Given that union membership is relatively low nowadays, I wonder if a certain amount of romanticizing the past happens from people not intimately familiar with these institutions. I’ve been a union member almost my whole adult life, and it’s not all stickin’ it to the man. There is a lot of bullshit. Good lord so much bullshit.
In my last local I remember going to the union for a committee meeting in the middle of the morning. The paid president of the local was sitting in his office staring at the wall. When I left an hour later, he was still sitting and staring at the wall. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to do something about him. And the things I heard the vice-pres and sec-treasurer say. The whole mentality was that everyone was just going to do the absolute minimum to not get fired and anything more than that was met with “well they should pay us more”. If you at all cared about quality, or take pride in doing good work in your life, or had any sense of professionalism (I believe if you agree to do a job for certain compensation, you should do it well, not take the job and then half ass it) it was soul killing. I will admit my current local is a little better. A larger local up the freeway is corrupt to the bone and has done its level best to drive work away.
Edited to add: as a bonus, my union also lobbies for extending copyright and associated enforcement mechanisms, so there is that. Ugh.
Sorry if this little rant is getting too OT.
