Union Labor: For or Against?

Thanks Joanne. You know this concerns me directly. My job can be moved off shore. I currently am working in non-union environment. From what Wildflower describes, I consider myself very lucky. I don't know how long I would last at a job working double shifts. It isn't right at all.

Right and I am a union activist only. If you feel betrayed by your union, and the printers are one of the oldest and most traditional in the US you should challenge them.

Are in a union shop or a closed shop? Whoops misread again, darn it.

Well then how might we hook you up to organize at your place of business? Is that what you would like?

Only unions can stop the off shore job movement by not rolling (no union can wave employee right's without violating the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) over or give up employee right's by sleeping on the labor management agreement (contract) without violating the NLRA.

P.S. I am not a lawyer but have done a lot of labor management relations (LMR) litigation as a lay person. The United Mine Worker's (UMWA) sometimes even have it written in the contracts, no lawyers at the negotiating table.

No, no abuses like that here. But thank you for your offer. But, the union shop I worked for before. Closed its doors. They did not tell me directly why, something about dwindling business etc.

Well that is a management right for sure, to close up shop; and go away. It is unfortunate that they blame the union when things like that happen.

The Printers Guild is one of the oldest and for years and years was the sternest of unions. They would not let many news papers update machinery and consequently local news But that type of bad behavior no longer jibes with new workers and astute workers and the union was forced to change its ways.

But now the tide may be turning because of the economic downturn. The workers for the most part can no longer afford to be unrepresented.

Often I am horrified by the stories I hear. Both of being over worked or placed in the precarious position of being under employed. Being under employed is the scariest of all I think.
papers did fail financially.

Yes - the scenario Wildflower pointed out, about being so overworked and understaffed - not good either. Not at all.

Nobody ever said it was a one sided issue. By the way, Wildflower is not talking about double shifts. She is talking about double shifts at straight time pay. Many businesses try to circumvent the Fair Labor Standards act by giving virtually everyone the title of supervisor, manager, or manager trainee. I have never seen a classified ad for clerk from a video store, though it may happen. Typically, they advertise for "management trainee." Over and over, courts have held that the title does not necessairly define the job, but they just keep trying.

Exactly correct Roger. It is a matter of law the definition of professional. Being called professional and actually being a professional are two horses of a different color.

IMHO it is a management ploy to call everyone professional. Or changing job titles to try to avoid over time rules under FLSA.

However, on the bright side, if a person kept good records of their time they have three years from the date of last employment to file a claim for overtime pay with the USDOL.

That one is especially persuasive if the company (the real management) has slipped up and docked anyone's pay for a part of a day. That almost absolutely defines non-exempt employment.

Thank you for the clarification, roger. Thank you Joanne - for the information. I have got to get outside at some point today - so that's where I'm heading. Best to you all.

JD's quote, 'IMHO it is a management ploy to call everyone professional. Or changing job titles to try to avoid over time rules under FLSA." It's not only management; this administration tried to reduce the number who receive overtime pay by legislation - to reclassify exempt and nonexempt. I think their ploy failed, but they may try again.

Here's a link on Bush's attemps to restrictd overtime pay. http://www.aflcio.org/yourjobeconomy/overtimepay/underattack.cfm

Rewards of a 90-Hour Week: Poverty and Dirty Laundry

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Published: May 31, 2004

[]or the many New Yorkers who dread spending two hours in a noisy, often smelly laundry washing and drying their clothes, it is a godsend that most laundries will handle that unpleasant chore for them, and for as little as $5 a load.
But few customers pay attention to the thousands of "wash and fold" workers - most of them women from Mexico - who actually handle their laundry. They are among the most anonymous laborers in New York. In humid basements and backrooms around the city, they shovel clothes in and out of washers and dryers, matching socks and folding hundreds of towels and undergarments each day.
[]
Most laundry workers earn less, often far less, than the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. Gabriela Mendez, a veteran of six Manhattan laundries, said one paid her $230, or $3.19 an hour, for a 72-hour week, while at another she earned $220, or $2.45 an hour, for a 90-hour week.
She and other workers boil over with tales of oppressive conditions or abusive bosses. Some said their employers hit them for taking a long lunch or fired them for being out sick for a day; others said they saw co-workers collapse from the heat.
"The laundry pays us less than they're able to," said Inriqueta G., an illegal immigrant who works at a laundry in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn. She would not give her last name.
"They say they can't pay us more because we don't understand English," she continued, speaking through a translator. "But we work just as well as other people."
In recent months, the wages and working conditions of laundry workers have begun to attract outside attention. The state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, has begun cracking down on a handful of laundries, winning tens of thousands of dollars in back wages for the workers and pressuring some laundries to begin granting paid sick days and one-week vacations. Several immigrant advocacy groups have taken up the cause of laundry employees, and an effort has begun to unionize some workers.
"There's an industrywide problem about failure to pay the minimum wage, and these workers are almost never paid time and a half," said Patricia Smith, director of the attorney general's Labor Bureau. "When we ask owners why they're paying so little, they say, 'That's what everybody else pays.' "
Ms. Smith added that at a majority of the laundries investigated by the office, there have been allegations of oppressive working conditions, including sexual harassment, physical and verbal abuse and poor environmental conditions, like the use of harsh chemicals.
Avenue B Cleaners, a laundry on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, agreed last month to pay $23,000 in back wages and damages after several workers complained to the attorney general that they had been paid less than $250 each for a 72-hour work week. Anyone who works a 72-hour week - or 12 hours a day, six days a week - should receive at least $453.20 a week if paid the minimum wage and overtime. Government officials noted that minimum wage laws also apply to workers who are in the country illegally.
Avenue B's lawyer, Samuel Ahne, acknowledged the company's failure to pay the minimum wage, but he said that should not be surprising. "The reason people are being underpaid is there is a lot of financial stress over all on the owners," Mr. Ahne said, citing property tax increases, soaring rents and intense competition from immigrant entrepreneurs.
James B. Levin, a lawyer for Bright Laundry, a laundry on East 84th Street that agreed last September to pay $18,200 in a settlement with the attorney general, had a different explanation for the wage violations. "There aren't enough jobs available for people, and they'd much rather work for less than the minimum wage than not work at all," he said. "And, remember, a lot of these workers aren't legal."
Ms. Mendez said she grew so fed up with the illegal wages she was paid at laundry after laundry that she complained to Casa Mexico, an immigrant advocacy group, and then to the attorney general. She, her husband and their 5-year-old son live with two other families in a bare-bones three-bedroom apartment in Corona, Queens. Her 12-year-old son lives with her mother back in Mexico.

contiued http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/31/nyregion/31laundry.html?

This is what happens when management has the upper hand and there is no union to protect and speak for the worker. These people are illegals but don't think for a moment it would be any different for citizens if there were no unions or threat of unions.

Greed drives most humans; until we understand human nature, there must be some ways for workers to be protected from owners and managers.

The wisest statement I have ever heard from anyone about unions came from my wife's uncle. He was a solid management guy but he said, "every company that has a union deserves it".

Another of my wife's uncles, who worked in personnel at Chrysler, hated the UAW passionately. But, knowing the way the company operated, he also said that if he ever went to work on the line the first thing he would do was join the union.

Americans do not naturally join unions. They do so out of desperation, when they feel they have no other recourse. Low wages, dangerous conditions, and, few options to work elsewhere are obvious contributing factors.

Sadly, politics often intrude, as successive generations of union leadership seek to gain ever greater consessions from management, in order to appease their membership and retain power.

But we would be far worse if the unions hadn't arose, and I think their lack of influence now is more dangerous to our future than whatever abuses of influence have been committed.

The influence of organized crime is a separate issue, I think, and one the Justice Department can be faulted for not addressing over the last seventy-five years.

Greyfan, Thanks for your testimonial on unions. It supports what I've believed most of my life; unions are necessary evils in order to protect workers.

That was a good post greyfan this is my favorite part:

As a paid AFL-CIO organizer for a couple of years health and safety issues were the most often cited reasons for employees to request union representation.

Unions are the mafia with better PR people, no more and no less. I will never join under any circumstances.

What line of work are you in, Jarlaxle?

... and in what country?

I drive wreckers & buses, in New England.