Let me begin by saying I am 100% PRO UNION. Just very conflicted on this one so I want more view points.
Which brings me to my confusion. I have been a member of a union with about 1.3 million members internationally for almost 2 decades. When I first joined we saw representatives at all hours of the day and night. Constantly. They would come in and just see how we were or if we needed anything at 3 am if they needed to. If there was a problem we made one call and someone would be in the car on the way ready to put some company lackey in his place (usually at the end a closed door ass ripping). It was great.
After a few years though I could feel it change. They stopped coming in as much. We started waiting longer and longer for responses or call backs. The second contract that was voted through was sub par IMO and I'm not sure how it even passed. Worse and worse it got. There was one instance for example where I had a corporate employee threaten to “kick my ass” and more in front of customers and employees. I let loose (verbally) on him and I have no problem admitting that. But after the interaction I did what I should have done in the first place and called the rep. 3 DAYS… That's how long it took for him to get back to me. Only to tell me “this is probably a thing that should be dealt with in house” between me, him, and our boss… and hang up. So yea I have been less enthralled by the effort but sometimes it's one person. Sometimes it's not. Outside of the 3 year contact negotiation time we never see them. I'm talking less than half a dozen times. Total in the last 6-7 years.
Then a few years back someone posted picture they took of a computer screen with what looked like some of the the Local admin and the salaries they earned. It was crooked and cut off on portions but it was enough to go on if you were inclined to look into it further. I did. It took me a few days of light research starting from scratch, but I was able to track down where to get that information. Turns out it's public information. It was also so much more than just a few salaries. It shows everything. All the financials for the filed tax year. Needless to say I was just a little bit upset seeing how many of the union reps that were too busy for us were making 100k a year. That was nothing however, to the things that had nothing to do with salary.
According to the 2022 form, my local made a total of over 53 million in disbursements in 2022. About a quarter of that went to salary alone to people who make 2 to 6 times what the average member makes. I have seen a contract negotiated $0.15 wage increase. It's not fun to look at losing money just to inflation that year. The worst thing though was the ridiculous amount of money spent on random things. Like a total of Airline purchases for $119,627. That's almost 400 tickets in a year. Why? Who's flying that much? Or the $378,090 spent on hotels in the year. Some of which were tens of thousands of dollars for the same event, on the same date, at DIFFERENT HOTELS! Like the $7,189 spent at one hotel in Las Vegas? What. The. Flying. Fuck. I can't even begin to figure out why one company got paid multiple times a week or month for “equipment rentals” to the tune of $1,263,744. I mean come on. We had seven union shops shut down that year because the company said they didn't make money. about 1000 members had to try and find out not only where they could transfer, but how they would make it to work everyday in a new location. I don't see big payments for bus passes or Uber there anywhere. But 1.2 million on equipment rental. Cool. That's just ONE local. There's so many more and some of them are far far worse. Like the one with 3 family members who held all 3 top admin positions and make over a million between them. On a small size local.
When did all of this happen? Was it always that way? I remember my dad (also a union guy) telling me the stories of companies that tried to step out of line with them and how they fought back. Everyone was taken care of. It was us against them. Now it seems that this union specifically is running more like a corporation. It really feels like they are just selling us out every contract with small raises and promises to get it back next time. Hell, we can't even look at thee contract details before we go vote. That's when we see it. At the vote. And it's just a bullet point. It's not even the whole thing. Again, it seems like they know if they give us time to understand it we'll say no. Like a timeshare sales pitch. The whole thing after almost 20 years just feels off. But maybe it's just me.
Don't misunderstand me. The things we have are because of the union. Less than what we had when I started though. Which is weird right? A bit more money on the paycheck with a far cry from what is should be. We've lost benefits, pay, scheduling, ect. Every time. We lose something and we're just told that it wasn't what the members wanted this time. That it was this other thing. So we'll get more next time. When did we ever give anything up? Isn't that what we are supposed to be doing? Getting fair treatment? Not giving back the extra pay for working on Sundays that the guys before us fought to get.
Well thanks for sitting through that and good luck.