Comment by reaperducer

Need to plug that new PC into the socket? Sorry, equipment installation is a union job

For anyone who thinks that this is just hyperbole, it's exactly the sort of thing that happens.

When I worked at a unionized television station, I was watching an aircheck of a recent broadcast. When I was done, I ejected the tape and put it back into the archive.

The union filed a grievance against me for pressing the eject button. As a manager, I could use Play, Stop, and the shuttle controls, but not Eject. Only a union member could eject a tape.

At another television station where I worked, there was an employee retiring after 30 years with the station, and we thought it would be cute to show a ten-second clip of him working while the anchors said goodbye and thanks. It never happened. He worked upstairs, in the tech center, and the members of the photographers union weren't allowed to operate any electronic equipment up there because that was the province of a different union. This included working their own cameras. At the same time, the people who worked in the tech center weren't allowed to operate any of the station's cameras, because that was the domain of the photographer's union. As I said, we were never able to air a clip of this good employee doing his job.

At another television station, I worked weekends. Naturally, I was expected to work five days a week like every other employee. So I was assigned to help write during three weekdays. A union grievance was filed against me for taking a theoretical writer's job. The result was that for the next FIVE YEARS, I did nothing three days a week but look at lolcats, and the station had to keep paying me my full salary.

I'm not anti-union. I think unions are essential for coal miners, maids, janitors, and other people. But I'm not convinced that white collar people need unions. Or at least there should be a method of calling out and publicizing union abuses to let their members know what's going on.