Hello, my name is John, and I am a union member.
That may sound like I am making light of alcoholism. Truly I am not. It just feels like some times I have to confess it. I am also a born again believer, I don't however feel the need to confess that, in fact I am proud of that.
Last weekend I spent my time at Watrous in a convention with my union brothers and sisters discussion solidarity, and what we could do corporately to the "man" to make our plight better.
We talked about policy and brought forward resulotions that we want our union to lobby the government on. These were not all bad resolutions, but a lot of them I could not vote for. But it was immaterial how I voted. It was kind of like trying to stop the water from falling over Niagara falls with one bag of sand. Unions are LEFT wing organizations, always have been, and probably always will be. I on the other hand lean more to the right. That is the dilemma I have. How does a right winger like me belong to a left wing organization? Did I mention that I am on the executive of our local? No? Well I am. I took the job because I wanted to bring a little balance to our organization. Unions a lot of times are about protecting the worker at all costs. I am all for protecting the worker against no neck employers, but sometimes we forget that we came to the employer asking for work and promised to do a fair days work for the pay that no neck was offering. I don't think I would like to work for my present employer without the benefit of my union, but I have worked for employers before who were very good to their employees. Treated us more than fair all the time.
At this convention, it seemed that anything the NDP had done, or was doing, or would have done had they been elected, was met with hand clapping and amens. While everytime the Conservatives of any stripe were mentioned, the room broke out in a chorus of boo's and hisses. How can we be so narrow minded? Must I turn in the portion of my brain marked "free will" when I sign on the dotted line? I don't understand. Not sure if I ever will. But until something better comes along, I will keep my union membership and try to remember that I work for my employer and not for the union.
Last weekend I spent my time at Watrous in a convention with my union brothers and sisters discussion solidarity, and what we could do corporately to the "man" to make our plight better.
We talked about policy and brought forward resulotions that we want our union to lobby the government on. These were not all bad resolutions, but a lot of them I could not vote for. But it was immaterial how I voted. It was kind of like trying to stop the water from falling over Niagara falls with one bag of sand. Unions are LEFT wing organizations, always have been, and probably always will be. I on the other hand lean more to the right. That is the dilemma I have. How does a right winger like me belong to a left wing organization? Did I mention that I am on the executive of our local? No? Well I am. I took the job because I wanted to bring a little balance to our organization. Unions a lot of times are about protecting the worker at all costs. I am all for protecting the worker against no neck employers, but sometimes we forget that we came to the employer asking for work and promised to do a fair days work for the pay that no neck was offering. I don't think I would like to work for my present employer without the benefit of my union, but I have worked for employers before who were very good to their employees. Treated us more than fair all the time.
At this convention, it seemed that anything the NDP had done, or was doing, or would have done had they been elected, was met with hand clapping and amens. While everytime the Conservatives of any stripe were mentioned, the room broke out in a chorus of boo's and hisses. How can we be so narrow minded? Must I turn in the portion of my brain marked "free will" when I sign on the dotted line? I don't understand. Not sure if I ever will. But until something better comes along, I will keep my union membership and try to remember that I work for my employer and not for the union.
posted by John at 5:25 PM
4 Comments:
Well John, I have never worked under a union but I do at least know that they were designed to protect the worker and that they have been badly abused. I don't think any of us has to look very far in this world to see where laws have been created to protect the innocent and then somehow things have gone way too far and they take on a life of thier own and turn around to bite us. The child rights laws was there to protect children who were being abused so now in some countries, it is illegal to spank your kids. Now we have teenagers growing up totally with out any discipline or regard for any authority figure and they are protected against the horrific crimes they commit by the young offenders act. The whole womens lib thing started out to be not a bad thing but again it just became this monster of a thing that has destroyed so many families. We haven't travelled a huge amount but enough to know that although Canada is still 'the 2nd best place in the world' to live, we have seen places where governments are run differently and you have to wonder why things seem to be so much better there when by our standards they are doing every thing wrong. Take Singapore for example. Yes it is illegal to chew gum there or spit on the streets. It's a $500 fine for that and they do enforce it.If you are cought trafficing drugs, it's the death penalty. If they tried that here it would go over like a lead balloon. But we noticed that people were very happy, teens were very well behaved, streets were amazingly clean and they all felt safe. There is almost no crime as they have zero tolerance for it. People move there because it's such a safe place to raise kids yet us westerners think of it as very oppressive. They seem to have a lot more freedom than we do. It's like South Africa. They have burgler bars on every window in their home and even in their hallways because the burglers will go on the roof, cut a hole and come down into the house. They want to be in the living area where the most valuable stuff is to steal so the people have to barricade themselves into the back of the house to protect themselves. Who really are the ones in jail?? We had friends there that shot a guy trying to steal their car and when he called the cops, the cops said they had no vehicle to come and get the guy so could Doug bring him down himself.
So I know that this all really has nothing to do with union other than something that was meant for good has been turned to evil. But God says that what Satan intended for evil, God will turn to good. So we have hope. PTL!!
I have to agree. The unions were put there to protect workers who were being treated unfairly. But, in the same breath I have to say, that in some cases the Unions have a bit too much power, and this allows workers to stay put, when they really should not be working there.
They have their strong points, and they have their not so strong points. Not sure if one can balance the two.
I did work for a Union when working at the Airport. And though I had not been in a Union before, it was weird to be in one. But I also heard lots of people complaining about how the company was treating them, so I said "Go talk to your Union about it." No use grumbling about stuff, if you can't go to your Union and see if there is a way to deal with the issue. Duh!!
Some very good thoughts.
Keep up the good work, John.
MK
I have mixed feelings about unions. They do protect the workers against exploitation and bad working conditions, but they also protect bad employees. Once you are represented by the union it's almost impossible for an employer to get rid of a bad employee. I think the original idea of union protection has become completely misconstrued. All I can say is that as long as strong Christian men and women represent us in the union we should see more fairness for both the employer and employee. Keep up the good work.
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