Wednesday, November 5, 2008
What it means to be a part of IAM Local 735
I’d like to offer a place for people to tell their stories about what the Union means to each of us. TS1 has a really good story about an experience she had with the IAM Union Family on her blog. I’d like to invite others to tell their stories too by commenting on this blog. You can read her story by going to http://ts1blog.blogspot.com
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What the Union Means to Me
I scrapped some parts once. It was an honest mistake and I owned up to it. I even went in to explaining why it happened and how we might avoid making the same mistake again. It was the first thing I had scrapped in the 8 years and I haven’t scrapped anything since.
My boss said that he regretted that he would have to write me up, but that there would be no disciplinary action and that after a year (or 6 months; I don’t remember now) he would throw the write-up away, as long as I didn’t scrap anything else. This seamed reasonable to me. In fact, this was what they normally do.
When I came in to work the next day, things had changed. The department manager had overridden the frontline supervisor’s decision about the written-verbal and bumped the disciplinary action up to a week off without pay. Okay, fine; if that was what they wanted to do, I really didn’t have anything to say about it, except, why were they singling me out? Why were they being so hard on me, compared to how they treated everyone else?
I found out later that it had nothing to do with me; it was actually about the department manager covering his own butt. He didn’t know me or my performance history, because I was on a different shift. We had never met and since I had never worked for him directly, I was expendable. By disciplining me, he was able to shift the heat he was getting on to someone else. Blaming me was his way of explaining what happened to the material. And punishing me justified the loss.
I real man owns up to his mistakes. I did that. And in a perfect world, a manager would have gone to bat for a good and honest worker, but in this case, the good and honest worker became a casualty of the political climate of the day and the department manager cowered under the pressure.
When I went to the 3rd step meeting, the HR manager said he really wanted to fire me but that he didn’t think he could get away with it and that is why he was only suspending me for a week without pay.
Of course everyone on the shop floor new the whole story and knew that I was being treated unfairly. All the guys on my shift had turned down overtime so that the list would make it to me. I took 3 days overtime to make up for the 3-day week that I was suspended from. It really chapped the boss’s A$$ to see us pull together like that, but I think he secretly admired us for it.
I grieved the disciplinary action and proved that I had been treated more harshly than anyone else who had scrapped parts. It was one year later when the company paid the grievance. It was for a weeks pay. And when that check came in, I bought a barbeque rib dinner for all the guys who had given up their overtime for me. We even offered the boss some but as you can imagine, it was all way too humiliating for him.
I know that there are other stories where people feel that the Union didn’t come through for them and I know that some people think the Union is only there to protect the losers and that is why I’m telling my story. The Union really did come through for me. If it weren’t for the Union, I would have most likely been fired 2 years ago over someone in management just trying to cover his butt.
The Union is made up of people just the guys on my shift who gave up their overtime for me and the committee-persons who went to bat for me and people like me who stand on principal. I could have just rolled over and taken it but I also stood up for the Union because in my mind, if I let them run over me, then I’m making it easier for them to run over my Union bothers and Sisters.
Wow! Didn't know anybody was actually reading that haha
Got an updated one in progress.....
This was copied from the other IAM Blog.
Back in the 1920's, my grandfather worked at a cot... Back in the 1920's, my grandfather worked at a cotton mill in Huntsville, AL. He had a wife and 6 children, and they lived in company housing. He voted to unionize the plant, but they lost by only a few votes. Because of this, he was fired from his job. ARMED GUARDS from the company went to their house and forced my Grandmother and her 6 small children out of their home--just like that. They refused to let them have their belongings, even though my grandfather paid for them with his own money, because they wanted to make sure he was not in debt to the company. He wasn’t. My grandfather did not believe in credit. If he did not have the cash to pay for it, they did without.
When the company brought armed guards to deal with the good men and women of our negotiating committee, I could not help but think about what happened to my grandparents and their children. It seems that companies like to use armed guards against innocent people—even a gentle, Christian, loving 4’8” tall mother and her 6 small children.
Of those six children, there was only one son--the youngest child. When he grew up, he went to work at Ferro Fiberglass in Nashville and eventually became the president of their union. He died too young of lung cancer because of the dust and debris he breathed in from the fiberglass. He left a wife and five children and more grandchildren than you can shake a stick at. But he left too soon, and we miss him.
Today, we stand on the line—just like they did—not just for us, but for our children and their children. It is a fragile line, and what we do today determines how strong that line becomes in the future. We stand on the line so that we don’t have to watch helplessly while they take away everything we've worked for. We stand on the line so that we are not forced to place our hard-earned money into a failing system that’s based on a gamble and hope we are lucky enough to retire in a good year. Our Avco brothers and sisters stood on the line in the past so that we could have a retirement plan that no one could touch—that wouldn’t fail during bad economic times. Men and women just like us stood outside the plant fighting for that right, and they won. They stood on the line to prevent departmental seniority and other unfair practices. Are we going to throw away what they fought so hard for? I’m not. I’m standing on the line, brothers and sisters. AND I SHALL NOT BE MOVED!!!!
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