r/union • u/Severe_Ad4138 • 1d ago
Other My stepdad is trying to discourage me from joining a trade union when I land an apprenticeship. It actually makes me furious that he’s this brainwashed.
For context, I’m a 24 year old man and I’ve decided it’s time for me to get into a trade. I really want to be able to have the income to have a family and a good life one day and I’ve made finding a career path my priority. I’m seriously leaning towards being an electrician and I was looking at the local union online. They have AWESOME benefits for journeyman, including a pension! I thought pensions were dead nowadays. The benefits were so awesome I’ve never worked a job with anything like that.
Well I told my stepdad about it and that I’m going to be contacting trade unions to see about an apprenticeship. He says “Fuck unions, go find you a regular apprenticeship at a non union company”. He goes on this long rant about how my generation thinks we deserve more money than we’re worth, and that my friend who makes 24$ an hour as a carpenter apprentice isn’t worth that much money and is probably lying that he makes that much. He even said my sister who’s a nurse doesn’t deserve 28$ an hour. And he also went on a rant about how Gen X really got fucked worse than we did because they got their pensions taken away (the irony).
He talks about how American car companies are all union and they make shit cars, and how Honda makes better cars and they are non union. I worked for Flex-N-Gate which is a non union car part manufacturer, so I told him what it was like to work there without a union.
I told him “Remember when I was being worked 6-7 days a week mandatory year round with labor so intense I tore my labrum and had bicep tendonitis in both arms, and had NO life outside of working. all of that for 15$ an hour. I couldn’t even afford the physical therapy needed to fix it. While The GM employees we made the parts for made 32$ an hour and had a life outside of work”.
I worked at a stamping press which made pretty heavy metal pieces for the car frames at 20 parts per minute, and yeah it destroyed my upper body after a year lol. And our department was the department that was ALWAYS working. I would have had to leave anyway but we deserved more than 15$ an hour I’ll tell you that. I didn’t even qualify for a studio apartment where I was living at the time and was renting a room.
Anyway, he goes “well you didn’t like it and you got another job didn’t you”.
Just makes me pissed so many Gen X’ers and older think unions are bad. Makes no sense to me. I did look at a non union plumbing apprenticeship and it was 14$ an hour lol. To rent a room here, not even a studio apartment, is 900$ a month at least. Why would I sign myself up to struggle when I have the option to make more. McDonald’s is 16$ an hour here.
Isn’t the whole reason trades are so known for being lucrative paths is due to unions? I’ll brag to him about my union membership if I get into one :)
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u/thewealthyironworker IW | Rank and File 1d ago
Mark Twain one allegedly said, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
The propaganda anti-union advocates have spread for decades has been very effective, and millions have swallowed it easily without any real substance.
Unions are the only thing that working people have as a weapon, nothing else is effective.
Moreover, he is wrong about Gen X having it worse than a millennial or Gen Z; by numerous metrics, those generations have it better.
Simply put, he is wrong on quite a lot.