Quote:
Originally Posted by Tbugs
IowaParkersburg -
Lou,
Federal government employees have the right to join a union. Look at National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) and American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). They represent their members and even non-members for violations of hiring practices, unfair labor practices, unfair promotion practices, illegal terminations, and other issues. They are a necessary force as a go-between for labor and management.
Federal union officials also testify before Congress when it is time for salaries and wages to be discussed. This is for the entire Federal workforce but union officials make their viewpoints known.
Federal unions do NOT have the right to strike.
You, as a contract officer, did not have the right to be a union member since you were considered management. However, your employees had that right.
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This is one area where, unbelievably it may seem to others in this forum, where we are in agreement.
The number of people, especially those that were in blue collar positions, who discount the value of the union to the working man is mind boggling.
I'll always say that the true power in this country is money. Those that have the money have the power. There is only one challenge to that power, and that is the power of the workers to organize. Of course, those with the money are fighting tooth and nail to undermine this challenge to their power and their allies are the Republican Party and the conservative media.
I understand that the public unions are totally different to the private unions, but we are all going down the drain together.
I am usually sympathetic to the argument that the public unions drain the money of the taxpayer who doesn't have the same compensation as the public union worker, but then in arguing this the conservative broadcaster can't resist lumping in examples of private union problems as in the case of General Motors.
Now, General Motors union employees had a lucrative deal, there is no denying that. The point is that the company, General Motors, negotiated this deal with the UAW and did not put one red cent into a fund to finance this deal. Then when General Motors began to fail and the bill became due to pay their contracted workers, they didn't have the money. Duh!!!
All you hear from the great Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the like, who I admire by the way, is that the unions killed the golden goose. I can agree that the union had a deal that might have been too lucrative, but the corporation agreed to this. Not one mention is made of the startling fact that the company didn't have a fund in place to pay for their contracted agreements. It's reported that the fault is totally with the union and that is just plain old American bull crap.
If the pension fund had been with the UAW this would never have happened. And that is because the Union would have been in the position of having to maintain the fund and it would have been their responsibility to do so. GM though didn't want to actually have to pay a set amount of money to anybody to maintain the fund and when the bill had to be paid and their pockets were empty they and their allies blamed the greed of the union.
I could go on, but this post is getting long enough