I find this puzzling. Back in 2000, I worked at the south Medford Fred Meyer store, and was forced to belong to UFCW. They happily took one in every four of my paychecks and did absolutely nothing for me, except send me Al Gore propaganda in the mail. I wonder what would cause the Fred Meyer management at that store to suddenly become so hostile to a union with which they have worked for so long.

I'll bet $1 it's just one "Frank Burns" from MAS*H-model assistant manager that's been listening to way too much Rush/Faux News to be able to function in society effectively.

Maybe they should be talking to them in the breakroom, not on the sales floor. :o)

Kari, you conveniently omitted a fairly pertinent part of the linked report in your post:

"The management said 'fine you can communicate with them on their breaks, in the breakroom, no problem,'" [Hillsboro Police Department Lt. Mike] Rouches said.

Assuming that's really what management said, then it sounds to me more like a dispute about union reps disrupting the worker's duties. Workers may have the right to speak to union reps in the workplace, but do they have the right to just stop working at any time in order to do so?

Or, in other words, what adawn said. :-)

Seems like we haven't gotten the whole story on this one.

Gee Scott, one in four paychecks? Musta been tough living on $25 a week. Or did you just forget to show up for work? You can choose to not like unions, but cut the crap, okay?

Kari, I'm prety adept at the NLRA as well as union organizing. The Act states that union representatives may contact their union members or prospective members on breaks, but not working time. Once organized, if the union leadership wants to address the membership that is what mailings and union meetings are for.

Most Collective bargaining agreements set out procedures for union representative contact during the work day. Even those circumstances revolve around grievances or some other specifics. The fact that four reps were there (I also believe that one was the local President according to the Oregonian) indicates something more than a mere pressing of the flesh was going on.

It could be nothing more than an overzealous assistant manager, but my spidey sense say otherwise. There is most likely an issue brewing at that Freddies, the national is having a go at corporat owner Kroger, or some provacation is taking place by either side.

It would be nice to get the rest of the story.

Sticking with the actual observed behavior...

Yes, FM's actions violated Fed statute. It was also Criminal Trespass II, under the Oregon criminal code. And that is where the injustice enters. Metro area police depts. function as a de facto store security staff. They always immediately side with the business, seldom bothering to check any facts, or have at least as much objectivity as they would on another kind of call. "The management asked them to leave". I have seen many instances where a cashier with a personal beef against a customer just declares "I'm the manager", and the police cart a legitimate customer with a beef off to jail. Depends a lot on what you look like, too. Very regressive!

As far as Fred Myer go, A & Poo are calling the shots in Cincy. I personally knew the woman that ran them for years. The sister of the prefect of that Franciscan province, is a throwback to the Pope Pius XII and anti-union sentiment. They're communists. Period. She says the rosary to prevent union take-over. Lectures friends on how Mary's color is blue and the Soviets was red. Regards John XXIII as an anti-pope.

Maybe you didn't know, but your home town store has long been gone. Stop shopping there. Not one iota better than Wal-Mart. You shop at Wal-Mart?

Artsasinic- How dare you pretend to know more about my life experience than I do. You've got a lot of nerve.

JJ Ferguson - What the heck neighborhood do you live in to have seen, "many times", a cashier sending people to the hoosegow by falsely claiming to be the manager?

Bizarre.

Really?

Scott: I have to mention to you and JJ that if you make up implausible stuff, nobody listens to you.

So Jack Roberts, if you can take a moment away from coiffing your hair, what's your point about Wal-Mart?

Implausible stuff? Look, I worked at Fred Meyer for around a year and paid hundreds upon hundreds of dollars to UFCW for the privilege of doing so. This was despite the fact that I never received a single, tangible benefit from UFCW as a result. Implausible stuff? Or are you and Artsasinic so enfatuated with unions that it's beyond your comprehension that they may not always represent their members' best interests? That can't be it. It must be something simpler, like Artsasinic's ridiculous assertion that I must have forgotten to show up to work.

Arrested? GEZZZUSSSS "Can't we all just get along?" Why does Fred Meyer have to act this way? What's the hold up on the contract? They don't want to pay any back pay? They don't want to pay us in Bend decent wages? Arrested our union president? That REAL GOOD for business! I'm sure our customers LOVE to see Fred Meyer acting this way. Let's see how much business they end up loosing over this...... Hmmm Should I go to Freddies or to that other store over there where they treat their employees fair? What has the union done for you? I know they have done a LOT for me and my family! I like the fact that I have a whole team of lawyers behind me! I like the fact that I can't be terminated just because..... THAT'S WHAT YOUR UNION DOES FOR YOU! and YES I AM a Fred Meyer worker and member of local 555, I choose to be or I'd go get a job somewhere else!

Again, why were FOUR union officials, including the local President at that particular Freddies? Something is up and a good investigative reporter would find out.

Thank you Monica. Apparently local 555 and this Freddies are not yet at agreement regarding their contract. Sounds like some union grandstanding and stupid store managment.

Nothing to see here folks, move along. Let the two sides work it out.

Scott,

You do realize that your pay and working conditions were negotiated by the union you belonged to, right? And you realize that union wages are better than those negotiated in the private sector due to collective bargaining, right?

So, you are saying that your wages and benefits (not to mention the fact that you couldn't be dismissed from the job or disciplined without your employer having to make damn sure they had a case or your union would have filed a grievance on our behalf)---those aren't tangible benefits?

Uhm, okay, if you say so. By the way, got your old union contract laying around? Cause I'd LOVE to see the dues deduction clause and the salary schedule....25% of your wages? Hey, there's a nice bridge in POrtland with a view of the ocean...wanna buy a timeshare?

Ummm, Scott, as a current member of UFCW, I happen to have some idea of the dues structure, so yes, I can make a guess at your life experiences and what being a union member cost you, and as I also worked at one point for another union in representing Fred Meyer workers, I assure you, life at Freddies would be intolerable without a union presence.

Yes, the Union is of tremendous value.

I work in a workplace where the stipulation is that should anyone externally have any complaint, no matter what, it's summary termination. Even if they were utterly and clearly dead wrong. It's just how it is. And a friend had a similar situation at HP - he was five mins early to work every day, their top production cog month after month for over three years. One day he was exactly five minutes late. Fired summarily. That was their rule, they had to enforce it. His story ended happily: two weeks later a very highly-placed person called him at home and they hired him back. Back when uppers might visit the floor and possibly even know what is going on in their own facility. But his work was so incredibly stand out, his story had that ending. A normal employee, with decent work habits but maybe occasionally touched by management? No such thing.

His point: he knows I'm not making it up that I've been told my work is flawless, I suffer zero supervision or monitoring or auditing of my work because national entities have found not one thing to even suggest I do differently... :).... but that stipulation of summary firing is there notwithstanding.

I could tell the story of someone else I know. Veteran logistics project manager of twenty years uninterrupted service whose home company closed shop. Sought-after. Had to quit new job b/c the guy who built the company treated it as his personal piggy bank, and also demanded that this man leave behind his personal life and take up the jobs of a second managerial position on top of his - mornings, nights, weekends on top of regular hours. Union would have saved him from the petty antics of a man who is not professional in his dealings with employees and corporation.

Unions: we need them. We have no idea what they do for us until we do not have them.

Supportive comment made, I have to also point out that Unions instigate highly colorful interactions and disturbances so as to draw attention when there is a campaign. Up to and including harassing corporate headquarters, knocking on doors and being told to leave under threat of law enforcement - knowing that this is exactly what will occur. It's highly staged.

Much as I believe in them, they are politicians too!

Scott Jorgensen, a big chuck of what union workers get for your union dues is a strike fund. That strike fund is what gives workers the financial capability for the members of the Union to strike.

Because the union collects those dues, unions have the ability to strike when a strike is the only option left.

That strike power in the union's back pocket means your wages at Fred Meyers and the wages of some family members of mine Krogers in the Midwest put themselves through Big-10 Universities working 25-30 hour weeks. Walmart and WinnDixie pay a few cents over minimum wage.

Rather than debating the pros and cons of union membership in the abstract, lets focus on this particular issue or set of issues.

What none of the news sources stated is that local 555 and Freddies have a rather byzantine collective bargaining arrangement for Oregon and southern WA. The Portland area stores have been working under a contract extension since the last contract expired in the summer of 2008. Both sides have been reluctant to take a serious stance at the table and twice mediators have been called in to jump start the process. There have been about 3-4 ULP charges filed regarding alleged unilateral company decisions affecting the represented workers.

Some of the complications revolve around including Bend Freddies in the Portland agreement since the store pays managers at Portland rates but does not recognize the Portland bargained rates for Bend empoyees in the union.

Another huge sticking point is a grossly underfunded union Pension and Benefit Trust, probably due to last years stock market meltdown. The third issue is concerns about healthcare union trusts as the Eugene employees health trust is in serious trouble. It would appear that local 555 wants to bargain in maintaining the trusts with Freddies making up the shortfall. On the other hand it would appear Freddies is bargaining to bring the union trust benefits back under Freddies corporate plan run out of Kroger HQ in Cincinnati, OH.

It would be interesting to get some perspective on why it has taken so long for this contract negotiation to get moving towards a new contract. It isn't because Krogers is anti-union, because they aren't. Of course the economic climate has been really bad for retial for the past 18 months and even in good times grocery stores operate on a thin margin of about 3%. Even so, it would appear that the two sides have been shadow boxing with each other and it just recently boiled over into the public arena.

I could have cut and paste most of the background material from local 555's website, but gave a condensed version of my research into this interesting issue.

Mel-

During my stint at Fred Meyer, I was paid just over minimum wage, but the difference went straight to union dues. As I previously stated, I received no benefits as the result of that arrangement. The only thing even close was knowing that I could not be fired for any reason except for failure to pay my dues. I never had any contract with UFCW, but had to cut a substantial check to them ever so often for no real good reason. No, artsasinic, I'm positive that I know much more about the conditions I worked under 10 years ago. That's completely irrelevant to what you're doing now. A friend of mine who stuck with the company told me a few years ago that his dues were somewhere around $25 per month and included benefits. I never worked there under any such circumstances. But would Fred Meyer be intolerable without the union? I really don't know about that. Saul Alinsky addressed that issue fairly early on in "Reville for Radicals," which I recommend to everybody. He basically stated that big labor sometimes works in concert with big business, and can be just as guilty of exploiting workers. That was my experience with UFCW and Fred Meyer, as much as the union shills would like to pretend otherwise (Gee, I was unsatisfied with UFCW, so I must be just lying about the whole thing)! I had no love lost for management either, but the union certainly didn't do anything to help out. That's why I'm so surprised to see such public feuding between the union and management at this particular store.

Scott: you are saying you were told that you would be fired if you did not pay your dues? Serious?

Yep rw, that part of Scott's story rings true, most union contracts have stipulations in them requiring employers to terminate employees if they fail to pay dues, and the union requests the terminiation. Otherwise we would be looking what happens in so-called "right to work" states, where union strength is a total joke.

Anyone who does NOT belong to a union is a pure unadulterated fucking idiot. Not working 12 hour shift 7 days a week is union.

The tightest unions are the doctors (AMA), ambulance chasers (ABA), political scum (Republicans and Democrats) and dentists.

The best paying jobs that I have had were because of unions. Anyone who believes the anti union propaganda of the oligarchy is a fool, I don't care how intelligent they are, they are still fools.

The comment earlier about 1 out of 4 paychecks going to the union, is not a union members comment, but an antiunion asshole, probably an ambulance chaser and a politician.

Art - he is not telling the whole story. There are two tiers of union members in union shops. And he lies if he says he was forced to pay out one check in four.

It is true, a union member MUST pay SOME dues of SOME kind for belonging to a shop that will protect him in a grievance situation, strike on his behalf with him AND offers some severance monies to fired workers! yes, really. Not much, but they will pay a heat bill, some gas for the rig, like that.

At any rate, there are full dues-paying members who pay at one rate, and then there are members who pay a much reduced rate who get a lower level of engagement from the union. But not the one paycheck out of four he says he paid.

Perhaps he had tiny work hours? He refuses to really tell the rest of the story. So I do not take his story seriously. If he really wanted us to understand what the union did to him, it would be needful to know such things as what was the pay rate, what was he doing, how old was he, how many hours as that would help you kjonw why he claims one check in four taken away from him.

He sounds like a generally disgruntled person who did not accept the reality he bought. You cannot make someone happy if they sign on but don't like the conditions. Face it - if you got forty hours, that dues hits less hard. But if you only get twelve, of course, asshole, it hits harder. AND: if you are a pain in the butt employee whose hours get trimmed down and trimmed down....... like that!

LIkewise, my son notes that many of his peers in H.S. and then just out of H.S. seem to feel "good money" is owed to them, and they do not really want to work too hard. No comment on "the youth of this time" b/c that's not true either. But noting that a lot of kids who were not allowed to work by Oregon state when they were ready, as well as unable to work b/c there was no work to be found never learned to work. And lots of kids really just want the money, and find no stimulation in the aspects of work.

Sorry, strayed away. I am saying that he does not give enough detail to understand his story. And we are just blabbering away up here speculatively. I don't call that a true political discuss. It is just blather and speculation.

We were baited like a fishin' hole, folks!

Scott states he worked at Freddies about 10 years ago. Then minimum wage was $6/hr. A 40 hour workweek would gross $240. With about 1/3rd taken for FICA, fed, state taxes that leaves him $160. $25/week is about 1/8th of his paycheck - again assuming a 40 hour week. Lower hours ups the percentage paid out in dues. Of course this does not take into account initiation fees.

Oregon is a state that does not force union participation as a condition of work. If a member of a unit covered by a Collective Bargaining Agreement chooses to, they may make like donations to a charity rather than the union representing the work unit.

Several years ago Interstate bakery in Los Angeles shut down. It didn't have to. The workers there were willing to renegotiate their contracts enabling the company to stay open. The Teamsters refused, as that would have set a precedent for the other Interstate bakeries nationwide. The union was only too happy to let several hundred workers lose their job in California, rather than give an inch on a bargaining strategy nationwide. I bet those union workers in CA feel really glad to be in their union.

It isn't the 1930s anymore. Unions are an anachronism. Unions, along with threats of litigation and a plethora of environmental and other regulations are the real reason why so many manufacturing jobs are leaving this country.

BTW, if you say you are pro-union but drive a Toyota, Nissan or Honda, you are a hypocrite. I only buy and drive cars made by my UAW friends.

Posted by: rw | Oct 17, 2009 3:03:26 PM

JJ Ferguson - What the heck neighborhood do you live in to have seen, "many times", a cashier sending people to the hoosegow by falsely claiming to be the manager?

Bizarre.

Really?

Yes. And why does the neighborhood always enter into it? All cases were in Portland. I mention that, because, I actually saw a "clerk claiming to be a manager" once, that yelled at the customer, "what are you doing in the crackhead part of town, anyway"? (It was 82nd and Powell) That really irritated me then, and what's "bizarre" is that would be the thing you asked.

Frankly, I thought that was general knowledge to anyone that has ever been involved in anything that was a store complaint. It that not par for the course in Portland?

BBrook, not sure what the heck you are getting at? If you are trying to say I"m some out of touch matron ensconced in a chic part of town tooling around in my Land Rover hybrid, cell phone clamped to my coiffed head with nails always done.... ummmm.

I said n'hood, B, not because I think some scallawag nhood is gonna have this crime against humanity and civility and not a more posh place...

I was making fun of JJ's deeply injured garbage posts that are terribly light on meaningful detail to create a semblance of substance beyond crying around!

I do admit to being awfully naive in that I experience that we live UTTERLY exposed in this world, and cannot imagine any jughead claiming to be a manager if they are not! Unless it's at some crummy corner store where there's only one guy on board at the time, eh? But at a larger store? You'd be in trouble so fast for such moronic lying to customers! I find it implausible that this epidemic of lying cashiers is terrorizing the populace and not somehow being found out by the big boss?

Heheheehe.

I'm a lowbrow wench. Ask them that knows me.

Really. Even if I CAN spell. Mostly.

Kurt: not so. When I worked at OHSU, I was MADE to pay a lower fee, but dues nonetheless. I was not given an option. I did not pay the full dues for I could not support my son alone on the pay I had AND the dues - I was part of the lower echelon on the Hill who watched jealously as nurses bitched and whined about thier pay, coverage, terms et. al. :)... while we were admonished to thank the nurses for our distinctly less-poshy offerings! :)... hehehhe.. Anyway: either SEIU lied to me and so should be hugely ashamed, or I was forced to sign on either as a full dues-paying member or a partial dues-paying member. The union did not protect my coworkers from firings and hazings.

But I still do believe in the union. Just because they sucked where I worked and seemed way more interested, also in janitors and scrub ladies than us somewhat skilled phlebots and such who also paid dues and were not paid too terribly much more than the cleanign staff.... heheheh... well, I forgive them. The immigrant staff made better poster children for the SEIU campaigns. :)...

I can believe in them without kissing their pictures at night.

I'm Pro-Union and I drive a Toyota....I love my UAW brethern, but because their corporate fatcat masters haven't attempted to stay abreast of the latest and best technologies, updating their plants accordingly, the cars they produce break down more often than their foreign counterparts. I would love to see pressure on Toyota and the others who have plants in the US to go union, but I also live in the real world and can't afford to fix my car every 4-6 months. So, fine, I'm a hypocrite---but I'm a hypocrite that is able to drive without going bankrupt.

Also, many "American" brands have parts that are produced by non-union workers in other countries. The lines are truly blurred now. So I wouldn't get too high up on my horse just because you buy/drive "American"....it may say Ford or Chevy, but some of the parts were made on the same line as Hondas and Toyotas, and not by your UAW friends.

Yes I understand. "Pro-Union" except when it is inconvenient.

I have heard those dissembling and justifications like that before. All I know is when I am in Michigan and Indiana talking with my UAW friends, they cannot believe that in Portland there are Union-Yes! stickers on the back of a Toyota or Hyundai. Their comment is: "How can people think like that." My answer, "That's Portland."

I think you should drive any brand you want. But don't label yourself as Pro-Union. My friends in the UAW don't think you are.

I wanted to clarify a few things here. The first is that I'm not necessarily anti-union, and am certainly not an ambulance chaser or a politician. It just so happens that I had to be unionized for the crappiest job I've ever had. Under the conditions of my employment, I was only guaranteed eight hours per week. Of course, it was usually more like 30 hours per week, especially during the holiday season. But when WinCo opened up across the street, everybody in the grocery department had their hours cut to the bare minimum. That severely affected morale, which was already bad, and lead to even higher turnover than usual. I left the company shortly thereafter, even though I had just cut a check to UFCW for a couple hundred dollars, which is a lot when you're not making very much. So was it one in four checks? I don't know. It may have been more like one in six or one in eight. The point is, I never felt like I got the value of that. I really wish I had, and it did put a bad taste in my mouth. I'm glad that many of you are happy with your union memberships, and I hope that UFCW provides more benefit to its members than I ever got. I understand that that is the case, which is great. As to the question of getting fired over not paying dues, I never got fired, because I did pay my dues. And I will add that the union did make it impossible for people to get fired, some of whom probably even should have been! Towards the end of my stint, I was called into the manager's office because I hadn't paid my dues yet, and it was made very clear to me that I needed to do that right away. The job I had right afterwards was with the family-owned store in Talent. I didn't have to deal with the union or a huge corporation, and was much happier and had more consistent hours. Ironically, even though I hated working at Fred Meyer, I've always liked shopping there. I even heard that prior to its ownership by Kroger, it was an excellent company to work for. But as I mentioned before, I didn't much care for the union or management, which is why I'm somewhat amused to see them fighting in public. It's kind of like watching Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh duke it out. Do you care who wins? Not really, but you wouldn't want to jump in and break it up, either.

Unions, in general, are a good thing, but just like everything else there are good ones and there are bad ones, and some have good leaders and others don't.

For those of you familiar with UFCW structure and how the stores are represented by the business reps - is it "normal, ordinary" business for 8 business reps to be going into a store at the same time, no less a store that 7 of the reps do not have on their route????? While only 3 were arrested, initially 8 UFCW reps were out there at that store for the purpose of showing Fred Meyer that they will go into a store and talk to members on the floor whenever they want to and for however long they want to. The Union is pushing the envelope here, not Fred Meyer. Normally, only the one rep assigned to a particular store goes in and speaks to members about contract negotiations, grievances, etc. Not a whole flock of them.