Owner closes businesses days after employees unionize

[actaeon277]

To pick up the thread, I worked for a factory here in Indy that was (and still is, I believe) family owned. It was a non-union shop because the owner did at least as good for the employees as the unions were doing, without the fees. Basically the same story as Libertarian01's guy, but I don't think they ever sent a rep to the negotiations. Instead, the owner just paid attention to what the employees wanted/needed.

If there was something the union got that he couldn't do, they figured it out. That's how it should be.

And if I worked for a company like that, I'm sure I'd not understand the need for a union (not claiming you don't, but for the some that don't).


When my dad retired, I went to his company for his retirement party.
Clean floors. Clean shelves. Cranes were cute little things that only could lift 10 tons (our cranes have a 25 ton hook, 75 ton hook, and 325 ton hook all on the same crane). They STOPPED working for the retirement, fed the entire workforce. And the best part, they NEVER KILLED a worker.
I almost quit my job that day to try to work for them.
Though being in Chicago was a big negative.
This company didn't need a union.

 

[T.Lex]

And if I worked for a company like that, I'm sure I'd not understand the need for a union (not claiming you don't, but for the some that don't).

Oh absolutely.

For me, personally, my grandfather was born and raised in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. His family fought for the right to unionize under conditions that were nearly slave labor. I understand that there undoubtedly was a time for unions - and given the pendulum swings of human interactions - probably are now and will be again conditions where it makes sense.

But, the modern American Unions are big business, for the most part. More about profit-taking (ironically) than protection.

 

[actaeon277]

Oh absolutely.

For me, personally, my grandfather was born and raised in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. His family fought for the right to unionize under conditions that were nearly slave labor. I understand that there undoubtedly was a time for unions - and given the pendulum swings of human interactions - probably are now and will be again conditions where it makes sense.

But, the modern American Unions are big business, for the most part. More about profit-taking (ironically) than protection.

Oh I agree. Like anything with money/power, there is the risk of corruption.
And I'm sure my union isn't pure as driven snow.
In fact, many times I'm mad at fellow union guys when they say stuff.
But, without it, I think many more people would be injured, or dead. Also, the union has even saved he company $$$ many times when the company tried to make a decision that later turned out would have cost millions instead of saving. Or the new manager trying to show his authority, even though he's the newest of 1,000 managers.

 

[gunsisgood]

'Murica!

^ THIS

 

[churchmouse]

Employees have the right to unionize.
The owner has to right to go out of business.

Each to their own, but personally I would never work as an employee in a union shop.
The owner should set the pay, benefits, workplace rules and decide on promotions.
Workers can decide as individuals whether they wish to work there or not.

Bingo.
Every situation is different. The work place in question was not a dangerous place past a paper cut etc.
I have worked both sides. I see the benefits every month from 20 years employment in union service businesses. Glad I stuck it out but the politics of dancing sucked. Literally.

 

[hoosierdoc]

Bingo.
Every situation is different. The work place in question was not a dangerous place past a paper cut etc.
I have worked both sides. I see the benefits every month from 20 years employment in union service businesses. Glad I stuck it out but the politics of dancing sucked. Literally.

Wait... what??

retirement benefits are NOT worth TMJ dysfunction

 

[Bapak2ja]

I have worked both union (GE plants in The Fort) and non-union (Zollner in The Fort, machine shop in New Haven, Dalton Foundry in Warsaw).

The best was Zollner while Fred still ran things. Zollner took care of its human resources, and the human resources did their best to produce a quality product at the best possible price. The workers were serious about start times, break times, lunch times—no wasting time or goofing around. When the whistle blew, they were on the job and running production. When something was not right, they fixed it; did not matter if it was the plumber's job or the carpenter's. If they knew what needed to be done to get production going again, they did it. It was a great place to work. Only left to start a new career in Asia, from which I recently retired.

The worst was that machine shop in New Haven. The owner came by during my first week there to exhort the employees. I was new, but I had to wonder who was driving that Corvette in the parking lot. When we were ordered to stand down fifteen minutes early for a meeting with the ownership I found out. It was the owner's son, who was now serving as plant manager over a couple shops. I never met a more arrogant, self-serving, egotistical, and foul-mouthed man in my life. It was all about increased production or get out. In my six days of employment there (desperate for cash and working for a temporary agency), I was told to run a drill press and hold the piece being drilled with my bare hands as the high-speed drill cut into metal only 1.75" square. When I questioned the wisdom of it, especially mentioning the edges of the metal squares were very sharp, and asked about a jig to hold the piece while drilling, I was told the company did not waste money on jigs. If I was afraid I would slice up my fingers I should use gloves. Right!

The next night I was assigned to run a grinder. There was a huge grindstone attached to a metal rod, like an axle, that was lowered onto the top of transmission covers to smooth out the edge that would be bolted to the other half of the transmission cover. On my second night there I was told to switch out the grindstone. I kid you not, the process of removing the upper stone called for me to lie prostrate under the stone while a colleague released it from the spindle. I was then required to slide it across my chest, out of the machine, so a colleague could mount a lift device and move it out of the way to a trolley. Then the new stone was lowered onto my abdomen. I was to slide it back onto position, line it up with the spindle, push it up into place and hold it there while a colleague tightened the screws that held it in place. This grindstone was over two feet thick, and more than four feet in diameter (the hands had to be placed in the normal position for doing bench presses, so you can understand how wide it was). I never did hear the actual weight of the stone, but it was clearly more than I could bench press. I told the foreman I was not strong enough to lift that stone (my 5'10" frame only carried 150 lbs back then). He took a serious look at me, agreed with my assessment, and called a big brute of a man to do the job for me. I was "trained" to do the job as two other men did it. The gorilla who was assigned to raise and lower the stone was able to lift it, but the other guy and I took too long to get the screws started (over 45 seconds) so gorilla called a halt, lowered the stone on to his massive chest, and rested for a couple minutes, just enough time to catch his breath. When he bench pressed that stone into place a second time you can bet we got the screws in FAST! During the week I worked there, we had to change that grindstone out twice. Same procedure both times. I quit at the end of the week. I told the temp agency about it, but they were unconcerned.

I prefer a union shop. Unions have their problems, and they got out of control after 1970 in the USA. I never heard of an honest one, either; but I have worked for enough bosses, both in the plants and in management, who were willing to sacrifice the limbs, families, and lives of their employees for an additional three cents on the ROI and to qualify for their stock options, that I no longer trust any management—not even in the church/mission organizations with which I served in Asia. I completed my professional career as a self-employed contract worker with a church denomination, tasked to work in Asia. I raised all my own funds, paid for all my own expenses, and had to pay my portion for the salary, benefits, travel, and office expenses for my executive director and his staff who then told me me how much I could raise for salary and how much I had to pay for his expenses and staff. I would have loved a union to help negotiate that arrangement! My director and his staff, as well as the denominational leadership, were totally opposed to unions, and often talked about the dangers of unionization and the negative impact it would have on their leadership. I just kept my mouth shut so I wouldn't be fired. A union has its benefits.

 

[femurphy77]

I disagree with this. Since we already kill something like 1.2 workers every year at my plant, and almost EVERY safety problem is addressed through the union.

Since there is a union that invests the time and resources doing this why should the company? I worked at one of the few non-union goodyear plants in North America; our wages, benefits, job security, etc were BETTER than any of the union plants. All without the honor of have to pay a monthly homage to the union and all with the ability to fire deadbeat employees as needed. Been in several unions and all they did was take. YMMV and if you're happy with yours then more power to you!

 

[BugI02]

Curious. How much of the good conditions at the plant you worked at would you attribute to the desire to keep it non-union? Would the company allow conditions to come off worse in comparison to the union shops if further unionization was not possible?

Did/do you think the good working conditions were the result of the goodness of senior managements heart, the desire and belief that a happy workforce is a more productive workforce, a cold-hearted decision to maintain conditions just good enough to stave off unionization (with attendant anti-union propaganda and an obvious steel fist within the velvet glove) or some combination of any or all of the above

Without the competing economic model of a union shop, how much do you think your former employer would have spent on employee happiness that wasn't in some way mandated

I guess what I'm really asking is, do you think Sr management would have just sent in the Pinkertons to keep the workers in line if it was legal and less expensive than the alternative?

Point being capitalism is without doubt the best system extant to live under, but it still needs a leash or it becomes exploitative

 

[Twangbanger]

So:

Now that the usual INGO blue-collar horror-story portion of the thread has run its course, and the repository of one-sided anecdotes with selected details stripped out has been exhausted...

...has anybody bothered to actually read about what kind of company and workers we're talking about here?

Because, you know...it's an internet news operation staffed by people who have degrees and mostly sit in cubicles all day. Nothing resembling the types of places discussed above. There are no Pinkertons here. No grinding wheels, Matewan coal massacres, or Pullman towns. (Which, I suspect, is the reason why the usual INGO slate of "blue" labor justice types are so far abstaining from commenting on the thread).

The question of whether the owner ran afoul of the NLRB will have to be investigated and duly reported upon. But there's a side of me who looks at this, and sees an educated, office-sitting segment of the workforce, trying to exempt themselves from the same type of "creatively-destructive" occupational uncertainty which many in their profession spent the past twenty-five years writing articles positing the "inevitability" of, for workers in other areas and occupations.

Now, the shoe is on the other foot. The unions largely could not save blue collar workers from the quote-unquote "free trade" mania that swept U.S. government policy since the 1990s. Now, changing trends in society and massive competition for advertising dollars is disrupting the white collar internet news industry. So it is fair to ask the question - why should they be exempt from this? It isn't even really a foreign entity they're seeking protection from. It's just an over-abundance of other Americans like themselves, people with journalism degrees who wish to be paid to think great thoughts. And it turns out that the economics of their industry might not be able to support such a large number of them. Thereby, driving people who work for publications like Slate and The Root to seek union representation, as a hedge against the "inevitable" repercussions to their employment prospects.

Is the owner of this company a conservative plutocratic pig? Very likely. But why was that sort of thing not a problem for the last 25 years, when it was only SUV-driving high school education Midwestern factory workers who were getting the shaft? I don't see how having stock-holders involved and Wall Street-aligned think tanks calling the ideological dance tunes - as opposed to just a single greedy, ideological individual - really makes it all that much different. It's just that here, they have a single person with known ideological beliefs to target.

I cannot tell you what the solution is, for the fact that the "working world" is not "fair." But I'm not convinced that allowing educated white collar people, whose exclusive work product is words on a screen, to carve out exemptions from reality for themselves - while other sections of society have to go suck an egg - is part of it. If the solution involves understanding each others' realities, then let the word-smiths actually live a little of the reality they've spent the last quarter-century being the mouthpiece for.

 

[femurphy77]

Curious. How much of the good conditions at the plant you worked at would you attribute to the desire to keep it non-union? Would the company allow conditions to come off worse in comparison to the union shops if further unionization was not possible?

Did/do you think the good working conditions were the result of the goodness of senior managements heart, the desire and belief that a happy workforce is a more productive workforce, a cold-hearted decision to maintain conditions just good enough to stave off unionization (with attendant anti-union propaganda and an obvious steel fist within the velvet glove) or some combination of any or all of the above

Without the competing economic model of a union shop, how much do you think your former employer would have spent on employee happiness that wasn't in some way mandated

I guess what I'm really asking is, do you think Sr management would have just sent in the Pinkertons to keep the workers in line if it was legal and less expensive than the alternative?

Point being capitalism is without doubt the best system extant to live under, but it still needs a leash or it becomes exploitative

There is NO doubt in my mind that the benefits we realized were the results of their effort to keep the union out. So for me to say the union never did anything for me is truly disingenuous. My experience tells me that when it hits the fan the union will sacrifice the lowest man on the totem pole instead of the most worthless. When United closed its doors here in Indy the union was more concerned with getting me the $10 postage due I had to pay to get my layoff notice than they were with the 3000 jobs that had been lost.

 

[Thor]

I was in the Army back when they tried to unionize us...."um, yeah, sorry sarge I can't take that hill because it's not in the contract. You'll have to show it to me...I'll file a grievance." What utter lunacy. Jimuh Cahtah though...

 

[rhino]

I was once forced into union membership without my consent. I left another job as the same thing was happening.

If I owned a business and the employees unionized, I would most likely close the business immediately and move on to something else.