Last May we were unionized in an election that was for lack of a better word, rigged. Those that wanted to unionize knew they didn’t have the votes so they excluded our engineering and communication sections because no one in those sections supported the union. We also had 3 guys who were not allowed to vote because they were on vacation during the election. Those 3 were very vocal about not wanting anything to do with a union. We asked to have the election put off until the 3 on vacation returned, we were told no. Well we lost the election by 2 votes.
Once the union was in place they proceeded to include the engineering and comm sections during contract negotiations. These rocket scientists also proceeded to negotiate away our 5% company matching contribution to our 401k for a 5% raise.
Now they are running around dropping grievances like it’s cool. We work on a Govt contract training Marine Corps aircrews how to defeat and survive in an air to ground threat enviroment. Our daily schedule can change depending on the training needs of the Marine Corps. The Marine are very good at giving us 24 hour notice for any changes, but there are times it’s not possible. The grievances come from these schedule changes. When we signed on for the job it was explained that we would be required to shift our hours to support the Marines. It’s not like this is a big suprise to anyone. Recently the Marines asked us to man the range for longer periods of the day, so the company shifted our work week to 4 ten hour days.(I love it. I get a 3 day weekend every weekend) The company split our crews so some are off on Friday and the rest are off on Monday. This caused a major shiite storm amoung the usual suspects and is now in the grievance process.
This union has caused alot of problems. We have guys pissed at each other because one supports the union no matter what and the other doesn’t. One bright note is there are a few who voted for the union comming to our side, so when the vote to keep the union comes up in 2 years we have a great chance of getting rid of it. Screw unions, they have turned a great place to work into a hellhole in the space of a year.
bttt