I am retired from AMO. I did not have much of a choice as my company when union but I was one of the last to retire at 20 and Out. For now I have full paid health insurance for myself and my wife.
A really good friend retired from M.E.B.A. He took the cash buy out at the age of 55 with over 30 years in the union. He walked away with over $1,000,000.00. He has it invested and is set for life.
If anyone should have a bad taste for Unions it should be me as I went through the U.M.D. of the I.L.A. Local 333 in new York. My last company was Non-Union for the Chief, Captain and Mate before they went AMO. There was so much back stabbing and unless you were part of the Good Ol Boys Club your raises were less than others.
Wow, hostility. I know at one point unions were good, but how long ago did you sail with one? I left union because companies were laying up ships, companies were going under and jobs were getting tough to get because the members who were permanent had lost their jobs and benefits and they needed jobs to get them back. Someone just joing the union wont enjoy a $2000 a month retirement with the way the pensions are going. There’s not enough shipping jobs to sustain it.
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;99600]No worries SnG we all got our opinions. I’m glad you made out great with MEBA I’m sure it was good back in the day. I’m glad you get to hang out in the hot tub with a drink and a stogie. After a life at sea you earned it and I hope you enjoy it. I wish I could get to the bitter roots and dip into the private stock with you. As you say cultural and geographical differences have some feeling one way or the other about unions. I had my four years with the union and found it to be a racket and I got out. So I only speak from my experience and as I’ve read others share those experiences as well.[/QUOTE]
I do understand, my Buddy, nothing in this world of ours is totally clean. We make decisions on what is best for us. Fragrat, you are most welcome to visit. We are Merchant Seamen after all.
[QUOTE=Tugs;99601]I am retired from AMO. I did not have much of a choice as my company when union but I was one of the last to retire at 20 and Out. For now I have full paid health insurance for myself and my wife.
A really good friend retired from M.E.B.A. He took the cash buy out at the age of 55 with over 30 years in the union. He walked away with over $1,000,000.00. He has it invested and is set for life.
If anyone should have a bad taste for Unions it should be me as I went through the U.M.D. of the I.L.A. Local 333 in new York. My last company was Non-Union for the Chief, Captain and Mate before they went AMO. There was so much back stabbing and unless you were part of the Good Ol Boys Club your raises were less than others.[/QUOTE]
I’m sorry about all the shit you went through, Tugs, I went through some crap myself and not just in the Merchant Marine, I appreciate our postings of both good and bad about Unions. No one ever told us it would be easy, it never is. Life goes through cycles, we try to capture it at the highest point, if we can. If we miss, dust ourselves off and keep on trying.
I’ve posted, as have many others on this subject. The first 15 years I sailed was in the oilfield, salvage and fish processing. Every time the unions made a push, I got a big raise in the oilfield. I lived through several cycles in the oilfield. In the early to mid '80s down cycle, I walked into the Houston SIU hall and had a job the next day at more day rate plus overtime than I was making before. Soon after that, I remarried and settled down to a 28/28 sched. Over the next 24 years, We lived on my income and invested my wifes income. I retired on a wage related pension at 56 which was much more than the SIU standard pension. In the contracts I worked, we always negotiated the best benifits and insurance. In retirement, the insurance coverage drops down one grade. My insurance costs $100 per month for me or $200 for family coverage. I had always heard that the dental coverage dropped to nothing after retirement. After my last round in January with my dentist, the bill was $7100 and the SIU paid $2850. I can’t complain.
I cant speak for all but SIU tugs GOM has some of the lowest wages in the industry. You do get a retirement BUT you would have to serve 20 years at this rate to do so. If you decide to leave then you are donating pension $$$$ and cant transfer it with you. Forget about bonuses…Health care is expensive and low to fair coverage. No short or long term disability. Life insurance is around 10,000
[QUOTE=AHTS Master;99449]Union = Bad in the GOM.[/QUOTE]
SIU rates in the GOM are the lowest in the industry. Non union companies have been ahead for a long time. Nil on short or longterm disability. You can serve 20 years and get a retirement but have to do so at that rate. Insurance is very expensive and low to moderate performance. Life insurance is 10,000. Never seen a bonus of any kind.
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;99560]Your clueless we never got raises because they were down here. All we got was the full frontal “there is no you in unions” speech. We get raises because there is a boom. Then the inevitable bust comes and things are stagnant for a while. Some company’s even cut pay. People leave for land jobs or other sectors of the industry. Then we get another boom and they have to bump up pay scales to attract people back down this way. It’s the ebb and flow of the oilfield and as certain as death and taxes.[/QUOTE]
You got that right fraqrat. Well, part of it anyway… Guess you forgot when we were only making 450 a day as Captains down here. Also, didn’t realize we were insulting fellow Mariners on this site(CLUELESS). Leads me to wonder just what kinda leadership you provide onboard your vessel at whatever position you might hold…Smooth sailing brother!!
I remember when captains were making sub $200 a day. I also remember each time we got raises. I also remember when the unions came down and how long the companies were concerned about them. After about a year of trying everything the unions ran out of steam. Then none of the companies were sweating them. It is insulting that you would insinuate their mere presence gets all of us a raise. The last time they were here for a big push was the late 90’s. In that time we have had GOM wide pay scale adjustments about 3 times. Each one of those in turn attributed to a boom cycle. Not because we saw Gulf Coast Mariners Unite signs littering the bayou. So again I say you are clueless as to wether the “families” are so scared they only give us raises to scare them off. If they are so awesome go join a union and then try and organize your vessel. You won’t do that because you like your high paying job and so called lousy benefits.
[QUOTE=PaddyWest2012;100774]I hope this isn’t too much of a break from the path of this thread but this brings questions to my mind in relation to another thread. Z-Drive, maybe you would like to comment there about this topic. The other thread I am thinking of is “Union or No Union.” You seem to have a pretty decent set-up where you are now. I certainly wouldn’t turn my nose up at it. So the question I would ask you, and again you don’t have to answer here because this is not in line with the original purpose of this thread, is whether or not you think the “total” compensation you are getting from your company is due to the influence of unions, or if your company adequately compensates you in their own right.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=z-drive;100786]Having union guys on the boat helps with some of the BS on occasion, but ultimately whatever the union guys “get” they give us (management) more, a bonus, or a better package to stick it to them. Its not a particularly strong union either, they get very limited benefits through the union as most come from the company. I feel that we would ALL benefit from an informal bargaining unit in-house rather than an organized union, as there are only a handful of ‘yesmen’ that don’t put their foot down on issues…as in the union rarely steps up so the guys handle issues in house with shore-side on their own. It helps me operationally as myself and the head steward get along very well so issues rarely leave the boat…I tell them to call their steward and see what he says.
So no, we actually have got raises less frequently than the union guys. It only helps with keeping day to day BS in check.[/QUOTE]
As an employee at will if he doesn’t like his pay he can debark his current employatorium and seek more monified situlations. I don’t need a third party to negotiate for me. If there wasn’t something in it for the union they wouldn’t do it would they? They don’t represent mariners out of the kindness of their hearts. They negotiate a good deal so they can get a taste for themselves. Plus the dues they collect. It’s a nice racket else they wouldn’t be doing it.
As a practical matter I’ve worked both union and non-union. I got no problem with people in either situation. The main reason I didn’t go non-union years ago is because they didn’t hire me.
I was thinking about the idea of collective action and individuals when Wall Mart told workers that it would not recognize workers as members of a workers association but it would be happy to listen to complaints by individual workers. That’s interesting because Wall Mart is a group ( a corporation) and if you violate their rights they will call another group (the government), specifically the police to enforce those rights.
Workers are encouraged to act as individuals while corporations and political parties together fight “government interference” and “corrupt union bosses”. Workers depend upon either the government or the union to protect their rights. There are contiuous attempts to weaken both groups. We are told that the reason is to give individuals more rights but there is good reason to be suspicious of the motives of the groups behind this effort. These groups may be simply seeking to increase their own power.
Two other points, unions do raise wages in a sector for both union and non-union workers. There are lots of studies which can be found with google. Secondly any group composed of humans can be corrup. governments, churches banks, you name it. If it involves people, it can go wrong.
I live in Virginia, which is an employment at will state. Virginia recently disbanded it’s Wage and Hour division of the Dept of Labor.
Wage and Hour were the people you went to if you got screwed out of wages by your (non-union) employer. Guess what you have to do now if you are swindled out of wages in Virginia? You have to hire a lawyer, if one will even take the case- and if the wages are but a couple hundred dollars, (could be rent or groceries and light bill we are talking about), no lawyer will touch.
Wage theft is growing in leaps and bounds. It’s big in the semi-skilled and non-skilled sectors because employers count on warm bodies, not loyalty. And there are plenty of warm bodies to fill a job.
Thank your friendly neighborhood Chambers of Commerce for that development. They lobbied hard to end Wage and Hour, saying it was “bad for business.” Yes, paying your employees in accordance with law is “bad for business” and this mentality is spreading like a cancer. It will make its way into our industry, too, when the Jones Act is ushered out the door. I know the unions can be screwed up, but they all a worker has against the business community- which IS united against you.
And if you are in a union, go to meetings and vote in elections, and throw out the dead wood. Complaining gets you nothing.
Good call on voting out the deadwood. But what do you do when the whole tree is rotten and deep rooted? There is most definitely one, maybe two maritime unions that fit that bill. I worked for three. Two were great. One horrendous. Now non union. It has its pluses and minuses.
[QUOTE=dredgeboater;102360]Good call on voting out the deadwood. But what do you do when the whole tree is rotten and deep rooted? There is most definitely one, maybe two maritime unions that fit that bill. I worked for three. Two were great. One horrendous. Now non union. It has its pluses and minuses.[/QUOTE]
I hear ya. I wish I had all the answers. When I was a yardbird I was with the Steelworkers and the local was loaded with no-goodniks, cronies, a lot of them from one particular shop. But what really annoyed me the most were the people who didn’t even belong to the union, they complained the most. In an right-to-work state like VA, if union membership drops below say 50 percent the local can be dissolved. So then what?
Maybe the membership throws out the union and brings in another one? Or starts a new one?
