General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why your job sucks: Sub shop employees fired two days before Christmas. [View all]trekbiker
(768 posts)14 years ago the engineers in my workgroup elected to go union. We are all degreed professionals, about 90 of us in this particular classification in my company (large fortune 500 corporation). A series of management missteps and incompetence over a period of years led to the very difficult process of leaving management and joining the union. We then spent the next 10 years fighting with management for fair pay scales using industry averages (not the completely bogus industry averages the company regularly forced upon us). The dirty tricks and deceptions employed by management during this time convinced the 40 percent of the engineers that voted against going union to change their minds from anti to pro union so that now my group is near 100 percent pro union. There are the usual problems being in a union, hard to fire incompetent engineers, high performers paid the same as poor performers, etc. But the advantages FAR outwiegh the dissadvantages. I myself benefitted from union protection when a certain management supervisor came after me with some false accusations.
Since my group succeeded in leaving management and joining the union nearly every technical group in my company has done the same, nearly 900 of the formerly management technical professionals are now in the union.