On Oct 31, 2011, at 3:31 PM, MICHAEL YATES wrote:
> Here is something UAW dissident Greg Shotwell just wrote about labor leaders and OWS. What do people think of this?
Sounds right.
My last experience with a US union was [in '85] as a newly elected shop steward for a second shift at FMC's Bradley vehicle assembly line in San Jose. I sat through a contract negotiation, and when the contract was approved, the treasurer of the union - also a steward - transferred from his day shift to the second shift and ran against me in some sort of recall election. I was fired shortly after his election.
My problem started because I remembered receiving [months before the contract negotiations] a letter from the company, describing a plan to draw on funds from the hourly employee pension funds to purchase back shares to distribute to the salaried workers as an ESOP. None of the other hourly employees seemed to have any knowledge of the letter, which I had misplaced by the time I recalled it during pre-negotiation meetings. The business agents in charge of the negotiations ignored me, until I got some info from a stock broker or a prospectus or something, to document my assertions. Even then they only paid passing mention to the issue during planning or negotiations.
I think that I must have received my letter mistakenly - perhaps there was some confusion in their mail merging data. But the company stripped the pension fund to buy stock for salaried staff. And I got fired, for arguing that the stripping of the pension fund should be a core issue in the negotiation. I was fired with the collusion of the union in the process - a union which certainly had knowledge of the pension issue.
As a new steward I didn't know how to spread the issue of the pension funds to the shop floor, since the union negotiated under a 'gag' rule. I still gag when I think about *that* job.