After a period of unemployment while still living in Tennessee years ago, I was hired by “the telephone company” as a Microwave Technician. Tennessee was/is a “right to work” state.

The job was a “union” position; however, while you were not required to join the union, you had to operate under union jurisdiction. After I was on the job one month, the union, in the midst of a contract dispute with management, decided to “go out” on a strike.

Now, I had reservations against joining for the union is not your employer and sometimes they would do or get involved in things that were generally “ungodly” practices. In any case, since I was a “new hire”, I was not qualified to join the union until I had been on the job for 90 days.

The union did go out on strike and I was called by the supervisor and was given two choices; cross the picket lines and come to work, or be fired! Since I had been without income for nearly a year and a half my decision was to “serve” my employer (and my family) and go to work as ordered.

Shortly after the strike began, union members decided to use me as a target of their wrath for my crossing the lines. They cared less that the only other option I had was to quit my new job.

My wife received harassing telephone calls day & night, threats were shouted as I went to work daily, tacks were thrown in our driveway, horn blowing at night while sleeping and one day they stole my car from the “secured” company parking lot.

The strike went on for over two months and several union members straggled back to work crossing the lines during that time. The net result was that the union accepted a contract that was less than the original offer. So, they came back to work but had ill feelings toward me, many of them for the remainder of my time there (three years).

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Although there wasn’t e-mail and such then, upon my move to Florida and into yet another union domain (the same union), they quickly forwarded info about me from Tennessee!  The union harassment continued at the Kennedy Space Center, by trying to get me fired or falsely accusing me of impropriety, until I was “promoted” out of their “shop” and into a non-represented software group – more money and less harassment.

(Usually, it is very difficult to advance out of a union environment, for management seems to think that you will carry that “mentality” with you, causing additional problems).

In all fairness, this was only ONE union. I don’t know if they ALL operate in such a manner, but having seen rail and mine unions operating in the “coal fields” of Southwest Virginia, I have my suspicions!

Many years ago, there was a TV commercial with a song – “Look for the Union Label”. I think we have found it.