I'm sure union leadership is a hell of a lot more caring about the people they represent than the executives and CEO's running the place. It's sorta weird to see greed be brought up as a reason to despise unions, when the people they are fighting are greedier by far.
You obviously have never been involved in negotiating a union contract to say something like that. Either that or you belong to a union. Unions might have worked for a minute back when companies chained their workers to their equipment, but that time has loooong since passed. Unions today (and for a long time now) have done litle more than given the illusion to "care' about the people they represent in order to pad their own pockets. They exploit time and again a fairly significant uneducated base of members, who still believe that the 'Union" is going to save them from big daddy boss man. Unions are why we have no manufacturing based economy in this country any longer. I have sat with these people and watched them do actual harm to the people they claim to represent countless times. I have seen company, after company, after company who have sat down and honestly and in earnest tried to do the very best for their employees, and I've seen union reps actually sell out their own members in order to get some crazy assed concession that either A) gives the illusion that without the union the employees would have nothing, or B) makes the company look bad intenionally to drive membership in an open shop. I've seen it dozens upon dozens of times.
I actually worked with a small company that had the WORST union of all (SEIU) represnt it's employees. It was an open shop, and they had a rep who was constantly trying to circumvent the contract. The contract clearly stipulated that the rep could visit the facility one day each month on a "mutually agreed upon" date and time, for the sole purpose of meeting with the COMPANY representatives. She instead would call the company and tell them a day in advance when she was GOING to be there, and then would NEVER show. She would then tell her members the company changed the time, which wasn't true. The company hired my firm, and asked me to be the point person for them. The managers had very little union experience. She was of course livid, because I held her to the terms of the contract. I told her without it, we had nothing. So I would let her know if her proposed days and times would work, and then once we mutually agree upon a day and time, she would not show up. I'd be there, but she wouldn't show. OR she would want to come out and meet with employees in order to hold elections (to select her as rep again). I refused. No part of the contract allowed her to come and disrupt the entire day for the employees. She basically wanted to halt production for a day and meet with everybody. I told her no. She threatened to file greivance after greivance after grievance. She never did. When it came time for negotiations we (the company) were prepared to offer a modest increase, and we also were going to allow union staff into the companies retirement plan (by law they have to be included now), but back then they had some really poor pension plan that up until then the union DEMANDED they get. It was horrible. I recall the owner of the company saying how upset he was about their pension plan. Contract after contract the union insisted they keep their worthless plan. It was crazy. They of course wanted he moon. Initially they wanted to triple the employees wages. It was ludicrous. We were near the end of the negotiations, we were actually giving them alot more than their rep from the SEIU was asking for them (except the triple salary). I went through my spiel about everything we had agreed upon and the rep looks across the table and says to me..."We'll take everything off the table if you give me access to the plant every Monday from 2-4pm to meet with members to discus issues or grievances." I actually said "Why would you do that to your people?" She just looked at me. I then said we needed to excuse ourselves and give her and the employee reps a chance to talk things over. We came back about 20 minutes later, and you could tell her people were upset, and a bit confused. She said the deal still stood. I probably shouldn't have, because it could have been seen that technically I was now negotiating on the union members behalf, but I wanted to make sure the employees knew what this meant. They were pissed, but she had worn them down. I'm sure she promised them some ridiculous bullshit benefit from this. Her whole intention was to increase membership. Being an open shop the union only had about 250 out of 500 workers. I asked once again, if they knew that HER proposal meant that EVERYTHING came off the table and all they got was her access. She said, "They know, they don't need some schiester lawyer to explain it to them." I said,"Maybe not, but I think somebody who actually cares about them probably should." She just glared at me. So I rewrote the new contract, and we both signed it. Over the course of the next week. 140 people submitted their withdrawal from the union. She had sold them out. Because membership fell so much, she NEVER came to visit the facility on Mondays, even though she had the conference room booked every Monday from 2-4. Now we could have said no, but in all honesty we were hoping the union could be de-certified, and sure enough about 15 months later, they were.
As for reducing salary... CEO's are usually the brightest and the best, and they don't come cheap. I'm amazed at how many people assume CEO's dont take pay cuts when times are bad or lean for companies. Most often do. Every company I ever represented ALWAYS looked to reduce costs through some fashion either by reducing or right sizing benefits for executives first, or some other means of cost control BEFORE they ever even thought of laying workers off.
Topic: PepsiCo to cut 8,700 jobs (Read 14612 times)
