I’m employed by a company that supervises union longshore work. We are the only salary employees in longshore work in our area as the union and port employees are all hourly and also make more than us. Also we frequently work more than 40 hrs a week with no overtime. None of that has ever really bothered me but in the last year or two our company has created a shift that doesn’t allow for a lunch break which I absolutely hate working.
It’s hard to explain it shortly but I’ll try my best. Basically because we aren’t union we don’t work the same shifts as the union does. My company has basically a day crew and night crew and day crew works from 0600 till 1800. And there are times that a union shift will end at 1200 and new shift will start at 1300. So on those days we have to spend our usual 1200-1300 lunch break closing out for the union shift that just ended and setting up for the next one that is about to start. If we didn’t spend our meal hour doing this it would cause the shipping lines standby. We expressed that we weren’t happy that we weren’t able to go get lunch and we were just told to pack a lunch instead.
If anyone was able to follow what advise do y’all have? Other than forming our own union or jointing the existing one because I work with too many hyper conservatives who think all unions are bad and the unions that exist are very difficult to join.