Boeing workers in Kansas dump union

Since this happened in your part of the country, Omaha Steve, I wondered what comments you might have.

-----

"Technical and professional workers at Boeing Integrated Defense Systems Wichita in Kansas are now working without a labor union.

"The Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace's Wichita Technical Professional Unit was decertified by a vote of 408 to 353."

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2007/06/18/daily17.html

I've seen it a few times. It won't happen immediately, but it will almost certainly happen.

My first impulse was to just say "what do you expect from Kansas". But the size of the group to decertify is unusual. I don't know about this situation, so I'm only using generalities.

It could have been a bad union. Blame that on a bad leader, apathy or both.

Perhaps the company did a good job of anti-union preaching over the years.

Maybe when these engineers went to college they didn't take any pro labor classes. Many were put through college by a parent in a union I'm willing to bet.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

1) The hard-core, union-or-die, union is my life and more important than oxygen type.

2) The apathetic, pay my dues and maybe show up to meetings now and then but really don't care one way or the other type.

3) The absolutely hate the the union with every fiber of my being and only join because they made me but I'd quit at the first opportunity type.

My experience has been that the more highly-educated and professional classes tend to be the #3 type most often. My dad, who happens to be an aerospace engineer, is definitely in that category. He used to work for one of the big companies that forced him to be in a union and he definitely hated in with every fiber of his being. He eventually quit to take a better job somewhere else, one of the benefits (from his perspective) being he didn't have to join a union. I think the most common complaints I heard from him and his like-minded friends were "the union takes my money and gives me nothing in return" or "the union takes my money and spends it on political causes I don't support."

In all honesty, I'm probably in category #2. I guess I'm technically in a union but it's just graduate students and a pretty meaningless organization.

Unions had and have their problems but they built a great way of
life for many families & towns.

Our race to the bottom is on.

Aerospace engineers were knocked around & laid off at radio frequency. Enjoy it now dumb asses.

The cycles of the business still went on. People were hired and laid off regardless. Also given the specialties, seniority really did not mean much either. Under those circumstances, its harder to make a case for unions to the white collar crowd.