Why are so many Americans fearful/resentful of unions?

[Chan790]

47. It needed to be said. I'd highlight a further problem.

There is a seeming active antipathy on the part of organized labor to unionize or support unionization of white-collar private-sector workers even where there is already an active worker-driven effort to do so and they're reaching out to organized labor for assistance/advice. Unionizing us is the future of labor as the we (along with service sector) are the growing employment base while manufacturing recedes rapidly, fail to do it and organized labor in America will continue to recede.

I was central to one such effort when I was in banking...the bank treated us like crap. They made promises they broke to workers with no repercussions. They fired people without cause, when pushed for cause or proof...they'd say "internal security suspected theft. No, we can't give you evidence. No, we can't reveal how we know. It would cripple our ability to deter theft if we had to prove these accusations." They screwed us on raises. They created an atmosphere were if they accused you of something, you were guilty until proven innocent and seeking legal counsel was terminable. They were Goliath and we were defenseless alone.

It started as a whisper in one branch, that whisper spread from one person to two (I was #2. #1 got fired and they thought that it died with #1 until they realized there were legion.) to two branches to four to two corporate-areas within DC to about half the city. (by area. We had the majority of the branches and staff as we had downtown and the wealthy part of NW DC.) The bank was suspicious but lacked proof or any idea where the leadership was for a very long time, we were safe and we had the votes to make it happen if a vote were to occur; I literally had verbal commitments to unionize from 60% of the branch banking representatives of the major urban territory of one of the 10 largest banks in America. So we started reaching out for assistance and advice to every labor group and union we could think of realizing that nobody was quite aligned with us as a labor-base but someone might want us and others would be happy to at least give us advice. SEIU, AFL-CIO, UAW, Teamsters, IWW, UFCW (Half my family is UFCW.)...we reached out to everybody. I reached out to people on DU I knew were labor-organizers. We never got so much as a "We can't help you but 'Solidarity' and we support your efforts." letter from any of them. I felt hung out to dry.

There is nobody organizing private-sector white-collar labor and nobody wants to be the first.

I'd think this would be a coup, who wouldn't want us as it'd be a foothold being handed to them into unionization of white-collar workers, a growth segment; it'd break the dam and that union would benefit immensely. No.

Eventually, they figured out what was what and over the next several months, they sent in some wide-body tough from bank security to threaten me in trumped-up allegations, they eventually fired me without cause (and I took them "to the bank" on it in court), harassed the other key people involved until they made them miserable enough to quit or found grounds to fire them and the rest melted away as they saw the opportunity had been crushed and waited possibly for another opportunity/another day.

I've talked to labor organizers about it since I left the bank. The general response is "We'd never do that. You don't fit under what we aim to do. You're not really the kind of people we organize or want to organize." Well, you're you're unwilling and nobody else is...maybe you might want to look to that as possibly why organized-labor is shrinking.