Unions are like cancer, they’ll eventually kill you.

Only lazy people need them now.

Erwin, in response to your question.

Yup.

I guess so

Canada Post CUPW is not on strike!! 2300 members of the PSAC union at Canada Post are on strike and may have a tentative deal. They are the clerical and technical members of Canada Post. If Canada Post CUPW were on strike you would know it as there are 75000 employees across Canada and you would not be getting your Christmas cards.
Not all union members are lazy just like not all Private sector workers are not all greedy.
Not all union members are Socialist and many are Conservatives although they don’t brag aboutit.
Now, whether unions have a place in our Society is a matter of opinion but I’ll bet that if any of you who castigate and insult union members in large Corporations like Canada Post were to step in our shoes for a month or so you would see for yourself why unions are needed.
There are a lot of good managers at CP however there are a lot of stupid and intolerable managers who members and employees need protection from.
Like it or not that’s the way it is.
Now as far as your point that it is unwise for unions to be pushing for so much while others are losing jobs, you are right.
The Unions such as PSAC at Canada Post would be wise to accept the offer given by CP. Why?? Because it is a generous offer in these times. The sticking point is the STD or sick leave provision. CP is taking away sick days from 15 per year to 7 per year. I understand why. Abuse of sick time costs Canada Post millions per year. And yes people do abuse sick time. If I were in PSAC I’d accept the offer and advise my fellow employees to not take advantage of leave time.
I’ve been an employee at CP for 5 years and I can tell you that many of Canada Posts problems stem from their own Human Resources management and in particular their hiring practices and disciplinary practices. Front line Supervisors rarely take advantage of terminating problem employees during the Probation period. I’ve seen it time and time again. When they do, they are often handcuffed by their managers who will suggest that it’s too much trouble or they just don’t care. Clean up Management and you can clean up Canada Post but it won’t be done overnight.

Rick, thank you for your comment. I do not think all union workers are lazy, greedy or socialists. I am merely commenting on the lot that vote to go on strike. Re: your comments on why unions are needed: it works that way in any large corporation. There are lots of bad managers out there in private companies and you just have to learn to live with them, with or without a union. That’s just the way it is. Having unions (obviously) does not help in this situation, or you wouldn’t have those managerial problems at CP now.

I should have specified the PSAC portion of CP is on strike. I have changed that.

The Mrs. is union earns $8.75/hr. no benefits. She just got a mail-out from her union asking her to support the coalition and send money please. After all the coalition stands for the poor and pay equity etc. etc. TOTAL BULL Shit.

Unions are mostly “I’m OK JAck” s who don’t give a rat’s ass about union brothers and sisters never mind other workers.

All this talk of helping other poor workers is to sucker the poor workers to vote Liberal. DIPPERS vote strategically…a la BUZZ Whoregrove handing a CAW jacket to the biggest hypocrite PM Canada has ever known who balanced the books on the backs of the poor. The Liberals then give the unions what they want and screw you little worker.

How many sisters are out there earning minimum wage with NO benefits like drug plan, dental, glasses, sick time, indexed pensions. We already have a two tier health care system in this country. There’s the big unions and then there’s the rest of us. While average workers are falling behind , the unions want ever more. Who the C#$* do they think pays the bills? We don’t get the family plan when we buy the car. It’s a crime that people earning minimum wage pay income taxes at end of year to pay for the public trough feeders.

Bottom line: its not that unions are bad. The problem is with those who use unions to subvert our democracy to take the biggest piece of the pie for themselves and leave only crumbs for the rest of the workers. There’s only so much pie. That all said, the politician i respect the most is Ontario Provincial NDP leader Howard Hampton. He’s as true as they come.

The games the teacher unions play: Google “Working Families Coalition”.

Stick it to the greedy unionists who think they have it so bad and therefore are entitled. Stick it good till they realize we are sick and tired of their greed.

I think people should distinguish between Union members and Union officials.
I was a member of AUPE for 5 years and none of them volantarily. I refused to involve myself as I don’t believe in the need for unions. I am no longer in the union but my position comes under union review this January. The agreement they negotiated with my employers allowed them to review non-union positions to see if they should be union. I have no choice in this matter.
So please do not splatter all union members with the same bile.

Daryl, I am talking about those union members that vote to go on strike in these tough economic times. You obviously didn’t, so I’m not talking about you. The point of the post was that we can’t lay all the blame on union officials, since a large number of members vote with the officials to go on strike.

How many plants have closed because the unions refused to make any concessions? In some cases, the unions even refused to put management’s (very decent) offers to a vote by their members – who learned of the offer only after they and their coworkers had lost their livelihood.
The union leaders I`ve heard seem to have NO business or financial sense whatsoever.
What I don’t understand is why the rank and file unions members don’t rebel against their union bosses.

What I don’t understand is why the rank and file unions members don’t rebel against their union bosses.

This is something that puzzles me too.

There must be a lot of intimidation tactics going on.

Great post, BTW.

I sympathize with many of your comments Mr. Gerrits and take exception with some of the others. Unions are like many long-time institutions. The average member is too disinterested in the inner workings of the union’s hierarchy and, over a period of time, control gradually passes into the hands of the more radical elements who live and breath the us against them mentality.
A good portion of my life was spent as a member of a trade-craft union. The union became so radicalized that a great deal of our work went to non-union contractors. Our union tolerated chronic absenteeism, drinking on the job, and work slowdowns for no good reason. As a job steward on one particular project I was confronted with the threat of a job walk-off because the ice cream in the camp cafeteria was too hard. On another, our members were going to walk off in support of a strike by the workers in the refinery in which we were doing major revamp work. This was until it was pointed out that one of the demands of the strikers was that the company had to hire more permanent workers to do the work in which we were engaged. These idiots were going to support a strike that would take work away from our union.
Eventually the union got the message. A permanent cadre of well-trained job stewards was set up by the union. These folks now police the jobsites and have zero tolerance for workers being chronically late or absent. Drinking and drug use is no longer winked at. Job walk-offs without the intervention of a senior union delegate is forbidden. All these things now carry penalties, from completing substance abuse programs to long term suspension. The union has worked in concert with the contractors to develop safety and productivity-improvement programs and it has regained some, not all, of the lost work.
Unions can serve a useful purpose but, as the banking system has shown us all: without serious oversight and a regular housecleaning, the radical, unethical elements will undermine all the efforts and trust that have been earned by the dedicated people who work with honesty and integrity to make things better for all.

I heard on CFRA that the Salvation Army in Ottawa is going to serve half its normal number of Christmas dinners because so many people can’t get to the dinner.

Shame on the union!

The OC Transport drivers are starting to rebel against their union rep, however, you can tell they are affraid of something…

I wasn’t refering to your post. There have been a lot of people who have taken part in this type of bashing though.

A strike vote is NOT a vote on whether or not to actually call a strike. Rather, it is a vote by the membership on whether to give the
union the authority to call a strike if and when they conclude that such a step is necessary to reach an acceptable agreement.
Most union members find voting to give your union the right to strike as a necessary evil and you trust that bargaining will be done in good faith with a positive non striking outcome.

Remember Reagan with the air traffic controllers!

Any Union member on strike now or planning to strike or refusing to be part of the Auto business solution should be fired.

Now is not the time for selfish unions. In good times our governments seem to be run by the public service unions and the teachers. Well if they are intransigent now then fire them. I do not care how trained they are or even how long it takes to replace them. The US Air traffic control situation was tenuous for years but defient unions are worse and as shown will bankrupt the rest of us. Give them a week to declare if they wish to keep their jobs or let them walk. Then decertify the union.

That is what I don’t understand about the management of the Big 3 – why don’t they say – we are closing our doors unless you cut your wages and you will have to reapply for your job as non-union.

I predict that most would do so in order to have a job – if they don’t they are more about greed than needing a job.

For some reason though, it seems the management doesn’t want to do this – are they somehow more connected to the Big Union than we realize – are they somehow co-dependant, in that if they decide to “fire” the union – they don’t need the bailout?

Lots of things to make you go hmmmmmmmmm.

I am a mature university student trying to get an education degree. The faculty at my university went on strike thsi fall, putting my plans on hold. The union was without a contract from the end of April on. Instead of striking in May or June they decided to strike in September/October. Of course, this is when they have the most leverage. 3000 students were settled into their studies! All the while, the faculty claimed to be striking for better education for the students. They claimed that they felt for us!

To make matters worse, our students’ union voted to in favour of a position that supported the striking faculty. That makes no sense, suporting the group whose decision to strike has resulted in your own members missing classtime. I had some dialogue with the student union president and he had his reasons for supporting the faculty. Of course I disagreed with him. If I didn’t have my eyes on the goal of graduating and becoming a teacher, I would take a run at his job this next spring.

During the strike our premier (NPD) commented that both parties need to realize that there is a third party (the students) being affected by the strike and he went on to suggest that both sides submit to binding arbitration. The student Union president went on to say that this was very irresponsible for Premier Doer to say. Apparently binding arbitration is unfair because it usually rules on the side of the employer. This only leads me to presume that a “fair” negotiated settlement is unfair because it usually is in favour of the union.

All in all, I feel that we as students were taken for a ride by two unions; the faculty’s and our own. And I pay good money to the students’ union ever year (not my choice!)

Jim, it really makes no sense to me that the student union went to support the strike. You said the union president had his reasons, I would be interested to find out what they were.

The comments on my post make me realise more and more that unions should realy be a thing of the past and I am not sure they are still needed–labour laws in this country are designed to protect the workers–in fact, unions seem to be creating most of the problems they were intended to solve.

It seems the big unions are using something more than bagaining tools to keep their power.

Larry, thank you for clarifying the votes. Even though union members do not voto to strike but use it as a bargaining tool, they still make the decision that the current offer is not good enough and vote for a chance to go on strike to fight for more money/benefits. The point of my post was that workers in this position should realise that in these economic times they should be happy to even have a job.

I agree. They sure picked a bad time to go on strike. They picked a time to maximize the impact of their strike and inconvenience as many people as possible to create leverage. As usual, Joe Public got screwed.

It is hard to pin down what it is exactly that the president’s position was. I think that his view was that if the profs were paid more we would be able to attract better, more qualified faculty, and that, in turn, would be better for us as students. There was also fear of academic speech being stifled due to a policy known as a respectful environment policy. Truth be told, the president is a poli-sci student and has aspiriations of running for office. Being in the students’ union is his chance to step up onto a larger stage..I would never vote for him…he is(was) an avid Stephane supporter!

what Canada Post doesn’t want you to know is of their plans to PRIVATIZE. The accumulated, earned sick days show as a liability on their books. They can’t have that liability if they are going to privatize. We were on strike to ONLY keep what had already been negotiated through past collective bargaining…we weren’t asking for anything more. In the end we got stuck with the horrible short term disability plan that includes having Manulife as the administrator of the plan and Manulife will be over-riding what my doctor recommends for my healthcare. Canada Post also hasn’t told the public that the current Employment Inurance Act doesn’t permit employees to receive employment insurance when they have the accumulated sick days….so Canada Post is going to have to act fast..before 2010 and have the E.I legislation changed…does that sound right to you??? In the end Canada Post increases their profits at the employees expense and at the expense of the pubic as this new program that has us using E.I because they have frozen our accumulated, earned sick days will indeed burden all of us the tax payers.

Lori, what doesn’t sound right to me, and millions of ordinary Canadians, is that unionized people have something called “accumulated sick days”. And that is exactly the point of my original post. In this day and age, where people barely hang on to their jobs, you are on strike to keep your “earned accumulated sick days”. THAT is what is wrong with unions and people that go along with them. If you don’t see that, than the answer to my post title question is, obviously, “yes”.

Sick days are for being sick. I’ve been with the Feds for 27 years and have taken maybe 14 days sick time for the pleasure to be home barfing my guts up. Some might have a problem with that since I am after all a civil servant. I see much abuse in the private sector.

As a manager, any one who decides to abuse the sick leave requires a doctors note. Unfortunately it is the government and lawyers who will not allow me to fire lazy people. When I retire I will do so proudly knowing that many 100s of sick days have not been abused and the fact that I’ll not receive a dime for them.

I put in extra time at work every week with out renumeration to make things run smoothly while some jack ass who knows nothing about me paints me with a Canada Post lazy brush. Well it takes one to know one mom always said.

My neighbours who work in the private sector have better homes and cars than I are home more and manage vacations south in the winter, while I do not. I do however like my job, the non back stabbing co-workers and good employment conditions like heat ,light and a safe working site.

Basically the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence for people who don’t live there or want a bigger tax break for similar services. Look at the medical services in some have not provinces, people are paying from their own shallow pockets to go elsewhere while the wealthy don’t care, they have no line-up to wait in. My staff were out picking up bodies and aircraft parts from an airline crash while many watch from your cumfy living room. That’s what we gladly do, service the public. Give me a break you as know little about many of use. I sometimes wonder what it would be like to get a bonus for a job well done and going the extra mile?

Bill