I’m a fan of unions, but I think we can all agree that some union members cross the line from time to time and take advantage of their position of power.
And that was going on here, but her chickens came home to roost eventually.
Check out this story from Reddit and enjoy!
Sketchy Union Member Representative gets fired for lying and deceptive conduct.
“I’m in the HR/Payroll department for a janitorial service company that deals with a service workers union.
It’s a pretty big time US Union that has local branches. Our company is state-regional with a few thousand employees.
About two years ago, a new Union member representative got employed at the local branch.
Let’s call her Ashley.
She came in wanting to make waves.
The general sense was that she is extremely proactive and will call us out on everything so we gotta step up our game!
At first, she was very communicative with the employees/members.
Nothing wrong with this. It did cause an initial surge in employees complaining to us. Some had merit, others did not.
Since the Union contract is worded kinda funky, I don’t blame a person for misreading it.
Besides, our policy is to just straight-up read from it if an employee does not agree with something.
Still, we try to be reasonable without showing favoritism.
This was getting exhausting.
Some days I would have to talk to employee after employee about what Ashley said during the recent Union Member meeting was bull.
“No, you do not have 7 days of sick day. You just used up 7.”
She was literally giving us more work to cause office inefficiency so things can slip the cracks.
Whatever, as long as I do my work perfectly, we should be fine.
Something that became popular since Ashley started working was Union Leave assignments.
A union employee (plural at times) would be excused from work for weeks.
The motion would be brought up by Ashley with employees “volunteering” to be picked and our company approving or denying the motion (I dubbed these employees as “the volunteers”).
Since it was ****** if we do, ****** if we don’t.
We would just play the nice guy card and approve every single one.
Sometimes employees that would work along side the employee that just left on a “Union assignment” would get upset and ask how this is fair.
Take it up with the union!
We would just refer to the Union Contract and ask them to talk to the Union about it.
We would explain that this is certainly something that The Union pushed for in the contract, not the companies.
Ashley and “the volunteers” were known to be pretty buddy buddy outside of work.
When these employees would come back to work, they would push their weight around on the other employees.
A two tier level of Union Employees developed and we had to step in to try to discipline.
Of course, these Employees would go crying to Ashley immediately and state they were being discriminated against because they were “more union”.
Another thing that was shocking was how Ashley and “the volunteers” would back up claims with a list of a couple dozen signatures.
The most serious one was one which alleged that an area supervisor was overly aggressive and incompetent.
This woman was out of control.
They had like 40 signatures. “The volunteers” and a dozen employees showed up to our office to hand deliver this claim.
It felt like an intimidation tactic.
I interact with most employees and get to know them, yet I hardly recognized anyone in that group except of course “the volunteers”.
The supervisor was investigated by corporate HR, but they found nothing. We interviewed those that signed and we got a very different story.
Turns out the 40 signatures were just a sign-in sheet at a Union meeting.
This was sketchy.
About half the signatures were union employees who were not employed by our company.
They did discuss this supervisor in the meeting, but not everyone in attendance agreed with the claim.
The investigation was coming to a close while our company had a big meeting with the local union due to “new issues.”
I was told to sit there, look pretty, and keep my cool because I can be a hot head. Ashley is known for interrupting while someone else is speaking.
Our regional VP would be our main representative. He is diplomatic and can keep his cool.
Our folks show up to the meeting and they get hammered on 4 new big issues.
4 of our new hires are actually full union employees sent by Ashley who were recently laid off from a different Union Employer.
Hmmm…
We must pay and support these new hires as full union. If during the interview those details didn’t come up, too bad.
We got screwed big time.
The VP accepted defeated on this topic and moved on to another issues, but Ashley kept interrupting him.
He had enough. He told her to be professional, stop being so malicious, and to stop lying.
My mouth was still open as he was exiting the meeting room. “Oh that’s how you wanna play?” said Ashley’s boss.
In my mind, I thought Ashley’s boss probably knows best that if she is enabling a drama queen professional to cause havoc, she should deal with it… Or be asked to.
Ashley was in trouble.
After a few days, the VP emailed Ashley’s boss and other Union higher ups about the bull signatures she would collect about claims,
Ashley’s friends being paid through fake Union Leave Activities with “our employees money!” and the overly adversary tone she would carry in our relationship with her.
He attached employee testimonials (employees that attended The Union meetings) and emails that illustrated his accusations.
There was way more sketchy stuff Ashley did, but I just mentioned the worse stuff.
Ashley was fired the next day.
I’m all for Unions, fight the man, and social policies in the land of inequality.
Yet, there’s some bad apples in Unions.
It should not be surprising because Unions are on the decline and it’s very difficult to deal with giant corporations and big business, but we should all maintain a level of mutual respect.
Call me out on my bull, but I will do the same.
If it gets personal, let’s now see which bull pile stinks more.”
Here’s what Reddit users had to say.
This person chimed in.
Another individual shared their thoughts.
This reader didn’t hold back.
Another reader spoke up.
And this individual isn’t a fan of unions.
She was WAY out of line…
And it came back to bite her.
Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.