Quoting Andrew Lentvorski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
As I recall, your father got offered a rather generous incentive package to retire (if it was the particular round I'm thinking of). He didn't just get laid off. Do you really think he would have been offered anywhere near that without a union? I certainly don't.
Generous? Ha.. in fact, the company tried to fight his saying he didn't qualify (he did by 4 days.. they added onto time with the company and age) and the union didn't bother to help make his case IIRC. About the best thing that he got out of it was $50/month reimbursement for AT&T long distance... which was taken away from him when Lucent split off. The excuse? The job they did was with Lucent, so they didn't qualify for that $50/month anymore. Oddly enough, when he worked for them back in the Ma Bell days, those people that retired didn't have changes to their benefits based on which company they would've been with when the splits (including that Lucent split) happened. Do I think he would've faired better without a union? I don't know for sure.. it was partly due to the union that they wanted to flush all the older people in the first place. Perhaps if the wages for some of the people weren't artificially inflated due to the contract, people like my father, who are damn good at what they do.. could've stayed with the company longer. He's good enough at his job that in the last 14 years or so that he's been on his own, he's never had to look for clients. Word of mouth is enough to keep him busy. There was a time way back.. when there were earthquakes in Armenia (I think that was it, I was a lot younger). Some gov't officials came to AT&T to setup a crack team to go there for about a month to get comms up again. They handpicked my father, along with some of his friends to go. This was a chance to make a lot of money, because they were going to be paid basically 24/7 while there. The union stepped in and said they had to take people based on seniority... and it basically nixed the list they had. The gov't people basically told the union to f-off, that it was their list or none.. and the union didn't budge. So my father and the others lost out on that opportunity, thanks to the union.
Both of you also are white collar workers. Lucky you. This doesn't tend to hold for blue collar. We'll see if this continues to hold for white collar workers as outsourcing continues.
Yep... we'll see. Though my first job, which was the union one.. was food service, which isn't white collar. At least not AFAIK. -- Mike Marion-Unix SysAdmin/Staff Engineer-http://www.miguelito.org Marge: "Homer, sitting that close to the TV can't be good for you." Homer: "Talking while the TV's on can't be good for you!" ==> Simpsons -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
