"Union Agitator" has his own page
If you find the subject of collective bargaining (A Union) compelling, look above to the page labeled “UNION AGITATOR” He has offered an introductory message: Look above and click.
I am not sure about unionizing. So, Mister “Agitator” is on his own. I have proposed the idea that pharmacists are adults, capable of acting in their own best interest. I am not so sure about that.
However, I was a member of the Retail Clerks Union when I worked for Thrifty Drug Stores in the late 1960s in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was an Ohio boy agog in what the union gave me. Time and a half over 8 in a day or 40 in a week. Plenty of holidays. Is eleven possible? Good vacation line-up. If Thrifty called me in for a sickness or other emergency, they had to pay me for 8 hours. On and On.
Still, I knew that I was just a novelty to this union. It was, after all, the Retail Clerks International Association.
My biggest problem is this: The union was so strong that we had dead wood opportunists who yawned their way through a work day. They did the minimum and to hell with Thrifty. I think that this attitude is wrong. It is the attitude that got American cars the reputation of being “Pieces of shit”.
Union or not, I have always given my employer consummate value for his money. Union members who skate their way along a sleazebags.
That’s what I think. How about you, SOSP?
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I’m in agreement with you JP!
If a union could get a contract written that stipulated merit raises, bonuses based on quality of work vs. quantity (or on quality AND quantity), preferential scheduling for those with higher quality output, I’d be all for it. But I saw time and time again, in my experiences with unions, the “dead wood” you refer to… those who came in, put in the least amount of effort possible to get through their 8 hours, then went home with the sweet shifts, extra vacation, and fat raises.
After my experience, in jobs with unions (both open and closed shops) and without, I so much prefer NOT being unionized. I can see no benefit, as a pharmacist, to forking over my hard-earned money in dues, only to get shit on by the slackers with seniority.
This isn’t saying I’m against unions completely – I have friends who are plumbers and electricians that get great union benefits – job placement, healthcare (through the union rather than the employer) and retirement.
Unions have their place – it’s just not in pharmacy.
Though I have little experience with unions, just as an unskilled laundryworker, I would have to say, that there is deadwood in hospital jobs as well as any other job situation. I am disinclined to want to participate in any other group that puts as an encumbrance an additional level of responsibility for my proper remuneration of services.
I would not mind as a show of solidarity in joining an organization of pharmacists formed in response to unfairness across the board to our profession (like TPA).
I have witnessed situations in which individual pharmacists in a healthcare organization were unfairly ramrodded by ‘mob bosses’ AKA director and assistant director of pharmacy even within the dept and that the company could do nothing because ‘they didn’t understand what was correct or unambiguous in the pharmacy’. So, with that in mind–trouble brewed and stirred up among pharmacists based only on seniority or ‘clout’, I think that a ‘union mentality’ membership would only cause to dilute individual pharmacist’s ethical standing.
I have to disagree. I don’t see how an organzation that says working conditions are bad gets anything changed without some show of what will happen if things don’t improve. TPA may be the answer but you need some way to force change. Thing don’t happen because you think happy thoughts but let management walk all over you.