@rabel22,
rabel22 wrote:
So you think that big business is more honest than labor when they talk the union members into takeing a cut in pay than raise their compensation by reporting they induced the stupid labor people to accept a cut in wages. Not true? It happened to me when I was a steelworker.
Whose compensation was raised?
One of my major experiences was leading a company that had about 2,200 employees organized by the steelworkers union. (In fact it had previously been a UNMW union local, but was subsequently bought out by the Steelworkers when Ron Becker ran the union. Unions do acquisitions too.). I inherited over 900 greivances waiting for arbitration - some over six years old. The union had established a large number of what they called "binding past precedences" on work rules; one giving them the right to control job assignments, and dole them out by seniority whenever a change occurred, but without any downward adjustments in pay. The result was that whenever anyone left the company, about 50 people would change jobs as they "bumped" one another in succession; and we had some very expensive floor sweepers. Another gave the workers an hour to don protective clothing (coveralls) before entering the work area and another hour to take them off when finished. The net effect was to turn the normal incentives upside down. Pay and raises had nothing to do with productivity and performance, and they felt entitled to company supplied coffee & cokes while they sat around in a cafeteria during their two 60 minute "dressing" breaks each day. (They also got 18 paid holidays/year, and had one paid shop steward for every 70 employees.)
The company was in serious financial trouble, but the union expressed no concern over that. To save the situation, we did a major layoff of union & non-union employees; instituted profit sharing for all non-union workers and started negotiations with the Building Trades Union, based on an obscure technicality that our changing mission (under a government contract) made the work fit more closely with the latter union's charter. Frightened by our determination and the prospect of a competing union taking over, they negotiated a complete wipeout of all "past precedent" and other obnoxious rules and reduced the number of paid "shop stewards" by a factor of ten -- all for all workers under the new job categories, which we agreed to include in their scope in return. After the CBA was signed we then reclassified all workers in the new categories and had a fresh start.
In my experience the union was chronically unable to see past its immediate interests and the greed & ambition of its officers. I had an excellent object lesson in how unions have destroyed the economic competitiveness of the now departed manufacturing and textile industries in this country.