unions at best are just a coping mechanism to make dumbass workers feel in charge of their own autonomy. But if they had any autonomy they would have jobs. Theyd be out in the woods fucking their cousin preparing for the winter. Not this shit. Unions are peak first world liberalism and capitalism and you should want no part of it.

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unions in america are like guns. whoever has the best ones, doesn't need them, because the state already exists to protect their interests. am I talking out of my ass?

Sort of but not exactly. A lot of the people who benefit from american unions are only in a superior position to the rest of the working class being theyre benefiting from a nepotistic, exclusionary organization that allows them to be compensated much closer to fairly than everyone else. Without the unions tho most of them would be down here with the rest of us.

Live in Germany, member of ver.di (retail, nurses, and whatever else gets included under the umbrella of nebulously defined service stuff). It's OK. They send you some sort of newspaper eight times a year, and instead of having a part with regional news that is different in different regions, the paper has a sectoral section. The way they run strikes seems very different from what I heard how IG Metall does it: IGM usually demands a huge fraction of workers at the place to be members (like 50 or 60 %) before they support anything, and getting to the point is a real pain in the ass, but then they strongly support your strike. With ver.di, the national org will give a bit of support to a strike in a place even with very low membership in the hope that this grows, but if this doesn't work out ver.di bleeds a lot of money over time and the people doing the strike get frustrated and burned out. There is a risk of that happening with people organizing Amazon workers in Germany.

Does not ver.di expell people for being members of a Communist party?
Or it was IGM?

technically hitting on complete strangers is sexual harrasment, i mean who wants to be propositioned for sex in the grocery store.

however i have been informed that i am WRONG to feel this way and an inexcusable grumpyface for not entertaining age-inappropriate men who want who abuse my former customer service role to waste my time with their stupid weather talk.

meanwhile this same guy bitches that my attempts to fraternize with him, as a coworker, are irritating and that his time would be better put to use by chatting up hotter women on tindr.

the girl box sucks.

I contacted the IBEW a few years ago because I was interested in joining a union and learning a trade. They never replied.