Are you in a union? Do you follow their orders mindlessly?

I personally would not join a union. My family has had no good experiences with unions. My neice's life was threatened when my oldest brother who owned a bank would not go along with one of their money laundering plots. I detest being told how to think, what to do, and who to do it with. I desest the grab for political power and what that is doing to our country. I detest what unions do to individuals who work hard and still get passed over for promotion and raises because of seniority. My son put in for a lead man job and was passed over for a man who had been there forever. He was told to train this man. He refused. Said to them, I went to school, paid money to learn what I know. Let him do the same. Unions are part of the reason America is in the economic condition it is in.

we need union with out them the evil corporations will make us work 20 hrs a day and make our kids start work at 3yrs. .... come on. yes I was in a union and while some of the benefits were great I hated the fact that they held us over a fire. our dues went to things that I didnt support. and the fact that no matter how useless you are the employers and get rid of you.no I never went on strike it was illegal for us. I was in the Teamsters who when we changed unions to them they got rid of our union president and if we needed anything we had to go directly to the union rep Pauly ( go figure)

I've been in a union for every job I've had but one since I've been an adult. At the plant where there was no union there were people who had been there for decades and were still making minimum wage or very slightly above; minimum wage was $3.35 at the time, by the way. Sewing machine operators like myself were bounced around from one job to another so we couldn't possibly get to where we could make a halfway decent wage on piece rate. Conditions were horrible; we literally froze in the winter and suffocated from the heat in the summer. Luckily, I didn't work a whole summer there because I left in May after having started there the previous October. If there would ever have been a fire there it would have been horrific. There were bundles all over the place, blocking the aisles and making it nearly impossible to even walk from one machine to another without having to crawl over something. Sure, OSHA came to inspect now and then but somehow management always knew in advance and then and only then was the mess miraculously cleaned up. In all my years as a union member, starting with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union and ending with the National Association of Letter Carriers, I never went on strike. We were urged to boycott a brand of men's trousers years ago because they were being made for pennies a day in a foreign country. Before I started at the post office there apparently had been talk by some in the NALC to support the air traffic controllers union but they never went on strike. As you know I'm sure, it's illegal for postal workers to strike. We were asked to make a donation to their political fund and usually most of the carriers in my office would give a big $2 but nobody was required to do so. Our union magazine and local newsletter would publish the voting records of those running for election and they'd give their opinions as to who the best candidates for workers were but we obviously could make up our own minds by reading the information provided in their publications and doing our own research. If I had it to do all over whether I'd over go on strike or participate in a boycott would depend on the circumstances and my personal situation at the time so I can't really answer your question so broadly. Let's just say it certainly wouldn't be automatic that I'd go along with the union's advice to strike but neither would it be totally out of the question. The one thing for sure is that I'd make up my own mind, as I always have. Annie

When I was in A construction Union many years ago, the union reps were the negotiators between the workers and the general contractors. Today, a union, especially a municipal union, is nothing more than a PAC (political action committee) for the democrat party.