Hello all! I don’t know how welcome posts like this are but I wanted to share my story.
I work at a major theme park in a city that would not exist without them, over the last couple years it has become extremely unaffordable for most of the employees of the company to live in the city even when the company tried to raise wages (up to $14.75/hour) over last summer to stay competitive with the even bigger parks. I was promoted during that last summer to a position that I fortunately am still able to be represented by the union but the raise only brought me to $16/hour. Even at this wage I am killing myself to work more hours to afford an apartment here in the worst part of the city, while the company continues to cut labor hours despite us already being understaffed and about half of our employees making $11.75/hour compared to last summer’s $14.
We have been forced to begin getting trained to sell alcohol in places we did not previously. For those not familiar with this training, it has some lovely points about the possible legal and financial implications of serving minors or over serving. Many of our employees, including myself, are in great protest of this as we do not make enough to be risking our life and livelihood for the company just to gain more profit we will never see.
My final straw came when we had a storm a couple weekends ago, causing the park to be less busy than usual, we were enthused to have a fully staffed day where we could get some catching up done. This was not the case, we were immediately asked repetitively to send people home or tell them not to come in for their shift. Since that weekend, we have been feverishly cutting hours to “”catch-up” to last year. This leaving many of the best people we have left to question their future with the company as even in our busiest time of the year and while being understaffed we are still being commanded to cut hours away from people who need them.
Therefore, last week I had my first talk with a union representative who was very kind and ready to get the process started, as am I. I am looking forward to attempting to make a better future for my family and I but also everyone else whom I work with and around who I know bust their chops for a company who has utterly failed in showing it’s appreciation for such efforts, and profits.