You’ve seen it here before. We’re not shy about our support for unions, and whether it’s the Born Freelancer explaining why unions are boss or a fun video from the Canadian Media Guild demonstrating the sticky situations that unprotected workers find themselves in, we’re glad to share.
We can write about reasons to join a union until we’re blue in the face (fingers?), but sometimes hearing it from someone who’s experienced the benefits of union membership is most powerful. That’s what you’ll find here, in a post from Laura Kaminker, a librarian-in-training who works in a unionized job in Mississauga’s library system and also holds another non-unionized position.
Despite the non-unionized job paying significantly more, Kaminker prefers her work at the library. And she’s irritated at the negative attitude so many non-union workers have towards something that, as she writes so eloquently, “shifts the balance from the employer having 100% of the power to the employer having some amount less than 100%.” Likely prompted to voice her support for unions by the current Toronto library strike, Kaminker, a former active member of the National Writers Union, picks apart the usual anti-union sentiments one by one. Example:
…union workers are lazy. By lazy, I think they mean work a certain number of hours, for which they are paid, and are not forced to work longer hours and/or unpaid hours at the employer’s say-so. I suspect the people who call this lazy would very much like the opportunity to be lazy like that. Also, I’ve worked in non-union environments all my life, and I’ve had loads of lazy co-workers. And many industrious ones. People are people. Unions don’t change that.
Head over to Kaminker’s post at wmtc and read the rest. For the pro-union amongst us, it may be preaching to the choir, but it’s still worth a read to have a nice “damn right!” moment.
