Happy Labor Day!
Welcome one, welcome all to the continuing circus known as the International Association of Minions and Wannabees Union at Raytheon in Tucson.
In Feb 2008, this blog posted an announcement that anyone who was unhappy with the union, simply wear and orange t-shirt on Thursdays, the same day that the union wore their union blue. Over the years they responded with red superchicken shirts, Ghostbusters shirts and silly rat buttons. And their stewards intensely trained their minions that any opinion outside the soviet camp was just not healthy for them.
Times sure have changed! How many of you have noticed that the union members are parading around the plant site wearing orange t-shirts? Why would they change colors? Why would they wear Orange? Did they think there were a lot of members who sympathize with the Oustie struggle to make wages fair at RMS? Maybe, but that doesn't fit the union model. Throughout American History, unions struggled to LOWER wages of the most skilled workers, to give it to the unskilled. We call it the misguided Robin Hood syndrome. This union did it well in 2003, and then made the membership feel like it was the Company's fault. But I digress.
Could the union have been invaded by some covert Ousties who used whatever tricks they thought it would take to get the union to let their colors run, and put on the colors of their opponents? Maybe... We've had our moles in the past. One of the guys in 811, a metrologist was implicit in sharing info with a cal tech that exposed lots of embarrassing facts about this union. Too bad for them, he was never discovered. Thank goodness for him, they still think he is untainted. But why is the convergence of Orange t-shirts in both the Ousties and Union groups?
I suspect the Union thinks they can drown out the impact and stigma of the Orange T-Shirt having to do with the black eye they suffered when their union was dealt a decertification attempt. They think they can hide behind false pride by wearing the colors that shamed them. It wont fix the fact that every technician on the plant site gets ripped off every paycheck because the Union stole their wages and handed others a lopsided payraise in 2003, while everyone else got zero GWI for three years. And so it continues.
Are you paying over 800 dollars a year in dues and paying about 3000 dollars a year subsidizing your coworkers? An especially Happy Labor Day to You!
