I didn't read the entire article, but speaking as someone that was part of a union back in the day, it's both good and bad I guess.
It's good because it's nearly impossible to for you to get fired (from what I remember). Which means an employer can't fire you for piddly reasons. They have to have a legitimate reason. And they're there to make things better for you.
Course I do have complaints about my union, for instance, why in the world was I paying back dues when I had never been in a union before? There's no way they could have mistaken me for either of my brothers, who also worked for that company. For the first few months I pretty much didn't see any money because it all went to union dues, back dues, initiation fees and plane old dues.
Course the upside was that I got a raise something like every couple months. Granted it was something like 20 cents (I think) an hour, but in no time I made it up to 6/hr from 4 something.
Course a downside was I passed bagger's max when I was FINALLY pormoted. I watched as 2 guys were promoted over me, one who started a day or 2 before me, and the other one started AFTER me. I once asked when I was going to get my promotion and was told that the delay was due to the change in managers.
After I was finally promoted I went through checker training. What a joke. I picked it up first time around. So I spent what felt like a lot of time just standing there waiting as the only other person in my 'class' was going through it, getting more training because she wasn't picking it up as fast as me. So when I sat down on the end of the cashier, said witch of a manager came by and told me to get off, that I had to stand. Never mind the fact that my legs were dead and my knees were starting to bother me from standing there, locking 1 at a time. So I stood.
She came by later and caught me looking through a magazine, with my back turned to the register I was traning on. She again had something on the nasty side to say to me. She then more or less warned me that I better be good at the register. It was nice to know the girl training me didn't stand up for me.
So I showed that witch. Not only was I good, others with seniority over me had nothing but good things to say about me, but I was fast. I'm not exagerating when I say I was put on register 2 to cover this guy's break, and there was a line going back down the aisle for both 1 and 2 (both express lanes). I had 2 cleared out in less about 10 minutes and people from 1 were coming over to me because their line was moving so slow.
When the guy came back from break he basically had an empty lane.
Last edited by Batwoman; 2005-06-13 1:36 AM.
