If these anecdotes are to be believed, a drunk driver struck another human with a deadly weapon, causing severe injury and disability. How was this guy fighting for his job rather than his freedom?
Legal actions were taken, I, unfortunately, do not know the outcome of those actions, we all know courts/lawsuits can take a while to be resolved.
Part of becoming an adult is the realization that our parents are not infallible. They are humans and make mistakes just like anybody else. They can be affected by conscious and unconscious bias. I’m sure your dad has good intentions for his employees, but he is also somebody who is part of a system and society that at every turn devalues manual labor. The fact that he blames the union for his company’s woes and doesn’t place any responsibility on the (largely white, largely middle and upper class) management is indicative of some unconscious bias.
I'm not sure why everyone keeps assuming he "devalues manual labor". If anything he not only is a model example of a manual laborer, but he expects the same from his coworkers. It's the ones I'm referencing that don't seem to "value manual labor".
Also management at his place of work is about 60% Black, a lot of you are making large assumptions based on your own biases or expectations.
Workers unions are responsible, at least in part, for pretty much all non-racial civil rights progressive achievements in America. On the whole they have been really good for demanding and achieving worker safety standards, worker pay, reasonable work week hours and days, and a whole host of other stuff. Sure a few bad workers are protected in the process, oh well. On average though, Union workers are trying to get what they deserve from the companies they work for and the companies are trying to take everything they can get away with from their workers.
Pickle, It sucks that your dad has a few shitty employees that he can’t fire, but remember that the company agreed to the union contract in the first place and has their own hiring process that failed to scrutinize employees before they were hired. That sounds to me like a problem with the company and not the union. Your dad is misplacing blame, but it’s understandable because it also sounds like your dad was left to deal with the consequences of bad upper level management decisions. They agreed to union contract and they set the hr hiring practices in place, and now your dad is left with bad employees that he can’t fire. That is a management problem, not a union problem.
I have said, multiple times I believe, that at their best, unions are essential and when engaged properly are absolutely beneficial to both sides. Also, hiring procedures do little to weed out those who will show up for work drunk, refuse to wear safety equipment as to not affect their artificial fashion choices, those that will sneak off for a little nookie, those that will abuse the days off/write-up policy wherein they are fired after 3 write-ups for using more than their allotted 10 PTO days, only to be rehired on appeal, and proceed to do the exact same thing, in effect getting 30-40 paid days off (or more), disproportionately more than those that follow rules, or those that will refuse to wear helmets after previous incidents have almost scalped someone.
The last is a situation where the union was needed to change safety procedures, where unions serve their purpose, I'm not against them as a whole
Their scheduling system has been down for a year and the haven’t fixed/replaced it? Are we sure this place is being run well?
Exactly. Stuff like that convinces me that there are plenty of management problems that need to be addressed that probably contribute to worker issues.
It's an issue with the scheduling software nationwide, or regionally, not sure which. It's not just a product of their site or their management...again, more assumptions/bias.
If there are folks who will work for free 27 days straight to patch all the holes and do the jobs of multiple people then why change anything?
Not to knock OP’s dad at all, work ethic and owning your shit can be a rare art and the world would be a better place if it was not. But if they let the place get to a point that it can’t function without him duct taping it together that is a bad business model.
Not that you, or anyone, has asked, but he works weeks at a time without days off because he gets paid well in terms of OT, double time, triple time, etc etc. It is not necessarily required to keep the whole place from imploding in on itself. He works because that's who he is. He's taken 1 sick day in 30 years because that's who he is. Not because he is the only thing keeping the doors open, though he is the key reason his team/group stays up with the rest of the plant.
Now...I'm done with this topic. I came on here because it said "Political Chat Thread, All topics & Rants Welcome".
I guess this entire thing could have been prevented by semantically changing the initial post from "hating unions" to "hating the way workers at his plant abuse the union".
My mistake.
Carry on, I'm out.
