[jmcarter]

Everyone has their own perspective on unions but I can share mine based on managing a team of 200 machinist members of the IAM. Negotiating contracts and the language for distribution of overtime and such was never a huge problem. Hourly rate was always negotiated fairly easily unless the fully burdened rate would render our products too costly to compete. Larger issues were implementing productivity and/or quality improvements that the union felt could chip away at the total number of paying members. The poor performers were shielded by the union because again, the number of paying members were of the utmost importance to the union, not the productivity of the shop. A huge amount of my time was devoted to the discussion and arbitration of fairly petty issues. After two years in that role I was relieved to return to managing salaried employees, not to mention cutting my workweek from 70 to 50 hours