Carnegie Mellon custodial workers: “If we have a family emergency we can’t leave for anything. We’re like prisoners here.”
Carnegie Mellon custodial workers: “If we have a family emergency we can’t leave for anything. We’re like prisoners here.”
Custodial staff fear for their jobs as they navigate an understaffed, chaotic workplace and unresponsiveunion. Workers were told not to speak to Tartan reporters after an investigative article last…
“Our union is terrible. We can’t get in touch with anybody. They agree to everything that [UG2] say[s]. It’s like dealing with snakes in the grass.”
Another worker echoed this, saying that the union is allowing people to get fired without putting up a fight.
This suuuuuucks. Unions are supposed to exist in order to back up the workers. We talk about how much we love unions, but what’s the next step when the union drops the ball?
I assume the leaders can be voted out? Maybe even a petitions for an immediate election or specific ballot measures? I'm not sure what typical union rules allow. I've worked a shitty union job for a little bit, and I think the problem is with low-paying, high turnover jobs, people don't really care about the job enough to participate in union functions (at least I didn't, and nobody else I worked with did). So, I think you just get the union catering to the high-seniority people who do participate, and then there's probably also corruption up top.
The next step is splintering the union, which if not enough leave the old union, massively reduces its power.
Or just ousting the leadership
CMU in Pittsburgh? I almost took a tech job there but the Glassdoor reviews were horrible so I passed. Looks like I dodged a bullet.
If the union leadership is so bad, why don't they vote for a new one? I mean surely if it's this universally reviled it should be easy right? Is it just the case the union being too big and the leadership focusing and Catering to more active and vocal members? What's the disconnect here?
Forming a Union can be really hard and replacing a bad Union can be even harder for most of the same reasons, plus people get to accuse you of not having solidarity with the union. A good union can only continue to exist with leadership fighting tooth and nail every day year after year to stay true to their purpose in the face of massive bribery and coercion. "Just form a [better] union" is never easy and anyone who takes a swing and misses is under threat of standing in the unemployment line while their rent is overdue.
Well as mentioned in the article, they have a union so it's not about forming a union. The question is why is their Union so unrepresentative of them. Why is the union leadership so reviled by its members universally that they're complaining to newspapers about it.