Would you cross a picket line?

I've covered a strike where the local union was affiliated with the United Steel Workers.

Some of the guys told me the USW national office sent them some checks down but it wasn't much. Never found out exactly how much.

 

Yes there is strike pay, and depending on the union's finances, usually saved as long as possible and distributed as needed.

There are also people who make up little anecdotes (see above) about poor mothers having to cross picket lines to feed their starving children as a way to rationalize why they won't work collectively with their colleagues to improve their working conditions. It's always better to say you're on the side of starving mothers rather than admitting you're just too cheap to pay dues.

 

Strike pay is not universal.
The UMWA may have it and the Teamsters and such, but the United Brotherhood of Amalgamated Produce Works local 1044 may not.
Other, smaller unions may have strike pay, but it usually is very small and doesn't go very far.
When local UMWA strikes hit, the national union will help out, but it usually ain't much. It helps, but it ain't much.

 

Any union executive board that calls for a strike authorization without first developing some minimal war chest is being irresponsible to its membership. Members who would authorize a strike under such conditions are either terribly desperate or exceedingly dumb. I've never seen that happen.

 

Think ours was supposed to be $100/week in exchange for two eight-hour shifts on the line. That news scared the crap out of a lot of our people, and might have had more to do with their sign-the-contract sentiment than anything the company said.

 

Right. That's always the claim. But extend the logic to the next step. As soon as you ask for a merit raise, the bosses throw up their hands and say they're out of money from paying all the contractually required raises.

To me, a proper union contract would have mandated raises every other year, with the same amount of money dedicated to a merit pool for the years in between. If the worst worker in the newsroom and the best worker in the newsroom get the exact same raises, year after year, then the union is not serving all its members properly.

 

I don't get it, Joe. On one thread you say you don't trust management to decide who keeps their jobs. On this one, you do trust management to decide who gets the raises. If you think favoritism and ignorance would decide one, why wouldn't you think it would have a hand in the other?

 

If anything, merit pools are more easily subject to favoritism. If you think you're more valuable to your organization than what you're getting paid, you always have the option of demanding more money.

Of course, you may find out that you're expendable or don't have as much leverage as you thought.

 

But somebody has to make the determination who's pulling their weight and who isn't, because an even-handed brush just isn't practical. Some people get the job done. Others don't ... and are generally protected from dismissal in a union shop.

Who do you propose does that other than the executives?

 

Right, I was just noting the inconsistency.

 

Guess I'm not the trusting type.

But you're right, Frank. I'm less trusting of management than I am of unions, on my own personal scale of distrust. I just see how the "we don't stand in the way of merit raises" claim plays out in the practical world. Management hides behind that with all but its favorites. (Which, I know, makes your case for you.)

Wish I had better anecdotal experience, gathered over 20 years, with unions. Too much fear of challenging today on something specific, lest it maybe cost them something vague and unspecified tomorrow. A weak union is worse than no union at all.

 

That was exactly the case, though, in my scenario we didn't work in the newspaper business -- as I said in my original post. Everybody, from management to the union reps, said me and two others deserved raises, but because of the contract, it couldn't happen because it would open, as they put it, "Pandora's Box."