Your Union

  1. chimx
    chimx
    What union are you a member of? What are some issues in your union right now? What can be improved?

    I'm a member of the International Union of Roofers, Waterproofers, and Allied Workers.

    We recently won increased medical benefits beyond what are contract negotiations had stipulated. More importantly we will be electing a new business agent this summer who will have the task of renegotiating our contract. Our previous contract was a 5-year contract, so hopefully that bullshit won't happen again.

    But our biggest problem isn't the union contractors, but the huge surplus of non-union shops in the county. I've mentioned it before on the forums, but ultimately I think the Employee Free Choice Act is a necessary incremental step forward in terms of aiding unionization drives.
  2. Martin Blank
    I am currently a member of the IWW and have, at various points in my life, been a member of the United Auto Workers, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, United Brotherhood of Carpenters, National Production Workers Union, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the United Food and Commercial Workers.
  3. chimx
    chimx
    Boy, you get around.
  4. Os Cangaceiros
    Os Cangaceiros
    A local fisherman's union (more of a cooperative, actually) affiliated with the United Fishermen of Alaska.
  5. Bilan
    Bilan
    MEAA and was a member of the IWW
  6. BOZG
    BOZG
    I'm a member of the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU). It's the largest union in Ireland (about 1/3 of all unionised workers are in SIPTU) and a general workers' union. Its historical origins lie in the Irish Transport & General Workers' Union which was a militant trade union in the early part of the century but moved to the right over the years.

    The Union has for the past 20 years been in Social Partnership with the bosses and the leadership is currently in a new round of wage talks. With Ireland likely to be significantly affected by a US recession, IBEC, the employers' federation as well as the government have been constantly talking about realistic increases and the need for workers to tighten their belts, while government ministers and senior civil servants have been rewarded substantial pay increases. Obviously this has caused a level of resentment and the union leadership have had to make some noise about people receiving decent pay increases, considering the rate of inflation and cost of living in Ireland but their whole platform these days is based around Social Partnership so they'll eventually sell-out. At this point, it would be more likely that the employers would break with Partnership rather than the Unions.
  7. hekmatista
    hekmatista
    Formerly Mississippi Alliance of State Employees/CWA, formerly SEIU Local 1107, currently IWW.
  8. Comrade Rage
    Comrade Rage
    What union are you a member of?
    IWW.
    What are some issues in your union right now?
    Nothing too big, that's not private anyway.
    What can be improved?
    I'd like to organize a few people in the next two years. Organizing in my union has been a little slow in my locale, and I wantt to help out.
  9. YSR
    YSR
    Organizer for the IWW, but I am doing non-shop floor organizing right now.
  10. MarxSchmarx
    MarxSchmarx
    shit I meant to edit that. Suffice it to say it is an old, once proud business union that has no presence outside my region, but employers still avoid us like the plague .
  11. Saorsa
    Saorsa
    What union are you a member of?
    National Distribution Union. I work in a supermarket, and while I'm not a Delegate yet I'm an unofficial union militant who signs people up, answers questions and attends Local Organising Committee meetings.

    What are some issues in your union right now?
    The biggest one is probably the upcoming merger with Unite and the Service and Food Workers Union. This is a positive move, and will unite the three biggest private sector unions in New Zealand to form a super-union, making the members of all three unions and the working class in general much stronger.

    This will be an excellent opportunity for Marxists to do some good organising and propaganda work. The WP has several members who are full time organisers in the NDU and Unite, including a couple of people on Unite's National Executive. The SFWU's politics are pretty awful, and it's affiliated to Labour and gives away large sums of money to Labour every election year, so we will be challenging Labour in a very real and very full on way in this new union.

    Not much happening struggle wise in my neck of the woods involving either the NDU or the Servos (Unite doesn't really have a presence outside of Auckland, NZ's biggest city, but it's very strong up there).

    What can be improved?
    Internal democracy. The NDU's pretty good with this, especially when compared to some other unions in NZ, but it could definitely be improved. For example, while I've already said I fully support the merger process, there was no real grassroots discussion of this amongst the shop floor membership, and I don't think there's even been a vote yet of all the LOCs in New Zealand! It was just announced from on high, which isn't good... it's something for the WP and our fellow militant leftists within the union movement to try and challenge.

    Beyond that, we need to recruit more members! :P Something like 2/3 private sector workers do not belong to a union, and we need to rebuild and recover from the attacks of the 80s and 90s.
  12. Lenin's Law
    Lenin's Law
    What union are you a member of? What are some issues in your union right now? What can be improved?
    Union - National Education Association (NEA) Teachers union here in the states.

    Well the union is constantly negotiating with school administration and every 3 years, if all goes well, we get a new contract. As I'm sure most people here now, this union has made more and more concessions to the employer in terms of our health benefits, work load, pay scale , keeping older teachers under the 'old' contract while new teachers get a 'new' and less beneficial contract, etc. Part of the global offensive against all unions and the retreat of the union bureacracy from the benefits that were once taken for granted previously.

    Union meetings are largely ceremonial where a few representatives talk about how we must support the Democrats, Republicans are evil, education in the US is fine when every teacher knows there are serious problems.

    What can be improved? Everything.
  13. the_me_collective
    the_me_collective
    I'm a student member of the ABVV (Belgium socialist union). But I've never bean active, I'm just to young.
  14. Greenman
    Greenman
    I'm a dual carder in the IWW and the main Public Services (Local Government and Health workers) union in Britain, Unison. Unison was formed from both unions that were affiliated to the (now governing) Labour Party and others that were not, and this meant "opt-out" rights, so fortunately I can opt out of making any contributions to the party of neo-liberal business shills and warmongers! However, the leadership of Unison remains slavishly Labourist and right wing (centre left in their terms). In many local council branches Unison has been dreadfully weakened both by shoddy compromises in national disputes and catastrophic collaboration over the ham-fisted implementation of "equal pay of work of equal value" changes. However, it still retains a level of organisation and penetration of workplaces that is the envy of TUC affiliated unions working in the private sector. We can see from current events in Ireland what has been happening to public sector workers as the recession/depression bites - so public sector workers in Britain are likely to be in the front line fairly soon.
    The IWW is going from strength to strength in Britain (chiefly in England and Scotland at the moment). In the Midlands we now have strong GMBs in Leicester and Birmingham and a new one in Nottingham.
  15. hekmatista
    hekmatista
    Haven't been here in a while. Almost have a GMB of the IWW (one short) here in Reno. Possible job action at my hospital (no official union).
  16. pastradamus
    pastradamus
    I'm a member of the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU). It's the largest union in Ireland (about 1/3 of all unionised workers are in SIPTU) and a general workers' union. Its historical origins lie in the Irish Transport & General Workers' Union which was a militant trade union in the early part of the century but moved to the right over the years.

    The Union has for the past 20 years been in Social Partnership with the bosses and the leadership is currently in a new round of wage talks. With Ireland likely to be significantly affected by a US recession, IBEC, the employers' federation as well as the government have been constantly talking about realistic increases and the need for workers to tighten their belts, while government ministers and senior civil servants have been rewarded substantial pay increases. Obviously this has caused a level of resentment and the union leadership have had to make some noise about people receiving decent pay increases, considering the rate of inflation and cost of living in Ireland but their whole platform these days is based around Social Partnership so they'll eventually sell-out. At this point, it would be more likely that the employers would break with Partnership rather than the Unions.
    Ah for christs sake. Join us in the IWU stevo. SIPTU are useless.
  17. Mephisto
    As a student, I am a member of the "Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft" (Union for education and science). It's a union mostly for teachers, people who work in a kindergarten and and university employees.

    It's a member of the DGB, the only german mass union federation. The only problem with the DGB and it's member unions is, that they take a strong line of social partnership with the bosses and regional economic policy.

    Unfortunately, class struggle unions, beside the very small anarchist FAU, does not exist (yet).

    But there are still honest class conscious activists at the base of the DGB unions and I think that it is important for revolutionary socialists to work in the big unions so that one day the working class can take it's own organizations back from the bosses lackeys or at least to promote revolutionary ideas to the activists on the member base of the unions.



  18. Sosa
    Sosa
    Just joined the IWW in June
  19. RedTrackWorker
    RedTrackWorker
    Transport Workers Union Local 100 (organizes subway and bus workers of New York City Transit)
  20. pastradamus
    pastradamus
    Cork Branch - Independent workers Union. Ireland.