Union!

You have to read this story before I can continue. I'll give you a couple of minutes....

I worked at that Shaws warehouse. For three days back in 1995. During my tenure the warehouse was operated by a third party, not by Shaws itself. Therefore, none of what I say in this reminiscence relates to the current story. Okay?

I think it was '95. It might have been '94... but I think it was '95.

I had a job working for a school called Northeast Broadcasting School. I got the job a few weeks after graduating from their audio recording program. My job was to babysit the recording studios. It was part time, I made very little money, my hours were late at night and all weekend. The huge plus was that I got to use the studios myself when no students were there.

Of course they laid me off.

I ended up getting a job working 2nd shift on weekends at the Shaws warehouse. As I said before, I did not work for Shaws itself and I can't for the life of me remember the name of the third party company that ran things.

What I do know is that they were pulling out. I was to start on a Friday, and by the end of my shift on Sunday they were going to be gone and Shaws was going to take over.

The place was in chaos. It was insane. There was no supervision, no order, no anything. I had a little training on my first day and then it was off to the mad house. The conditions were awful, every single employee that I met was stretched to the breaking point. People would get pissed off at a manager and break open a box of food and throw it at the walls. One guy actually threw a tantrum and drove a fork lift into a wall. I asked one coworker if anyone had tried to Unionize and was told that the topic came up every once in a while, but with Shaws taking over most of the staff was hopeful that things would quickly change for the better.

At midnight on Monday morning all of the third party staff people left the building and a swarm of Shaws employees from other warehouses thundered in. I think my shift ended at 2:00am and that was it for me. I was done. I spoke to some one in the office on Monday afternoon and said Shaws or no Shaws I was never setting foot in that death trap again.

Now here we are 15 years later and the warehouse employees are on strike. Judging by the Globe article linked above it sure sounds like Shaws is trying to eff them in the eh. A wonderful new contract that includes a reduction in take home pay and a 10% increase in family health care cost. Nice.

I am glad they Unionized. Unions tend to get a bad rap these days and it is definitely deserved. I am generally a pro Union kinda guy, but they can be just as corrupt as anyone else. I worked at UPS for a while and was a member of the Teamsters. There were a few occasions when coworkers had some sort of problem with management and would seek out the Union's help. It used to bother the management folks, but from what I can see the situations would normally be resolved to everyone's benefit. Of course I can't for the life of me remember a specific example, so I might be passing on an affective snow job onto all of my faithful readers. Who knows. Who cares.

All I know is that I'm not shopping at Shaws until the strike is over.

Solidarity.