Trucking And Unionization...

I actually had a driver on anther shuttle route say to me; Bro you need to take it down a notch down, you’re making the rest of us look bad

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I encountered this same scenario after working for years non union then joining the union in the building trades! My work ethic is what it is and I like to stay busy and produce results. I was getting things done 2-3 times faster then pretty much anyone else and longtime guys were not very happy with me. But when things got slow, guess who taken care of and never got laid off. When new jobs were starting, guess who’s name was on all the foreman's crew request list.

Unions do breed a level of laziness and a theres always tomorrow attitude in some people. But, there are still many motivated, hard working people who do deserve the higher pay and perks a union gig has to offer. Its unfortunate that the union makes it hard to weed out the slackers

I agree that this is a great thread! While my knowledge of the trucking industry is just beginning, it does seem a far way off from unionizing--too fragmented, as Old School says. But I likewise agree that capitalism tends to produce unhealthy monopolies and needs a counterweight, as Brett says (like the balance of power in government). I always say, "The only thing worse than a union is not having a union." Capitalism has a centripetal force that needs some counterbalance.

I was in the union when I was an adjunct instructor at a community college. When there was a budget shortfall, they wanted to balance the books on the backs of us adjuncts, already the worst-paid folks at the institution. Thanks to the union and our contract, we were able to prevent that. For the last 16 years, I've worked at a public library. This past year, the library board froze our merit increases and cost-of-living increases, even though the library's finances were more than healthy. That means that those of us working "on the front lines" in the pandemic were making functionally less because of strong inflation. Guess what? The library voted to unionize this past year.

Do unions have flaws, and do lazy workers take advantage of their protections? For sure. But without a union, the oligarchs rule unchecked. Just my two cents.

I've been conscripted into unions before, in construction. The idiots voted to go union. We framed municipal structures so we're paid prevailing wage with cash payment for Benes. My take home went from about 1600 a week to 600. None of the funds that were being taken by the union ever were seen again. Unions are by their nature, extremely corrupt, promote laziness and are a product of group think and communism. The soviets used the unions as a spring board to launch communist insurgence here from the late 40s on. Second only to our educational systems. Even today, much of union managements are not surprisingly members of socialist and communist parties, very well documented.

In terms of the trucking industry, the desire to get drivers unified in interest is far different than getting them unionized. I too don't think it's possible, given the diversity of drivers as well as the influx of non US citizens in the driving community, however, if enough drivers did decide to shut down simultaneously, it would bring the federal government's and much of the country to it's knees. As we saw transpire in NZ.

This is a great thread indeed. I’ve always prided myself in being a dedicated hard worker for any company that gave me the opportunity since I was a teenager. I put myself through college thinking it would help me get ahead in life. Regretted that decision until I got my first Union job. Before I got my degree I would be told we want someone with more education. After I got my degree they wanted someone with experience. The Union brought me in got me training and lifted me out of poverty. While it’s true there were some lazy cats in our Union, us guys who were out in the field worked hard and took pride in the work we were turning out. People talk about the lazy folks in Unions, but honestly there are just as many if not more lazy people who are not Union who do enough to get by. Another thing I have a hard time figuring out is why people complain about Unions fighting for a better life for their members but are silent when it comes to CEOs and the compensation they get. Their compensation package has to figure into pricing just as much as the men and women who actually do the hard work to make a company successful.

People talk about the lazy folks in Unions, but honestly, there are just as many if not more lazy people who are not Union who do enough to get by

This is irrefutable. The claim that unions create lazy people is provably false. I've come across lazy people looking to do the minimum in non-union jobs my entire life. So have the rest of you. So we must redact that claim. It's simply not true.

I'll tell you what happens, though. The protection of a union will bring out a person's true character. If your job is safe and yet you show up to work hard and kick ass every day, then you have a strong work ethic. If you take advantage of the protection and allow yourself to do the bare minimum every day, then you have a weak work ethic and little integrity.

But you can't blame the unions because some workers in the unions have a poor work ethic or they lack integrity. After all, non-union jobs are full of people with poor work ethics, too. Who do you blame for that? Would you say it's the worker's fault if they're non-union workers, but the union's fault if they're a union worker? You obviously can't say that.

So I'm not on board with, "Unions create lazy workers." Lazy workers exist in unions and in non-union jobs.

Another common thread you'll hear is that the unions drove the jobs to foreign countries. Let me throw an alternative out there. What if the unions were preventing the management from underpaying the workers and over-compensating themselves? So upper management moved the jobs overseas where they could underpay the workers and keep the vast majority of the money for themselves.

I believe the data may point to that being the truth. Ever since unions dissolved and jobs moved overseas, the corporations make more money than ever, upper management makes way, way, way more money than ever, and workers are making barely more than they were in the 80's.

Here's another reminder of that:

Ratio of CEO pay to worker pay

(The taller the blue bars, the bigger the gap between CEO pay and worker pay)

I've been conscripted into unions before, in construction. The idiots voted to go union. We framed municipal structures so we're paid prevailing wage with cash payment for Benes. My take home went from about 1600 a week to 600. None of the funds that were being taken by the union ever were seen again.

I was thinking about this. Do you know what this sounds like to me? An inside job, a "fake" union, created by the company.

The company brings in their cronies to lead the fake union. The fake union organizes the workers. The company pretends to be against the union. The workers take the bait. You join the union, made up of corporate cronies, and they negotiate you guys into a worse situation than you were in before. The corporation and their cronies laugh all the way to the bank.

But wait, there's more! And here's the biggie!

Not only would the corporation win big and their cronies win big, but who looks like the bad guy in all this? Unions! So what do people like yourself do in response? Tell all future workers to vote out unions! That way corporations never have to worry about the workers organizing in the future.

The corporation makes a pile of money, the cronies make a pile of money, and unions look like the bad guy in the end. What a masterful con job that would be, eh?

You must admit, it's an interesting thought. It would not be that hard to pull it off, and that sort of stuff likely happens in big corporations and government all the time. Like they say, follow the money! Well, when you follow the money in this scenario, I think they may have played you like a fiddle.

I knew the owner of our company very well, I still had my business at the time and he would occasionally hand contracts to me. Him and I both were frustrated with the choice. When it transpired, the GC had sent their people around to talk to our guys. So it's quite possible something along those lines. The GCs didn't like subbing the framing out to us, we were non union, so they basically forced us to it. I ended up in the carpenters local. It lasted a very short time as I was simply not ok with their crap.

Wow! Didn't know I'd touch off such a lively topic when I posted!!! I've kept up with the thread, but haven't had an opportunity to post until now so let me say the following... I believe in the free market, I believe in capitalism, but I'll be the first to agree that even capitalism needs just a pinch of communism in the guise of being planned in select places. What I mean is that we always talk about how a free market would work itself out if it had a problem, if it was confronted with something, but a pinch of (for lack of a better word) communism through gov't telling the market how it's going to work can establish rules that everyone agrees to or is willing to come around to. I'd like to think that a business would treat everyone fairly and equally, but really? I got in the mail the other day another piece of junk mail about refinancing my home to take advantage of lower interest rates (incidentally it's not worth it cause it's only like a tenth or so lower than the rate I have), but I was talking to a friend afterwards about housing and how rules in a capitalist society give everyone a fair opportunity at a mortgage - a fair shot but not necessarily a fair outcome as it depends upon the choices they've made, their credit history, the money they've saved or can raise and how I for example can easily make my mortgage payment because I stuck hard to my budget in relationship to what I'm pulling in every month while someone else may have to scrimp each month because they blew their budget.

I'll agree that CEO's are paid more, much more and yes even to an extreme more than the line level worker. But while I'm not going to defend those CEO's and/or managers that abuse their salary I'm also going to throw this question out there. Doesn't the CEO deserve more? It's the CEO that had to accept the risk of starting the business, has to every day work to get business to keep things going. It's the CEO that has to make the decisions regarding which direction the company goes, what the company is and isn't willing to get involved in and he/she has to make decisions about the people applying to the company and the risk they may do good for the company or not. You, you just drive a truck. If trucking company A fails, you'll simply move on to trucking company B. I've had to have this argument as a night auditor in the hospitality industry with desk clerks paid less, at times much less, than me. Until recently I was an overnight auditor for a major hotel company for some twenty years and when asked (cause you're not supposed to talk about pay but employees always do), I'd have to explain to the wide eyed measly desk clerks it's because the GM has to find someone who'll work overnight, who'll work as a professional even when no one is there to watch them, who'll take the risk of being the only person in the hotel and not have "management" to fall back on when things get tough or they have a question. I can't go, "...let me get my manager to assist you..." at 2am or when I'm dealing with an angry guest, "...oh, you want to speak to my manager? Let me get him..." As an aside it actually caused an uproar when others found our how much more I made then them, I was called into the managers office and sort of read the riot act at the fires he was having to now put out which he explained exactly as I did about the hours and the risk that I accept in working alone while they work with a fully functional hotel. We always offered to have folks work an overnight shift and see how different things are, day/night, but I never had any takers and thus they never got to see exactly "why" I earned more than they did.

Lastly, because the character counter is getting a bit close to 5500, I'll say this about unions and work ethic. I'm sure there are good unions out there, who are fair to their members and the companies they work with. But they if they exist are being drowned out by those who are bad actors. Employers, private and public alike, foolishly believed good times would always be in the future never mind what commonsense would say otherwise. There'll always be those, in a union or not, that'll seek to take advantage of things for personal enrichment, seek to do as little as they have to and yet still get paid and benefited well. I've never been in a union, and I think that will all the rules, regulations, hotlines and such, that largely but not completely unions have gone past their prime. Are they still necessary? You can make the argument they are. You can also make the argument they aren't. What's the saying? One bad apple spoils the bunch... Well whether it's race, gender, corrupt politicians, greedy CEO's, that bad union or that bad employer it's what we hear about because no one's going to be interested in, "...HEADLINE! Union and XYZ Incorporated come to fast and peaceful agreement..."

Work ethic is what you make of it. I have a good work ethic. I show up and work hard, even at jobs I don't like (like the one I have now!) just because that's how I was raised and that's the person I want to be. I've worked alongside folks who won't do things outside their departments, have blinders on and my fav, would always say "...not my job..." I wasn't raised that way by my mom or by the various hotels I've worked for in the past and to work alongside someone like that always ****ed me off cause that's how I wouldn't want to be treated by someone.

Communism never comes in pinches, once you let the tiniest bit of it inside, it will grow like cancer and consume everything.

Communism never comes in pinches, once you let the tiniest bit of it inside, it will grow like cancer and consume everything.

Exactly.

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Sir Winston Churchill