My Summer and the Union
I was looking at how little I have blogged this summer and gave some thought as to why. Back in the spring my nephew Tommy was assaulted and as he clung to life in the hospital that was the primary focus of the family's attention. As Tommy recovered, I became active as a steward in my union and my work with the union has gotten a lot of my attention over the summer.
Growing up in Texas, the son of Goldwater republicans, I never got much exposure to unions. When I came back from my stint in the Navy, I worked in the movie business in Dallas. I worked on one industrial film with a longtime professional in the industry who held a card in the cinematographer's union in California. I asked him why he was a union member. He said he came from a union family, growing up in the steel towns of Pennsylvania. His father worked in the steel mills. He said, "Steel is a man-killing business and nobody looked out for you but the union." I could see the logic in an industry like steel or mining but I had no interest in those fields and was young and sure enough of myself that I felt I was better off negotiating my own ticket.
The next 3 decades saw me working mostly for myself or as an independent contractor so unions were never really an issue, but in my 50's I went took jobs with major corporations. As a general rule, if one came to work on time and did their job, the job was relatively safe as long as nothing happened. But it was made abundantly clear that under the rules of "at will" employment, one worked at the pleasure (and in some cases the whim) of their employer. People lost their jobs because their location wasn't profitable enough or their performance statistics weren't quite up to standards and it was easier for their manager to replace them than to coach them to improve. With the job went the health care for their family. We were in California for the dot-com bust and watched many people take lesser jobs or forced to leave the area. As someone trained in economics, I saw this as the playing out of market forces, but in negotiating employment it was clear that the deck was stacked in the employer's favor.
When we moved to Lubbock I looked at returning to working for myself but decided I wanted the stability and security of a job. I found my best opportunity and at new employee orientation was told I had the option of joining a union. Since it was clear that the union contract was responsible for the job having higher pay and better benefits than were available elsewhere in Lubbock, I elected to pay my share and joined the union.
For the first year my union membership consisted solely of paying my dues, but from time to time I would hear of someone caught in the cogs of the company's procedure or mistreated by a manager and how the union was able to get the situation corrected. The people who took care of this were the union stewards and I volunteered to be one. I got my training in May and have gotten more and more active.I ;have been learning about labor history, labor law and the rights of workers and stewards. I built a website for my local and have been elected to the executive board. This is how I spent much of my summer.