Reply to anyone else's spouse on strike duty for Verizon?

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[quote=Anonymous] As someone who worked as a union negotiator for number of years,  and dealt with my fair share of strikes and near strikes  it is absolutely fascinating to watch it happen somewhere else .

As others have mentioned, Management cannot simply fire these employees -  some of you may room remember when Reagan broke the  Air traffic controller strike...

What I do you think is likely the case at Verizon given the years of experience I have enough space or two universal truths of unions :  truth one is that union management does not have the best interest of their own union at heart.  They have re-election in mind and the best path to that is to appear to be strong against management, even when doing so hurts the employees more than not.  The second universal truth which many people don't like is that union wages and union benefits are generally significantly better and greater than those that would prevail in the open market.  The third universal truth if there is one is that management and union staff simply do not get along -  this thread is one such example the term scabs is already come out and we're only on page 2.

This leads to often absurd conversations in union negotiations.  To share an example or two ,  I once approached a large union and offered their employees the opportunity to share hotel rooms when traveling .  No obligation to do so but our data showed many did anyway and we wanted to reward that type of behavior as of course it saved the company money.  I asked for nothing in return,  simply an amendment to the existing rules stating that in addition to a fully paid hotel room the employee had the option at their own discretion to share a hotel room in which case each employee would receive $50 as a cost savings measure.  I presented this to the union management who immediately and steadfastly declared it highway robbery and demanded $100 per person.  I explained that our average hotel room cost was around $150, so two hotel would cost $300. Offering $200 plus the cost of the hote room would place the total cost at $350 - more than the cost of two seperate hotel rooms. I opened the books. They refused to even present the option to the union. Net result? 20% of the union continues to share rooms, we pay them nothing, the other 80% have no idea this was even ever presented. Who wins?

And the examples like this are numerous -  employees demanding free massages after every shift,  another union complaining that their healthcare dues which were locked in the early 1970s are now approaching $10 per paycheck for family PPO coverage...  In many ways I have found unions to be disconnected from reality and left the industry as a result. You can't change what no one wants to change. [/quote]

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