Look at me.
This is my frustrated face.
I thought that working in education would make me more sympathetic to the plight of the state worker. That I'd be down in the trenches shoveling the oppression that the teachers and the classified staff were being buried in, and that I'd be more than grateful for the good ol' California State Employees Association, rather than viewing it as a parasitic organization.
My experience has shown me no trenches. There are some gopher holes, burrowed and lived in by the President and "representatives" of my local CSEA chapter. Wow...where are we, and why do I want to sing the Caddyshack song all of a sudden?
Anyway, it all started one day last December. I was signing all of my paperwork for my new, big-kid job with the School District. This was when I found out that, even as a classified employee, the school district was a closed shop. I could either pay $36 a month to "have a voice, but not a vote," or $38 to be able to do both. Choices, choices.
There have been multiple personnel issues where the union has automatically assumed that the fascist supervisors and directors in the district are in the wrong, and that the problem has nothing to do with holding an employee accountable for constantly coming late and never finishing projects correctly or on time. Because of the ridiculous amount of power that the union holds in our district, the employee has to be put on an improvement plan, which means the supervisor has to babysit him every moment of the day, give him his tasks and they order they're to be done in, every day. So when his supervisor is out for a day, he can also take the day off, because she is not there to feed him his Cheerios and change his diaper. I had friends in college that went through years of school to get a degree in the job this guy hasn't been doing. It's frustrating to think back to how difficult it was for them to get jobs after graduation, while this guy is cozy and coddled in his mindless existence in the department.
I'm bitter that, every month, my family is making a contribution to this lunacy. I should have just as much of a right to refuse union "protection" than I do to request it. I'm bitter that our district is allowing the union to have this much power. It seems to me that those of us who are doing our job have no retribution to fear. If we feel we have been fired unjustly, there is wrongful termination suits that could be filed. If people don't want to work, then they shouldn't be employed. In my experience, every personnel situation that has come about thus far the union has latched onto and exacerbated solely for the purpose of sucking the situation dry to sustain it's own existence.
CSEA....punishing the people that work so you don't have to!
7 comments:
I have worked on both sides of this issue in my 40 year career. I have seen union organizers shoot out the windows in a single mother's home - with her and her kids inside! I witnessed a single woman that ran a small ranch have all of her livestock killed because she had crossed a picket line. I have seen concrete blocks dropped from interstate overpasses onto trucks carrying supplies and materials to a plant that was one strike. In addition, I have been involved where the Washington, D.C. leadership of a union has over-ridden the "democratic" vote of it's membership and rejected a strike vote all in the name of "keeping those dues flowing." In my management book, Wingtips with Spurs, I devote an entire chapter to labor relations. While in general, I am not a union hater (in fact, I have several union friends) I can not tolerate the amount of energy they place in protecting the gold-brickers.
Michael L. Gooch www.michaellgooch.com
Just to be nit-picky—I know you'd be disappointed with anything else—unions are antithetical to a free-market so being anti-union is more of a libertarian position than a strictly Republican one. Not that anyone really distinguishes between the two.
wait a minute...Cheerios and diapers??? That sounds like my job.
If you are going to attack an organization, the least you could do is get the name right.
It's the California SCHOOL Employees Association, not the California STATE Employees Association.
Hope that's not a sample of the accuracy of the rest of your posting.
Steve,
My post is less about CSEA and more about closed shops in general, but I appreciate your enlightening me as to what the acronym stands for. I haven't cared enough about the organization to delve into each letter.
As far as the accuracy of this blog, it is not the purpose of Home Sweet Ebert to educate the masses or to pull in a Pulitzer prize, but to create a place where my family can come to vent about anything they want, even it it's going to be about made-up unions.
And while I'm open to whatever comments people want to leave, whether it's in disagreement or it's people plugging their own books, their is no room for snyde comments, simply for the purpose of being rude (unless they're from us, in our posts).
Ah, nicely done.
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