My Point of View by Ebenezer Howe

My take on unions — please note these are based on my life experience. I just have to get it off my chest.

My first real employment was the U.S. Navy — not a union shop. After the Navy, I started work for Burroughs in Rochester as a field engineer — maintenance on mechanical adders and accounting machines. In rural southeast Minnesota, the territory structure of assignments did not lend itself to a union shop workplace. The only time I heard of union activity was at training from folks in large metro areas where 15 territories could be in one building and only one customer; a far cry from my assignment of parts of, and most of, five counties in southeast Minnesota.

My first direct encounter with unions was 1976 and 1977. In the fall of 1976, the Burroughs New York Financial District had been organized by the union. The union’s idea was that since just over 90 percent of all the checks that were handled by Wall Street were processed on equipment manufactured and maintained by Burroughs, a strike would be short-lived. Burroughs would be forced to accept union demands due to the demands of Wall Street that needed the checks to flow smoothly. The union had a strike just after Thanksgiving. Burroughs management had anticipated this move and was a jump ahead. Over the weekend, they had flown in support personnel and managers from across the country to cover this possible move. The strike was called, Burroughs support persons and managers were able to keep the checks flowing and the commerce of Christmas shopping was affected very little. I made several three-week trips.

All of this was just to set up my take on the strike at Albert Lea’s hospital just before Christmas. The union’s big claim of bad treatment was what they called a lockout. The hospital’s claim was they had to hire replacement folks for a week to be able to cover all contingencies. The union calling the strike for Tuesday the week before Christmas was to inflict discomfort for the hospital, hoping to force concessions. Just as in the above when the union thought they could win concessions through the pressure from Burroughs customers. The hospital hiring replacements on week-long contracts is comparable to Burroughs management being ready with the support folks they had in place.

You may be wondering, where in the world is this going? Well, in 2002, after taking an early retirement and returning to the area, I found employment at a Con-Agra plant in Wells. This was a union shop. I was shocked when the old salts there explained some of the rules to watch for during the 90-day probation period. The one they really wanted me to know about was that you only got one “no-call-no-show” in that 90 days. My shock was that the number was greater than zero! In all my prior work life, attendance was very important. The other thing I noticed about all the rules was they identified the amount of bad behavior before there were consequences and no mention when meritorious raises or promotions occurred. To me, the rules produced an environment of striving for the minimum rather than letting the cream rise to the top. During my employment at Con-Agra, they changed to a new payroll system. There were some complaints of workers getting shorted some minutes and in some cases hours of pay. The union never came to investigate why. I started keeping track of my punch times and how they reconciled with my paycheck — sure enough, there were issues. I took my concerns straight to the plant manager. Programmers identified some issues in the new program that were fixable right quick.

Now to my point. I want you to ponder what I say here before flying off the handle. I think today’s unions are at the end of their life. OSHA provides the safety net issues in safety even as they become a problem of their own. Laws and regulations limit what HR departments can and cannot do. This protects workers to a large extent. There are fewer and fewer jobs that fit the union format. Think about this when you read your next article in the paper on unions. What did the union do to improve employee performance? Improved employee performance is followed by pay increases. Do the union rules of a contract let the cream rise or do the folks strive for the bottom? In my experience, the workers who push for unions are always the malcontents, the troublemakers who strive for the bottom.

Alden resident Ebenezer Howe is chairman of the Freeborn County Republican Party. His views do not necessarily reflect the views of the local party members.