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Hostess

BigRedBuster

By BigRedBuster,
in Politics & Religion

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Ulty Backup

Ulty

Posted
Posted

I used to work for a corporate investigations firm, and when we had to go into a facility to interview alleged wrongdoers, we'd have to deal with the unions - most of our cases were in factories with strong unions, and most of our bad guys were drug dealers, gang members, etc. The Supereme Courthave held, under a case called Weingarten, that union employees have a right to union representation in any meeting during investigatory interviews, so we'd often have union stewards sitting in while we talked to the bad guys. Many times, they obstructed the process.

 

I remember one case in particular where we had a guy admit to working on a factory production totally wacked out on drugs, and he had also sold drugs to coworkers and had been responsible for injuring coworkers because of being under the influence and being a part of others being threatened by the pro-drug community in the factory. The union rep stood up for his druggie brother and threatened to have his union buddies shut down production if the investigation continued or if the company started firing employees based on the damning stuff we found (and there was mountains of evidence in additino to the employees outright admitting what they had done).

 

The union steward said to us: "I don't give a f#&k about this company. I only care about the union."

 

At the end of it all, we had done our investigation very well and had billed approximately $50,000 to the factory for our efforts. We found lots of bad guys, drugs, evidence of other crimes, and policy violations up the yin-yang. The company did not discipline a single person, let alone fire anyone. They were afraid of the union, despite having full rights to fire people. They also should have fired the guy who specifically said (on recording and in front of a supervisor) that he didn;t care about his job.

 

Now, I am liberal on most issues and generally pro-labor, and unions do serve a valid purpose, but sometimes (often?) they get too big for their britches and go beyond what they were supposed to do. If the purpose of a union is to protect the workforce and ensure people have safe and fair working conditions, one would think a good union rep would be outraged at the employee who admitted to selling and using drugs on the job, because it endangers his fellow workers and the workforce altogether. In the case og Hostess, a good union would see the forest beyond the trees and think that keeping the job for now is better than shutting down entirely, and maybe keep up on diplomatic negotiations with the company (easier said than done, and perhaps Hostess management were being strong-armed asses, I haven't read enough about it), but in either case, the result is certainly not in the best interest of the workers.

 

In my example above, I ran into many similar situations in other investigations where the unions had the same attitudes and enabled (or even encouraged) illegal or inappropriate behavior and held management hostage, as opposed to actually making the workforce and the workplace better. To be fair, I've seen quite a few good union reps who care about their work and their employers, but the problems I often saw were from the largest and strongest unions. Corruption and power became more important than quality of work conditions. It happens too often.

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beanman Starter

beanman

Posted
Posted

I used to work for a corporate investigations firm, and when we had to go into a facility to interview alleged wrongdoers, we'd have to deal with the unions - most of our cases were in factories with strong unions, and most of our bad guys were drug dealers, gang members, etc. The Supereme Courthave held, under a case called Weingarten, that union employees have a right to union representation in any meeting during investigatory interviews, so we'd often have union stewards sitting in while we talked to the bad guys. Many times, they obstructed the process.

 

I remember one case in particular where we had a guy admit to working on a factory production totally wacked out on drugs, and he had also sold drugs to coworkers and had been responsible for injuring coworkers because of being under the influence and being a part of others being threatened by the pro-drug community in the factory. The union rep stood up for his druggie brother and threatened to have his union buddies shut down production if the investigation continued or if the company started firing employees based on the damning stuff we found (and there was mountains of evidence in additino to the employees outright admitting what they had done).

 

The union steward said to us: "I don't give a f#&k about this company. I only care about the union."

 

At the end of it all, we had done our investigation very well and had billed approximately $50,000 to the factory for our efforts. We found lots of bad guys, drugs, evidence of other crimes, and policy violations up the yin-yang. The company did not discipline a single person, let alone fire anyone. They were afraid of the union, despite having full rights to fire people. They also should have fired the guy who specifically said (on recording and in front of a supervisor) that he didn;t care about his job.

 

Now, I am liberal on most issues and generally pro-labor, and unions do serve a valid purpose, but sometimes (often?) they get too big for their britches and go beyond what they were supposed to do. If the purpose of a union is to protect the workforce and ensure people have safe and fair working conditions, one would think a good union rep would be outraged at the employee who admitted to selling and using drugs on the job, because it endangers his fellow workers and the workforce altogether. In the case og Hostess, a good union would see the forest beyond the trees and think that keeping the job for now is better than shutting down entirely, and maybe keep up on diplomatic negotiations with the company (easier said than done, and perhaps Hostess management were being strong-armed asses, I haven't read enough about it), but in either case, the result is certainly not in the best interest of the workers.

 

In my example above, I ran into many similar situations in other investigations where the unions had the same attitudes and enabled (or even encouraged) illegal or inappropriate behavior and held management hostage, as opposed to actually making the workforce and the workplace better. To be fair, I've seen quite a few good union reps who care about their work and their employers, but the problems I often saw were from the largest and strongest unions. Corruption and power became more important than quality of work conditions. It happens too often.

Seems that your experiences are the same as mine. At the plant I worked at, half the union employees had guns in the facility, smoked pot while at work, drank while at work, and of course wouldn't lift a finger half the time if you asked them to do their jobs. I hope all those f'ers are out of work soon too; they don't deserve employment. They are worthless pieces of sh#t and I'm glad I'm not working in a union facility anymore. Those people were the highest compensated of 38 plants worldwide and had the lowest output of any 38(which included 3rd world countries). That place drove me near the brink of insanity with the hours I had to put in while they were all making more money than me even with my Engineering degree. I had to sit through hearings with the union, and it was impossible to get someone fired even when you had them on video doing something wrong for the 10th time.

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Ulty Backup

Ulty

Posted
Posted

Having said what I said above, in 100% of the investigations I worked on with that job, and even years later when I worked for the state of Nebraska investigating employment discrimination, serious problems in the workforce could always be traced to upper management. It starts at the top. Good businesses with good management either have a good relationship with their unions or keep the workforce satisfied enough that they don't want to form a union. In my example above, management was weak and incomptent, allowing the union to basically take over the entire culture and fill the leadership void. Corrupt unions don't exist in a vacuum.

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