The sheet metal unions are losing the war against nonunion sheet metal shops: Local 36 lost five shops; Local 170 lost two; and Local 18 lost three. We should be adding union shops and members not losing them. Are sheet metal unions giving up on organizing union shops and acquiring new members?
I live in northern California, specifically Shasta County, north of Marysville, in the jurisdiction of Local 104. There are now no union shops north of Marysville. The nonunion shops number about fifty to sixty shops and that is a lot of union work lost. We, in Shasta-Trinity counties, just passed a $138 million school and union college prevailing wage jobs and no union workers received any of the $138 million in jobs.
I have never seen any union reps on the jobs, checking prevailing wages or talking to the nonunion workers about unionizing. It appears like sheet metal unions have just given up the entire northern section of California, where the nonunion shops will just get stronger and keep edging toward the big cities, and start taking work from unions in the Sacramento, San Francisco and Los Angeles areas.
We will always lose in a defense battle so we must go on the offense in order to win. We are now dying little by little, day by day, and then we have unions raiding each other, which weakens unions as a whole for a short-term gain. This must stop. We cannot simultaneously go to war with the nonunion and ourselves and expect to win or even just stay alive.
The future of our unions are in our hands and it is do or die.
It’s open season the unions and we’re letting it happen. This is happening as the young people are fighting to unionize shops in the retail, fast food, ride-share, coffee shops and everything in-between. These young workers understand that in order improve overall working conditions, they have to work together and organize.
The kids are making us look bad.
It’s time to pick a side. You want to have and keep unions with good wages and pensions, then it’s time to pick a side. You want to keep Social Security for yourself and family, it is time to pick a side. You want to get or keep Medicare and Obama’s Affordable Care Act, then it’s time to pick a side. It is us against the billionaires. The very rich got that way off the backs of workers, and now want to strip everything away from those workers. It’s time to pick a side. The very rich can buy countries, then make the people get on their hands and knees and grovel and beg for scrapes that usually go into the dumpster. It’s time to pick a side. Is this what we want for our family and our future? It’s time to pick a side. Get ready to fight for you and your families’ lives. There is no middle ground with these greedy people for they want it all—all the money—all the power—all the land so where does this leave us when they have all the commons, like water, land and airways? It’s time to pick...
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