Fishtown.US - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19125

in and around Fishtown, Old Richmond, & East Kensington

To funny.Your statement about living these things.Recently a few of my friends and I were rehashing some of the things that happened during our lives.We came to a conclusive decision not to repeat some of these stories as people would really believe we were either mental or fabricators.(lol)Our parents would go shopping and while they were gone we were NOT allowed to answer the door nor open our shades.The door had to remain locked at all times during a time when no one locked their doors.This is one of my memories of Teamsters 107 union days.

My union actually negotiated for LOWER starting salaries for its members, the year I started my job with the City of New York. The union was a branch of the Teamsters but represented all city attorneys. (Before anyone starts griping about attorneys being unionized, we worked for EXTREMELY low wages and often carried HUGE case loads, so it wasn't some cush job.) A new contract was negoitiated the summer I graduated from law school, which affected the class of attorneys that I was joining in the Fall. As a result, new attorneys would start at a salary that was almost $3K LOWER than the class before us. They couldn't even get terms that would allow us to start at the SAME salary?? The new contract also lowered raise percentages, increased benefits payments, and made it so that the city could require that all overtime be paid in personal days, instead of actual overtime pay. So my first introduction to "my" union was that it wasn't negotiating for ME at all. I support the idea of a union that fights for its members, but at this point, the TWU isn't doing any good for its members at all.

I feel the same way about unions in today's world as I have heard to many tales concerning people losing their jobs when they are covered by union contracts.Recently,I read a contract given to me by someone who lost their job and the union basically sided with the employer;after reading this information all I could say was "wow" your union kicked it's members to the curb.Once again a union is only as strong as its members.Today it appears that union leaders are eating the chicken soup while tossing the bones to their members.

I should be more specific. I wrote that last post in a rush. My understanding, when I worked for the City of New York and was a member of a union there, was that the law was written generally to cover all public employees, with the intention that judges would set the more specific rules for it through precedent. So far, the only city unions that have tested the law have been firemen, police, teachers, and MTA, so the courts have said that they cannot strike, but have refused to extend their rulings to cover ALL public employees. The rulings have basically said that "essential" = those unions that have tested the law, thus far. Thus, the door is still open to other public employee unions, with the caveat that they might get past a judicial decision or they might not. The decisions essentially acknowledge that the general-ness of the law could be considered unconstitutional, but that in regards to these particular unions, the interest of the public welfare outweighs such considerations. Perhaps no other groups have tested it? I sure as hell know my union didn't, despite the fact that we sometimes went more than a year without a contract...but my union sucked.