Let us not forget why unions came into being: because employers tended to abuse their employees.

The bigest reason why so many people feel safe with their jobs even though they are not in unions is because they THINK they can sue and win, but the reality is that many states fall under “at will” employment. The first thing a lawyer will ask you is if you are in a union and so will the unemployment office if your case goes into arbitration for unemployment.

If you do not have a contract to work with your employer then for the most part you work “at will” and your employer can let you go for “any reason”. They don’t because he cost of being sued is high but they will most likely win most cases.

ANYWAY
With all of that said they are many employees who take advantage of their union status and just do not work and even feel ENTITLED to not working. I have met some of them and boy they can get really mad when they have to work when someone of a “lower rank” should be sent out first of “found” to do the job.

I am not sure what they plan on doing about this especially considering that management not only allows this but does it themselves. There are reasons for people not being able to work whether its a Firefighter, Police or Transit Track Worker, due to what ever they need to do that can’t be done and still get paid for 8 hours of work, but sleeping on the job in a public space is a no-no.

I am not surprised that Transit wants to cut the token booth clerks probably because of what you see pictured above. Token booth cllerks should have train maps, street maps, bus maps, people who can read them and people who are willing to help those who are lost.

Folks, we need to expand unionization not to break it.

I had to deal with it all last summer when people working for the highway department of the city of Stamford (CT) would do things like take two hour lunches, quit work at 1:30 in the afternoon, go hang out in the parking lot in front of CVS and goof off at about 10 in the morning, say they had done work which they hadn’t… basically, whenever me or someone else working for the engineering bureau wasn’t directly keeping an eye on them, not much would get done.