Question about Unions

I wish we were union, because I am told that if you work 9 1/2 hours you are supposed to have one to two breaks and a half hour lunch, I get NONE. Lately every day on my feet, my siactic nerve gets worse, my bad knees, we are standing on pure concrete (like your sidewalk), very little padding, I hurt my knees last years tripping over something I could not see, I went to the hospital, then came back to work, then worked the next 2 days, with my husbands help ( DH is not an employee of my workplace) I was told to take the next three days off I told them I couldn't afford to.

I pray not to have to go to work each day, the pain is gettng worse, this morning when I went to work at 5:30 a.m. till 10:00 a.m. I worked by myself, I took 1500 mg of tylenol for the pain because it was soo baad. ti helped for 2 1/2 hrs then returned. I work the Sunday fro 6:30 a.m. to til 3: p.m. If I am hurt next time I will not return to work until told to. I have a lot of trouble walking now, and i don't know what to do, no insurance or doctor.

Beejay said:

If you have a work-related injury that makes it impossible for you to perform you job, your time off should be covered by Workmen's Compensation. If at all possible, can you go back to work and tell them that you need the company to send you to a doctor ? A company must document work- related injuries. Do you have a community health clinic near you ? They charge on a sliding scale, based on your income. If not, go to the hospital emergency room. Be sure to tell them that your injury happened on the job. They will bill you for the visit,which you can pay later. You MUST get your injury looked at by a doctor !!!!!

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When I went to the hospital it told me where to go they have a place inside the hospital for those poeple without doctors. This happened in June of 2010. I plan on finding a another job and then reporting them, (my bosses were very generous to me the whole time I have been with them, they are multi-millionaries, maybe billionaries. They have done a lot for us. My bosses gave us a place to live free of charge, they remodeled this place and finished it less then 1 week before we moved in. But unfortunately the manager lets her family work with us. I work with the daughter, she is on the cell phone constantly, reading a book by a tablet, always doing homework, etc while on duty, when I say something she mentions DS Brad, DS Brad does more than her daughter ever thinks of doing.

The manager has her mom, sister, daughter, and brother working here. Except for one person I do all the work in the day shift (I work with the daughter one day aweek.) and my son does do what he can with a broken hand, but he has asked for more hours and will not get more ( some one quit, 3 days up for grabs), I have asked for more and nothing.

I have been here second longest after another girl that is more hard working then me. WHAT GIVES.

I grew up/live in Atlanta, GA (right to work state-A Right to Work law secures the right of employees to decide for themselves whether or not to join or financially support a union. However, employees who work in the railway or airline industries are not protected by a Right to Work law, and employees who work on a federal enclave may not be) and my dad (now 85 years old) was very anti union and frankly I have to agree with him. My husband is from Buffalo, Ny and was very pro-union until he moved here in the 1980's and saw how business was thriving here and dying in Buffalo. I think if you run a business and operate it within the law no one should be able to tell you what kind of benefits or pay (outside of min. wage) you give your employees.
The economys in Right to Work states grows while union states are dying....unions are running out business, no business, no job at all.
Taken from "Right to Work: A Fundamental Freedom"

"Under a decades-old political compromise, federal labor policies promoting compulsory unionism persist side by side with the ability of states to curb such compulsion with right-to-work laws. So far, as I said, 22 states have done so. And when we compare and contrast the economic performance in these 22 states against the others, we find interesting things. For example, from 1999 to 2009 (the last such year for which data are available), the aggregate real all-industry GDP of the 22 right-to-work states grew by 24.2 percent, nearly 40 percent more than the gain registered by the other 28 states as a group

Even more dramatic is the contrast if we look at personal income growth. From 2000 to 2010, real personal incomes grew by an average of 24.3 percent in the 22 right-to-work states, more than double the rate for the other 28 as a group. But the strongest indicator is the migration of young adults. In 2009, there were 20 percent more 25- to 34-year-olds in right-to-work states than in 1999. In the compulsory union states, the increase was only 3.3 percent—barely one-sixth as much."

"As more and more workers and businesses have obtained refuge from compulsory unionism in right-to-work states in recent decades, the rationality of the free market has been showing itself. But the public sector is another and a grimmer story.

The National Labor Relations Act affects only private-sector workers. Since the 1960s, however, 21 states have enacted laws authorizing the collection of forced union dues from at least some state and local public employees. More than a dozen additional states have granted union officials the monopoly power to speak for all government workers whether they consent to this or not. Thus today, government workers are more than five times as likely to be unionized as private sector workers. This represents a great danger for taxpayers and consumers of government services. For as Victor Gotbaum, head of the Manhattan-based District 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union, said 36 years ago: “We have the ability, in a sense, to elect our own boss.”

How this works is simple, and explains the inordinate power of union officials in so many states that have not adopted right-to-work laws. Union officials funnel a huge portion of the compulsory dues and fees they collect into efforts to influence the outcomes of elections. In return, elected officials are afraid to anger them even in the face of financial crisis. This explains why states with the heaviest tax burdens and the greatest long-term fiscal imbalances (in many cases due to bloated public employee pension funds) are those with the most unionized government workforces. California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin represent the worst default risks among the 50 states. In 2010, an average of 59.2 percent of the public employees in these nine worst default-risk states were unionized, 19.2 percentage points higher than the national average of 40 percent. All of these states except Nevada authorize compulsory union dues and fees in the public sector."