The ethics of strike-breaking, what do you think?

[Stand_watie]

Rather than just the polar extremes of the discussion (IE 1. "union members are commie barstids" 2. "scabs must die"), let me ask for a little more nuanced opinion. Specifically, let me give the exact circumstance that I refer to.

I work for an international company that has a full range of strongly-union to strongly anti-union facilities, varying by location. My own location (Texas) is firmly anti-union. Pay, benefits, employee safety, etc are good and approximately equal at all  U.S. locations (I can't compare international locations, because I have no idea what xyz dollars a year will buy you in Brazil or Belgium or Singapore). Non-union locations like mine have better pay in an approximately even trade-off against stuff like more paid holidays (we only get 11 paid holidays, I think our Chicago plant gets four or five more), I don't know what union dues cost, so I can't figure that into the equation.

Anyway, it's a good company to work for and has treated me well for 13 years. I got an email from the plant manager yesterday, of a future possible "work stoppage" at another company location, in a union state. He'll allow ONE person from our plant to go work it if they want to. I've no interest in doing it,  but the question got me to thinking of the ethics involved. Do I have a greater responsibility to my employer or to fellow employees in a union state? I know how I feel already BTW, I'm just interested in other people's opinions.

An added factor to the question - if this work stoppage occurs, it could cost me money out of next years bonus. Overall company profitability (among other issues like safety, environmental performance, etc) is an issue figured into our annual "performance bonus" (zero to twelve % of our annual pay). Obviously the difference between zero and twelve % of (let's say for example) 60g in a lump sum check at about property tax time and new lawnmower buying time is significant to most people, myself included.      

Now let me throw this open even further to tangents (this thread was intended to be tangent-friendly anyway). I've (like most) two grandfathers, both passed away before I could know them personally, but have from second-hand experience, highest personal regard for both of them.

One of these grandfathers was of the "unionists are commies, and Roosevelt was a dirty socialist" school of thought, and the other was of the "I'm a union man to the bone, and Mr. Roosevelt is gonna save us all " school of thought. I'll let you guess which one was the transplanted-from-Tennessee to the rust belt steel-mill worker and which the New England dairy farmer. Both my parents are a little more nuanced in their opinions.

[Big_R]

Professionally speaking, employers should take a very positive view of employees who willingly go into a mess like a work stoppage or strike. 

Personally speaking, it seems to me that you owe your company only as much as your presence at that site will contribute the the operation of that facility.  If you being physically located in that plant will carry a benefit for the business, and you're OK with the situation, you should go.  If not, pass on it.

Ryan

[Stand_watie]

..
  If you being physically located in that plant will carry a benefit for the business, and you're OK with the situation, you should go.  If not, pass on it.
Ryan

Ryan, I'm not going to go, but there are a couple or three younger fellows in the plant who are a little more adventure seeking than me, who probably will be fighting over which one of them gets to go, make the extra money, get to check out SoCal and stay in a nice hotel on the company tab.

[Big_R]

Mmmmmmmm, company tabs.  I've traveled enough for work to know I don't want to do it any more.  But, I've never eaten as well as I did while on those trips.  If there are some younger folks who want to go, they will most likely get a lesson not taught in school.  You don't forget your first trip where you're not welcome.

Ryan

[Stand_watie]

...You don't forget your first trip where you're not welcome.

Ryan

You sure got that right. I went to a small, parochial high-school. Consequently, our teachers could do almost anything with us for class projects as long as it passed muster with the parents of the students. One of our civics teachers, during a segment about American unionization, took us to a local public school which had a teacher strike going, and one of the public school teachers gave us their view on the strike, and then we went out to the picket line and watched the "scabs" crossing.  It was literally frightening for a 16 year old kid to watch.

[Chuck Dye]

You have a greater responsibility to yourself and the value of your word.

I have worked in "at will" states for most of my years and have crossed a few picket lines.  When challenged, I have told the union pickets that I have an agreement with my employer that he will meet certain conditions if I, in turn, will meet certain other conditions.  Given that my employer was making good on his part the bargain we struck when I took the job, I saw, and see, no reason to renege on my word because the union has issues.  If your employer is meeting its side of the deal you struck when you took the job and that deal includes temporary duty assignments at other locations, then go.  I will leave it to you to parse the unwritten  parts of your deal.

That having been said, if you go you need to do some home work.  Get a good handle on the risks, how to manage your security while at the struck location, and what the real situation at the site is.  I once crossed a picket line where the union representing the plant workers also represented the police.  One of the picketers was the brother of one of the cops I was relying on for safety.  A trucker a few loads after mine had a steering tire shot out just a couple of hours after I left with my load.  Catastrophic steer tire failure at freeway speeds put the rig into the trees, totaling the truck and hospitalizing the driver.  I have no reason to believe it could not have been my tire.  Minimizing who and how many know your temporary residence, varying your routes to and from work while keeping a weather eye to the rearview, you know, all that stuff that sounds so hokey until it is your backside on the line.

[Stand_watie]

That is scary stuff Huck. Are you still driving for a living?

We get our raw materials entirely by rail, and ship out about 50/50 by rail/truck. It never even occurred to me until I read your post that drivers (and I assume railroad personell) are also affected by strikes. I was talking to a train guy ("engineer"?, he drives it) the other day, and they are a mixture of union and non-union guys.

[Chuck Dye]

Yes, I still drive for a living, a non-union job in Oregon, an "at will" state.  I have not had any conflicts with union personnel since leaving my last 48 state job.  I still watch my six, tho'. 

[Stand_watie]

Yes, I still drive for a living, a non-union job in Oregon, an "at will" state.  I have not had any conflicts with union personnel since leaving my last 48 state job.  I still watch my six, tho'. 

I had thought that I had heard that there was some pay increase recently regarding hazmat trucking because of security issues, is there anything to that?

Here's something you might (or might not) find ironic.. I work a job that is frequently "back-breaking", but I couldn't do your job because of my back. It's fine for heavy lifting, shoveling, climbing stairs etc, but the hardest, most painful, part (from the perspective of my back), of my work week is my commute (in a car that's probably more comfy than your rig)

[Chuck Dye]

I cannot speak to any bump in pay for hazmat work, tho' there are now a fat new  fee, background check, and additional testing(?) to renew hazmat endorsements to a CDL, Commercial Driver's License.  I have maintained a hazmat endorsement, unnecessarily, in the past because it was just too cheap and easy.  I will probably allow my endorsement to lapse next time I renew my license.

Back problems may be a greater issue in your car.  My truck, a 2000 Peterbilt Model 379 has an airbag suspension between the frame and ground, another between the frame and cabin, and yet another in the driver's seat.  Even with 14 hours in the saddle, you might find the Pete comfy.

[Stand_watie]

... has an airbag suspension between the frame and ground, another between the frame and cabin, and yet another in the driver's seat.  Even with 14 hours in the saddle, you might find the Pete comfy.

Oooh! maybe I could get one of those suspensions for my riding mower.

Just curious, maybe you can answer this in a way that's not too personal to you (if not, ignore it) - if I walked into a Peterbuilt shop today with as much cash as I needed, what would be my approximate out-the-door price for that year/model truck? I had the impression that the initial outlay to buy a truck was huge...like the price of a nice house.

[Bogie]

Yeah - real trucks ride NICE...
 
I personally didn't worry much about union/non-union until one day... I was working for a consulting company, mapping out the right way to do some stuff, and a person walking into a stairwell dropped some notebooks. I helped the person pick them up. I got grievanced for that.
 
Fine.

Where before I might have considered not shopping somewhere, whatever, now I breeze right on past.
 

[HankB]

My late grandfather was a union steward.

When he was facing forced retirement - just a few short months before an enhanced pension plan was to be implemented - the union did nothing for him.

Zero. Zip. Nada.

So he "retired" with substantially fewer benefits.

But the story gets better . . . or worse.

A couple of months after his forced retirement, a couple of what he'd thought of as "friends" from the union came by his house. You see, he'd stopped paying his union dues - which bought a retiree nothing - and these two goons had the chutzpah to stop by and try to collect his past dues, so he could "keep the tradition going" and even offered to set up a payment plan. They were rather insistent about it, too, and demanded he sign some papers they'd brought with them.

Amazed he didn't get arrested for bouncing these goons down the stairs when he physically threw them out, but that was the end of it.

I've also encountered some other union types myself on the job, and were I candidly to express my opinon of unions in this forum, I would, without question, draw the ire of the moderators.

That some other posters have expressed a fear for their safety if they cross a picket line speaks volumes about unions and their memberships, and further reinforces my opinion of them.

[Chuck Dye]

Hey, why organize crime when organizing labor is legal and soooo profitable?  Unions, whatever good they may do in their early days, quickly become predators parasites that prey on members and employers with equal vigor.

[Stand_watie]

My late grandfather was a union steward.

When he was facing forced retirement - just a few short months before an enhanced pension plan was to be implemented - the union did nothing for him.

Zero. Zip. Nada.

So he "retired" with substantially fewer benefits.

But the story gets better . . . or worse.

A couple of months after his forced retirement, a couple of what he'd thought of as "friends" from the union came by his house. You see, he'd stopped paying his union dues - which bought a retiree nothing - and these two goons had the chutzpah to stop by and try to collect his past dues, so he could "keep the tradition going" and even offered to set up a payment plan. They were rather insistent about it, too, and demanded he sign some papers they'd brought with them...

Ughh. Think back to the "golden age", Rockerfella era of American employment circa (?) 1880 -90, and how employers (according to Hollywood, I don't know for fact) treated employees. Kind of lends credence to that Who song lyric "..here comes the new boss, same as the old boss..", yes I know, stolen from Orwell.

[MechAg94]

My Dad was in a journeyman union for his entire career.  Lucky for him I guess it was on the construction side of things so when he was a foreman, he had some control over who he had working for him.  He currently has a decent pension and reasonable insurance in retirement so at least the union held up their end on that. 

He always had the attitude that if he didn't make sure the company made money, then the company wouldn't be able to afford to hire him.  He would be the first to say that many in the union didn't think that at all. 

[MechAg94]

I have also talked to some of the construction managers in my company's construction group.  Most of them feel that using a union contractor only means poor workmanship and the potential for sabotage.  When they bid a construction job, they actually have to make sure the contractors are brought in separately.  It seems sometimes the union contrators will intimidate the non-union guys. 

Unions certainly can still have a good purpose and can do some good things for workers, but I think a lot of them fall very short of what they could do and simply leach off the workers and attack the companies.  I have never been there, but I have heard that the AFL-CIO headquarters is a virtual palace. 

[Stand_watie]

...He always had the attitude that if he didn't make sure the company made money, then the company wouldn't be able to afford to hire him.  He would be the first to say that many in the union didn't think that at all. 

I don't care whether you're pro or anti union, that better be a consideration for you. I always say, "If uncle (name of my company) is making money on this unit, that's job security for me, if not, I had better start looking for a new job"

The reverse of that is this (and maybe I overthink it, but I don't think so), is that all it takes from me to hurt a whole lot of people is a single moment of stupidity. If I put my little pinkie finger too close to a 480 line and jump a spark and kill myself, so what, right? It's just me and my daughter who will pay (and I have good life insurance so she'll only pay by not having a dad, right?) right? Wrong. Me killing myself at work will cost my employer a couple of million bucks. It will put a couple of my friends (or other employees I don't know who are just like them) out of work - food off of their table. Or maybe I just forget to close a valve and cause a minor environmental accident. So I killed a few fish right? Big deal, right? Except that that one cost the company 10 or 20 million and put a hundred of my friends and co-workers on welfare.

[MechAg94]

I'm with you there.  A lot of people put a lot of effort into keep chemical plants running reliably.  It takes a lot less to shut them down or destroy equipment. 

[Stand_watie]

Unions certainly can still have a good purpose and can do some good things for workers, but I think a lot of them fall very short of what they could do and simply leach off the workers and attack the companies.  I have never been there, but I have heard that the AFL-CIO headquarters is a virtual palace

Two different statements by you, but they both tie in nicely, actually.


Regarding unions having a good purpose, they do, in exact inverse proportion to how good the employer is. Employees of good employers don't need unions. Employees of despots need unions.

I'm with you there.  A lot of people put a lot of effort into keep chemical plants running reliably.  It takes a lot less to shut them down or destroy equipment. 

And then our business goes to China. Where they don't have unions. Which they need, to combat their despotic employers.

 

[roo_ster]

IMO, my decision to go nor not would be heavily influenced by the risks involved.  My current employer has no moral claim to pressure me into a dangerous situation.

I am not unsympathetic to some unions & strikes, especially safety concerns for the workers.  Butt, I think MechAg and SW have covered some of my concerns.  Like SW wrote: a good employer's employees need no union.  A bad employer's do.

[Art Eatman]

In general, the realities of the industrialized world before the 1930s fully justified the creation of trade unions.  But that was then and this is now.  Today's world sees union demands which have too much "spoiled brattism" built into them.

The behavior of union locals' people during a strike easily degenerates into mob behavior and violence.  Not always, but it would be wise to check the history of a given area as to past behavior.  It's commonly not a big problem in the early days of a strike, but as time goes on it can get ugly.

Stand_watie, just remember that those folks in other states, other operations, don't really give a hoot if you live or die or lose your own job.  Figure out what's best for you and your own career.

Art

[Otherguy Overby]

It occurs to me unions are probably incorporated and therefore can get NFA weapons where they are legal. 

Both the US and Canada enacted gun control in 1934.

[Chuck Dye]

NFA weapons

Say WHAT?

[cordex]

My impressions of modern unions are uniformly negative.

As a kid living in West Virginia and Indiana, I remember being told stories by former union "employees."  They gleefully recalled assaulting innocent people, sabatoging their employers' equipment, damaging vehicles (owned by management, vendors and "scabs" alike) and generally attempting to terrorize anyone who disagreed with them in order to cow management into giving in to whatever their demands were that week.  I've got some distant relatives who still like to talk about their destructive ingenuity in support of unions.

My mother-in-law works in the front office of a small-town elementary school.  The school recently offered the teacher's union a raise (around 2-3%, I think) and the non-union office staff got a 1.5% raise.  The teachers turned their raise down (it wasn't big enough and they had some other demands that weren't met) and went to the newspapers complaining that the office staff had received such a huge raise when the poor, honest, hardworking teachers - who are, after all, the important employees - hadn't been given so much as a dime.  You don't get what you won't accept, idiots.  And these people are teaching America's kids?

I'm sure that there was a time when unions were useful, less criminal and less deceitful, but I doubt anyone on this forum can remember those times.

I would have no problem working in place of employees who refused to do their job, as long as I was confident that my life would not be at great risk.

The March chapter of The Big U has an amusing fictional account of a university strike.