Organized Labor Touches Two Pleasanton Issues: Castlewood Lockout and a Proposed Walmart Grocery

I am a person who started out as a soda jerk and flipping burgers more than fifty years ago in the local corner drug store and went from joining a local labor union at age 18, to the corporate level as VP Plant Manager.

As a former supervisor and manager in heavy industry manufacturing, with non-union and union employees, I have experienced two totally different work environments. I have thoroughly experienced both sides of the table.

Being a soda jerk making milk shakes and cherry cokes for all the girls that filled my counter was a really great, fun time of my youth. When I turned 18, I joined the local labor union. I wanted to change my income from 75 cents an hour to $2 an hour. Wow, instant riches.

As a 130-pound weakling, I reported to the supervisor for work as a member in good standing of the local labor union. He took one look at me, shook his head in disgust and asked, "What are you doing here?"

I was assigned to work with a long-time union member that happened to be a strapping six-foot something, two hundred-plus pounds. Our job assignment was to jack hammer the tops off concrete pilings. I was given the 120-pound jack hammer. The strapping six foot something long-time union member was given  the ninety pound jack hammer.

My welcome to organized labor thankfully ended with the summer, as I went on to school. I carried that organized labor experience with me as I entered the non-union work force. I was employed with a large corporation and continued with school in my employment.

My employers were non-union for the next 35 years. I became involved with start-ups and was responsible for recruiting, hiring, training, managing and supervising hundreds of employees.

All employees were non-union. It never occurred to anyone, employees or management, that organized labor required or needed a presence in our environment. All hires were well-trained, knew their jobs and performed in a highly professional, efficient manner. There was never an issue, never a confrontation, never an unhappy employee.

Some years later in my career, I was employed as a supervisor in a union environment. For the next five years, what I encountered in that union environment as a manufacturing supervisor was for me unbelievable. The union demeanor was petty, the work force was highly inefficient, their demands were ludicrous and their activities in instances were illegal.

As I was introduced to a union steward in the center where I was assigned, I held out my hand. The steward did not take my hand, but he said to me. "I never met a supervisor I liked."

There was an occasion when I assigned a fully qualified female employee to drive a fork truck during her shift as a replacement fork lift driver for the regular driver that was scheduled off.

Within an hour of posting that assignment, the female employee was in my office with tears pouring out of her eyes, begging me to reassign her because one of the more senior male employees was demanding with her that he be assigned the driver job.

I explained to her that I would not change the assignment. She was fully qualified as fork lift driver, and neither seniority nor gender had a precedence for assigning the job. It was not in the contract that a more senior male be assigned. The contract stated simply, a fully qualified driver should be assigned.

Within 15 minutes, the union president was in my office demanding that I change the assignment to the senior male employee as the driver. I said no. The union president said, "Then I will write a grievance."

I said, this male employee is intimidating and harassing this female employee and you are here in my office supporting him. You go write your grievance. I will respond to it. The union president left my office, and never did write that grievance.

The union had a paragraph in the contract where they could state that they were sick after four hours of work and go home, and receive four hours pay for that day. If they stated they were sick and wanted to go home with less than four hours work for the day, they would not receive any pay for that day.

They were allowed to exercise this paragraph 16 times a year without disciplinary action. There were a couple of employees who did this every Friday within an hour of receiving their paychecks for the previous week's work.

This activity disrupted manufacturing lines and necessitated shutting down lines to maintain schedule on critical lines and then working overtime to complete the work load on the shutdown lines.

The workers locked out at should bargain their health care costs to a reasonable level like everyone else in the public and private sectors of employment. It is necessary to maintain employment.

There are some employees in the private sector that are personally opting out of health care coverage so as to have the extra take-home dollars. The locked out Castlewood employees should consider contracting for their own health care package independently.

There are affordable health care packages that can be negotiated. I believe the union leadership should have been researching and investigating a health care package for their membership, and then let the employer fend for his own health care without the membership contributing to it in order to support it.

The Walmart that will help reduce the cost of groceries overall and may well impact other local grocers in the initial stage. But those other stores, like Lucky's and , will respond as they did with the new Safeway.

I do not believe the Walmart going into the former Nob Hill Market would have much impact on a going into the Vintage Hills shopping center.