Coworker discussion- “I’m mad about what our company is doing but, man, unions have done some corrupt shit.”

Yep.  Absolutely.  Everyone knows about Jimmy Hoffa, or rather, maybe of Jimmy Hoffa, and that he’s somehow related to unions, and the mafia, and corruption and he’s buried under some football stadium somewhere… or something.  But everyone knows that unions have done dealings with the mob and issues with bribery and all sorts of bad shit.  But “Unions” is a BIG word when you use it like that.  Unions have had a presence in this country for hundreds of years- google informs me the first union in the US was in 1794.  And the word “Union” is kind of like “Big Oil” or “The government”... when someone says “The government is spying on me”, I’m sure they don’t mean their librarian, and yet their small town librarian is, in fact, a city employee…which is “the government.”  Where am I going with this?  

Well, do some internet searches- it won’t take you long to find out that some union, or some union at some point in history, or some particular labor union bosses were, in fact, corrupt, greedy, exploitative pieces of shit- that’s a fact.  But is it really fair to judge the integrity of our future Local Union, or even our future National Union, or even unions in general, by the bad apples of an entire industry over the course of several hundred years? 

I mean, I suppose we could judge that way, but how horrible does “big oil” as an industry look over even ½ that timeframe?  You certainly won’t want someone comparing CPF2’s operations to the Shell’s bribery of Nigerian government officials, or some Teapot Dome Scandal type shit.  If we’d like to narrow it down to just horrible stuff our company has done or been involved in, feel free to feed in our company's name and the words “scandal”, “corruption” or “illegal” into your favorite AI chatbot and you’ll have spicy reading for days… you might even learn something new about Iraqi mustard gas if you’re a chemistry nerd. But is any of that a fair reflection of how we operate here in Alaska in the 21st century? My point is- you won’t want someone pulling up 3 news articles about dangerous, methed-out, wife-beating oilfield workers and saying “yep- just like you.”  Unions, oil companies, and oilfield workers are massive groups with long histories, and we must remember that every headline doesn’t apply to every individual.  

But scandals aside- there’s still the dues and embezzlement and union bosses with huge houses….. Yeah, I looked into that– anti-union websites are pretty handy for finding union representatives salaries; after all they’re trying to paint them in the worst possible light…but the president of Alaska chapter of USW makes less than $20K in gross salary. Yikes… no wonder he’s still a sloper like the rest of us-  you can’t live like a mafia boss on $20K.   Hell, a Step 1 makes more than the national president of the union.  And remember, I’m pulling these numbers for a website that F’n HATES unions.  Does it suck that part of our future pay will go towards supporting some union guy that isn’t a sloper?  Sure I guess, but you’re ALREADY supporting HR Lady, all her little helpers, and about 30 VPs-  you remember them right? The ones who are trying to cut your pay and replace you with a contingent worker?  I’m more than happy to throw a few bucks towards Union-guy’s new granite countertop if it means he's fighting for us and we're not getting another 10% stolen from us by HR Lady.