I started working overnights in facilities maintenance at the university of Minnesota. I was excited to be in a union and get out of food service until I actually started working shifts and got all kinds of bullying, neglect, and petty miscommunication from the building leads as well as our overall manager.
Within a week I was meeting with union reps after my shifts and getting confirmation from them that my superiors' behavior was unacceptable but par for the course in the university. One of the reps told me the university was sabotaging the union by pitting east African workers against each other along ethnicity lines, that it lobbied the state legislature to be allowed to pay student workers less than minimum wage, and that the union itself was full of reactionary, pro-cop old white guys.
I had my 30 day review with the manager, where he told me what the building leads were saying about my attitude and accused me of shirking work and refusing assignments, but wouldn't give me details to support the accusations. So I gave him examples of some instances he may have been referring to from my perspective, which made him defensive and threatening. “well, I can check the security camera footage and ask the leads again” and I said yeah do it let me know what happens.
The next week he found me early in my shift, told me I hadn't passed probation, told me he didn't need to have a reason why, and escorted me out of the building. I demanded a grievance hearing through the union vice president, who essentially ignored my calls and emails for the next two months. I found out a week before my original hearing date when it was meant to be, then a day later found out it had been rescheduled so that I would have had to take unpaid time off from my new job to make it. It was scheduled for 8am, which I knew meant the manager and any building leads who were going to be at the meeting would be there after their overnight shifts ended at 6am. Morning of, I went to my new job and texted the union VP that id gotten called in unexpectedly.
Fuck those guys, hope they had to cancel plans.
Tldr: there's no way to shorten this story and it's not that satisfying, but hopefully it inspires others to waste shitty institutions' time