Well now this is a topic that I could quite litterally write a book about. Wait a minute, I tried and my wife told me that if I were to publish it I'd probably end up being shot.
I've been nursing for over 12 years now and I've yet to have any possitive experiences with union officials with three different labour organizations. Here's just a snap shot of a few of the countless reasons why.
1) I work for a municipal employer that has male dominated bargaining units like police and fire which are 100% Full Time while our bargaining unit is approximately 70% part time. I put in a discrimination grievance and the union dropped it because it didn't want to spend the money in arbitration.
2) The emplpoyer was looking at laying off over 100 nurses and converting those possitions to nurses aide possitions which was about a 13% wage reduction while they at the same time gave the fire fighters a 13% wage increase. Union officials allowed this to happen inspite of the outrage from the members.
3) We had a nurse manager who was the equivalent of a terrorist and routinely harassing the nursing staff including violating various human rights. Her actions were grieved, but the union president stated, "we can't damage employer union relations."
4) The employer decided to change our nursing scheduals which was a complete violation of three sections of our collective agreement. Nursing staff were furious and at one point a petition against the union officials was started by me and was gaining high momentum. The local union president was furious with this challenge to his so-called authority and sent me a threatening letter. I even challenged it to the head national union office because the local officials were even going against the Constitution of the union itself. I was told that the decision regarding nursing scheduals was made by the leadership of the union which is the ultimate authority in the union (gee I thought the members were the ultimate authority). Correct me if I'm wrong, but does this sound like a dictatorship?
I can describe countless other personal examples. But, I'll look at the bigger picture to give a perfect example of how useless many unions have become. According to Statistics Canada, 82% of the nurses in Canada are represented by a Labour organization, or some form of a collective agreement. Yet, in some jurisdictions in Canada, nurses and other health care workers are experiencing a level of violence three times higher than police officers. The research on violence was done by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation when they researched compensation board claims of various occupations.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/...nce060424.html
Using this as an example, why aren't these labour organizations doing anything about it when there's such high level of so-called representation?
If you want to examine Bullying in the workplace, you need not look any further than the book
The Bully at Work: what you can do to stop the hurt and reclaim your dignity on the job by Gary Namie & Ruth Namie.
On page 116 it states: "Unions, like employers, are organizations. They have agendas and goals that may or may not meet your needs. As incredible as this sounds, unions are not automatically good at giving unconditional support."
On Page 118 it states: "There is no excuse for the only official employee advocates to be too busy to help employees who seek relief from horrendous workplaces."
Then on page 233 it states: "Regrettably, too many Targets report to us that their union fails them. Either the steward is a bully herself and hates the target or the steward fails to see any need to defend the Target in the absence of collective bargaining agreement (contract) language."
If these Labour officials actually did the job that they are paid to do, which is represent their members, then I would be very much in favour of unions and other labour organizations. Unfortunately based on personal experience and much of the research that has been done, labour organizations are becoming more and more useless. Many of them are viewing their members as nothing more than a source of stable revenue for themselves. Unfortunately this is ever so true in nursing because in various jurisdictions it's illegal for nurses to strike. Many of the labour organizations that allegedly represent those nurses exploit that reality and cash in on that stable source of revenue.
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