Opinion: Are Unions Necessary? (Part II)

When I was a freshman in high school, Rudy Martinez, a close friend, was a senior. When I graduated in 1956, Rudy was still a senior.

Rudy had difficulty in some subjects: English, history, and math. How I laughed when Rudy would tell me that he became a senior with credits he accrued in physical education, and auto shop. After I graduated, Rudy was still a senior, and unable to graduate with the required credits, he quit school.

Shortly thereafter, Rudy and I went to work at a mobile home manufacturing company. During a temporary layoff at our mobile home company, Rudy applied at the then recently opened General Motors Company in Arlington, Texas. Luckily, Rudy was hired at GM. Today, after working many years at General Motors, Rudy is retired with excellent benefits he obtained at his union job at GM.

Though Rudy never graduated, he undoubtedly had a better-paying job than most high school graduates — probably even better than those with a college degree. “Why?” some would ask — Rudy was a union autoworker.

Kind of hurts, doesn’t it? Here we are telling our kids to study hard, get a good education, and then we hear of someone like Rudy, who did totally the opposite and landed a well-paying job — a job that didn’t require someone with a good education, yet pays more than the job of someone who has taken years to study and develop.

“Are unions necessary?” I asked you in last week’s column. Maybe yes, maybe no. However, for my not-so-good-educated friend Rudy and his family, his union job at GM definitely provided him with a quality of life and prosperity he most certainly would have probably not have enjoyed otherwise.

My wife’s parents were migrant workers. While growing up, it was difficult for her to attend school. During the school year, she was out in the farm fields helping her parents earn a living. She quit school in the 10th grade.

After working for several years in a local electronics-assembly plant, she was hired at General Dynamics as an electronic-harness assembler in the 80s. While working for General Dynamics, my wife’s annual salary was considerably higher than mine (as a typographer at a print shop), even though I finished school, had some college, and possessed a skill as a computer word processor, which took me years to attain. The reason my wife made more money than me was because she was a member of the International Association of machinists Union at General Dynamics.

Shortly after my wife was hired at General Dynamics, I was offered a position there as an Engineer Illustrator. However, my wife’s union did not represent my job. Often, my wife and I would compare the pros and cons of which one of us was benefiting the most from our union or nonunion job.

I’d often argue with my wife that I did not need to pay the union to protect me. “My skill is my greatest asset to secure my job at General Dynamics,” I’d tell her. “Not necessarily,” she countered. “Many union workers are very good employees and sometimes we are not treated fairly,” she said. She related an incident where a supervisor would often give more overtime to a worker he was having an affair with. Several union workers filed a grievance with their union steward and quickly his unfair disbursement of overtime and scheme was quickly halted.

After working for several years as a non-union worker at GD, my department was filed upon by the union for doing union-type work. After some deliberations and confrontations, I, along with several typesetters was forcibly put in the union. Though I was unhappy with the move, it didn’t upset me very much because I had already been approved to transfer to another non-union department.

Had I known that my new department was going to cause me untold misery; I would have stayed on in my old unionized department.

Though I was making more money that I had ever made in my life, I hated my job. Well, not my job, but rather my new supervisor. Never in my life had I worked for such a bigoted and unfair supervisor. And sadly, there was no one I could appeal to, concerning my supervisor’s unfair practices. It was then that I remembered the stories my wife would tell me of unfair practices by some supervisors and how quickly the union would squelch them.

After I worked a year in my new department, the government terminated the secret Navy project I had been assigned to. Though I had more seniority that the other employees in my department, I was the first one to be laid off. My supervisor, who disliked me, told me that because I was a better typesetter than the other employees, I could probably find a job quicker than they could. Had I stayed in my former union job, there was a probability that I could have stayed in my well paying job, due to seniority.

On the other hand, my union worker wife lost her job at General Dynamics shortly after I did. Seems that the work her department was doing was being sent to Mexico. The reason: high union wages forced the company to move their electrical harness operation South of the Border.

So what’s the answer? You tell me.

James H. Reza
4204 Grand Lake
Lake Worth, Texas 76134
Phones: 817-237-6287 (H) / 817-454-3316 (Cell)