[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.