The article fails to mention at all from the modest skim I gave it, so uhh, why exactly are they maybe going on strike?
It seems the Union was renegotiating the contract, and the steel companies just will not budge on anything. The union cites that the companies are on track to report record profits, but are refusing to move an inch on anything the Union brings forth after 3 months of negotiations, so they've halted the futile negotiations in favour of this, to apply pressure to the companies presumably.
All this vote is doing is potentially giving the Union the power to go on strike if it's deemed necessary, which it almost certainly will be.
Contract agreement for labor. It expired on the 1st. According to the union the empass is because of personal insurance.
I don't really know anything about union laws: Can the Steel companies simply hire non-union workers?
Non-union employees typically can't do union jobs, which is an agreement between the union and company.
If they wanna purge all of their employees and bring in new ones and can get the government to go along with it, ya they can. It happened to my Dads workplace 10 years ago. This is pretty hard right now since these kind of workers are in high demand.
And end up having to train them, most tradesmen get school training and then join one of local unions, and then its forward.
I don't know about steel in particular, but I know that when my dad's union went on strike (which felt like every few years because the company was a colossal piece of shit who tried to abuse its workforce as much as possible all the time), the mill would hire what is referred to as scabs to temporarily work the positions that were left open by the strike.
Most scabs are poorly trained and educated, and rather desperate to work - after all, the union is striking for a reason, and these scabs don't care and work the jobs anyways. They also tend to make the company look bad, and depending on the total context, can actually hurt the company in the end. Especially if the scabs end up doing their jobs so poorly that they break things.
you can also get your ass kicked if you get caught scabbing.
I can confirm that as well. My parents were part (retired after 30-ish years) of a major telecom company and they did the same thing. Needless to say once the scabs were brought in, they had some major issues that needed un-breaking. In the short term (a week or so), it can be fine. But long term strikes, they'll cause some decent damage especially when they bring in 3 guys to cover 10 guys jobs.
The guys on strike ended up collecting big time on overtime to fix and have the customer test to make sure it actually works instead of the customer trusting them like they did for years (they burnt a couple bridges this way since it showed the company didn't care it wasn't done right the first time).
Yeah, I didn't even get into the social politics of scabbing. I think the general attitude of the definitions on that UrbanDictionary page I linked to sums it up.
But in a nutshell, to a lot of people - especially striking union workers - scabs are literally scummier than dirt. It sort of goes back to that "poorly educated and desperate to work" thing I mentioned, because scabbing is a pretty-much-guaranteed way to make sure everyone hates you. And things can get pretty nasty for scabs, especially with the stress of the company trying to fuck the workers over to the point of them deciding striking is the best option.
No one wants to strike, so blood pressures are usually pretty high when it gets to that point. It doesn't take much to set people off then, and scabs are often one of the easiest targets for that frustration. Well, scabs and middle-management.
Maybe, but the chances are any non-union workers worth piss probably already have jobs.
USW may also include jobs like structural steel workers, and I would be amazed if employers could scrape together functioning crews. As previously mentioned, most non-union workers would be employed already, and unskilled laborers would basically just break everything and cause a major net loss for any jobs they work on. Either way things go they'd wind up with an understaffed labor force that's far less component.
This shit is so dumb. I was going to work at a place over the summer a few years ago, and they had a union. The union provided literally no benefits until you'd been there 8 months. So I said I wouldn't join. Got threatened when someone found out.
Didn't work there a week. Mission accomplished for the union I guess. Apparently a bunch of redneck thugs stroking their dicks in self righteous fury is more important than getting a job done.
Pretty much this. If you're truly good at an in demand job, you can find a job anywhere. The best companies I've worked for were filled with people from a couple of local unionized government contractors, and they all to a T said they would never ever go back.
You most likely weren't going to get benefits immediately because why waste resources on someone who may or may not stay. 8 Months is a fairly standard policy. Hell my part time non-union waited 2 years to give me basic benefits.
i hope the union can bend them over their knees
I'm not going to pay dues to an organization that will not benefit me.
Except they categorically do help everyone.
(news articles based on two of those papers)
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-mark-pocan/who-benefits-from-strong_b_11831706.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/06/business/labor-unions-income-inequality.html
Systemically helping a whole group is not the same as helping in individual cases. That's literally one of the backbones of game theory.
So, again why should I pay dues to a union that will not benefit me for a temporary contractor position in an industry I'm was only tangentially involved in? There's no way that you can rephrase that without making it sound like a protection racket.
Good. Labor needs to be rebuilt as a political force.
We should go a step further and create a social-democratic party to undercut both parties, seizing on the rising consciousness of the disaffected white working class and binding it to a wider progressive movement.
If you're expecting a Union who has to represent all of the workers including non union ones to give you benefits immediately. You're fucking stupid.
This is why America is in the state it's in right now.
Unions have been on a steep decline since the 70s, because right to work laws (so you can get union benefits without paying), corporate propaganda, and unions just getting a bad rap for corruption.
People just don't want to spend their cash of things like unions of infrastructure or education, it's American individualism.
It's mental illness.
Honestly, considering how the military gets a bigger budget every year and likely has tens of billions in waste and unaccountables since its never been audited, it's a bit understandable. Of course most
conservatives are fine with military spending, it's the welfare state, regulatory agencies, and education/infrastructure they don't want to fund.
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