[nickpsecurity]

"Okay so how did the Kroger union help my friend at all?"

Ive read their contract. The union negotiated great health/dental, paid vacations, time to sleep between shifts, no sit shifts for food workers, and most important: due process. At union companies like Kroger, they have to either prove you weren't doing what they said to fire you or laying you off cost something. The unions also act as private lawyer representing you during wrongful termination. Those two are all I need to hear to be pro-union in a capitalist system.

Now, lets consider Kroger. I boycotted the ones down here since their shelves stayed empty. Workers said they had no staff on purpose, cutting it aiming for bonuses. They also micro-manage a lot adding distractions further reducing profit. Did more cuts. Instead of increasing staff, they just blame workers threatening their jobs with some fired. Union and local workers told me all kinds of examples.

Currently, Kroger is trying to roll back some or all of health/dental and pension despite being more profitable than they were in tougher years. Union reps said they were fighting hard to keep them. On top of that, they intervened for a few management sacked as punishment for staffing-induced, performance problems. They still work there with some doing a lot better with newer set of managers they had no bad history with.

So, that's how unions help your friend at Kroger or other places if the union is good. If management did cuts and targeted them, the union would ensure they remained employed so long as they were doing whatever the company wanted them to do. They would also have benefits in a sector where many don't.

[adamrezich]

My friend was a temporary part time cheese monger at a QFC (Kroger). He had no prior cheese mongering experience and was trained over the course of a few months. He could have taken any part-time job but we lived close to a QFC and they had a cheese monger opening, which sounded interesting to him, as far as part time jobs go. If they spontaneously laid him off, he would have had little trouble finding another part-time job opening elsewhere, but within driving distance instead of walking distance. As I said elsewhere in the thread, he was not receiving benefits because he did not work there long enough to do so. When you put all of these things together, and factor in the costs of paycheckly union dues and the up front "union join" fee, the union did more for its own existence than it did for him by taking money from his minimum-wage paycheck.

I posted a link elsewhere in the thread but apparently the SCOTUS has ruled that mandatory union membership and/or fee paying is not constitutional, so perhaps the situation has improved for temporary, part-time employees of WA state QFCs, but at the time it was pretty shocking to see my friend lose hundreds of dollars to a union that did nothing for him at all.