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How many instances of employees' shucking union leadership can you tink of? Apparently the folks at the NLRB have helped corrupt our labor system by installing laws that enable union halls and companies to keep that from happening. Many folks are afraid that the employer will just "fire everybody" if they vote their sorry union representation out of office. And it appears that legislation is needed to control that type of event from occuring. But don't hold your breath on that one- you are being controlled and everything is fine- just go back to work.
 
2007 Member Survey
"I see my union rep about three times every year".
Which of the following best reflects your opinion on that statement:
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA you're kidding right?
Who cares anyway, he don't do nothin' for me!
How do I go about joining a RealUnion?
 
     How long are our union monies going to be spent running attack adds against Wal-Mart for not inspecting overseas containers that have never (ever) been used as a terrorist weapon?
Indefinitely because the guys at the Union hall know what is good for us, and we don' t know nuthin'. Could you guys take some more money out of my check for something really stupid? I mean idiotic stupid man; beyond dumb and dumber stupid. Oh yeah I forgot; more money to organize Wal-Mart. What was I thinking anyway?
 
OK Already I admit it: I was WRONG!
REALUNION VOTES IN NON-BINDING RESOLUTION
 
     This WAR has gone on for way too long and cost us way too much money. There have been countless lives WASTED in pursuing this War!
     It's been nearly SEVEN YEARS since our Union REP told us the Union Hall was increasing our dues by .69 cents weekly in order to "ORGANIZE WAL-MART."  As of the first of February we have once again had dues increased by an additional .46 cents weekly.
     It is time to bring the troops home. WE can no longer support funding to organize any Wal-Mart after SEVEN FAILED YEARS of trying to win an UN-WINABLE WAR!
     We need new leadership because the folks at our Union Hall just continue the same old strategy despite their record of ZERO wins and approximately 12 million five hundred and fifty eight THOUSAND dollars expended from our hard-earned treasury ( computed by using the guestimate of 50,000 UFCW 1099 members times .69= weekly figure; times 52= yearly figure; times 7= total for seven years of mis-spent union dues!)
     We need a NEW STRATEGY! We need CHANGE from our rotten union leadership! We need to have every employee at the D.C. as a member of our union! That includes our 'Auditors" and the folks who unload Meijer's trucks who work for Freight Handler's Incorporated! We need to see our union money spent in bettering OUR working conditions. We need leadership that cares about winning OUR war before engaging in an un-winnable war! WE have a UNION SHOP where nearly FIFTY PERCENT of laborers are NON UNION!
  WAKE UP MEIJER EMPLOYEES! Join REALUNION TODAY!
    
One of the following two topics is PATENTLY FALSE when the above argument is applied; 1) The War on Terror or 2) Wal-Mart  needs to be organized. Like Fox News, we'll let you decide. 
 
 

Englewood is our SPOTLIGHT STORE for 2007. Let's see how many applications we can receive from our Meijer Store in Englewood! Just click on the application form at the left on the home page and fill out your form for REAL UNION REPRESENTATION!

The WAGNER ACT OF 1935 identified unfair labor practices for employers including:

Dominating Unions by....cooperating Union Officials.

     How can our Union Hall cronies tell us the last contract was "overwhelmingly endorsed" when only 38% of our membership voted? Perhaps more to the point, how can every individual I've asked (EXCEPT ONE!) at the Distribution Center tell me they voted "NO" on our contract, and our Union Officials tell us the contract was "overwhelmingly endorsed"? Someone has to be lying here folks. Either my co-workers are lying when they tell me how they voted, or our Union Officals are lying and are incapable of counting union votes! If the latter is true, then we have some major corruption going on! Now what should the NLRB do when statistics liked these are brought to their attention? Shouldn't they insert themselves into our situation by monitoring our next ratification vote? Something very shady appears to be going on here folks.

 

***THE ORDER HAS BEEN ISSUED!***

POSTING OCCURED 1/31/07 at bldg 802 Tipp City D.C.

It has taken us two years to get the order enforced.

 Meijer, Inc. and Robert Lee Caldwell. 

 Tell all your co-workers to Join RealUnion today.

If you aren't concerned about your paycheck and how it is negatively affected by illegal immigration you need to reconsider. It's our dollars that UFCW-1099 uses to defend the illegal aliens at Swift Meatpacking based in Greeley, Colorado. see  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16169899/

It's at another site, an article written by Bob Sullivan; (http://redtape.msnbc.com/2006/03/hidden_cost_of_.html) where you learn why you should care;

"Behind many of the nation’s millions of undocumented workers are someone else's documents. To get a job, illegal immigrants need a Social Security number, and they often borrow one.  As victim Melody Millet is fond of saying, U.S. citizens are being forced to share their identities with undocumented immigrants to give corporate America a steady supply of cheap labor. "

     The law of supply and demand helps dictate wages. Increasing supply of laborers reduces the need and drives the cost of labor (our wages) down.

     Now why would a labor union (1099: represents your best interests!) encourage immigrants, and especially illegal immigrants, to come to our country and help reduce our hourly wages? Greed and Politics. They want more union dues. They don't care about us at all, they want more union dues to act even more irresponsibly with. And by pretending to care about this new potential voter they hope to gather more votes.

 It's the same with "Wal-Mart is bad for America". Of course they aren't; but poorly run unions are extremely bad for America; and they are especially bad for American laborers. Wake Up Meijer Union Members! Stop supporting tyranny at your worksite! Join Realunion today!

ps: If you browsed the latest propaganda from our union hall (Vision) our leadership now SAYS they are interested in inserting COLA's into union contracts. And to think it is the first time I've ever heard this mentioned in over ten years, and it has happened since I posted the absolute need for Cola's on this web page. Talk about coincidences! Always remember; "saying" is different than "doing".

 Letter from the Editor

Feb, 2005

     Ever notice how your computer screen never reflects "real time" statistics for you to know where you are concerning your expected "rated" job performance? You have numbers on your computer screen that are supposed to mean something; the bottom right number supposedly means your "rate for day performance". Problem is, this number does not reflect the delays you have entered for the shift unless your supervisor took the time to enter them and, (guess what?) they are way too busy to do that.

     Ever notice how you do certain jobs differently throughout the work year? For instance, stand-up hi-lo drivers always "stage" screen off during the busy season. It is much faster that way. But the original standard for that job task included pulling product from overstock, labelling product, and throwing product on the conveyor belt. I've had supervisors tell me I was not pulling rate for the week when I spent three hours each day "staging" screen off! On more than one occaision. My computer screen rate never exceeds 115%! I'm only doing one-third of the expected rated job, but my "rated"  performance never reaches 300%? What does this tell you about our computer rating system? How accurate do you think it is? Each of these instaces means my "rate" should have exceeded the expected rate by approximately 200% for the week! Yet my supervisors were of the opinion that I wasn't making "rate"!

     The other interesting phenomenon is these same supervisors have never seen instances where our computer generated "rate" was in error. The reality is no attempts have been made to "look" for "problems" like the ones mentioned here. Problems are hard to find if you know where you should look and intentionally don't look there!  

     Did you notice all the product staged in front of the racks in the main aisle from approximately September of 2005 to just a few weeks ago? That was because the same "infallible" computer system that is not capable of error when assessing "rate" for laborers would not allow systems coordinators to manually assign product to reserve locations. Because the computer system is incapable of recognizing manually assigned product. That's why the computer keeps telling you to put more product in the locations where manually assigned product exists. It does not "know" the product is there. And it is part of the reason we were driving around in a dangeraous and unsafe work environment for nearly half a year (With product all over the main aisles for us to drive around). Is your union doing anything about this? I'll bet they maintain they weren't even aware this problem existed. Little wonder. It was their time study engineer that gave the "rubber stamp" approval to our existing system.

Bob:

     I see U.F.C.W. is still doing nothing as usual for the money they take. A recently removed Meijer employee has gotten a job doing the same type of work that he did at Meijer. He'lll be able to get health care from the same health care provider as Meijer's for less cost!

 
It should be noted that this company is smaller than Meijer's!
 
This ex-employee does not work under the same stressful conditions that he/she did at Meijer! He/She really enjoys working for their new employer.
     The company does not charge their employee for gloves to handle their produce. This company has a higher standard for handling their produce. Therefore, they issue their employee four (4) pairs of gloves every morning. No advertising on them and no machine vending!
 
There is no Union to force the employee to pay!
     This person is much happier at this new job than they were with Meijer or U.F.C.W. on their back.Perhaps Meijer and the Union could take a lesson from this company? It is not known to me if they have race horses, Botanical Gardens, or if they are trying to organize another company.



Sincerely,
Phillip Thompson

 

Summer 2005

What is 1099 (UFCW) Doing Wrong?

They’ve been advancing their own political agenda over the best interests of dues paying union members.

Ever been asked if it would be OK for your local to use your dues money to try to organize Wal-Mart? Me either.

And while Meijer union members are turning out for contract ratification votes in record numbers approaching 38% of our membership (you read right, it says thirty eight percent), our union hall cronies are off gallivanting around trying to organize an historically un-organize-able retailer like (Wal-Mart). This demonstrates that securing a healthy union base in our bargaining unit is not as worthwhile an endeavor as hitting a grand-slam homerun by obtaining massive more union dues with a world-wide retailer like Wal-Mart.

In other words, our union hall cronies are all about obtaining money for political slush-funds (and houseboats and golf outings etc.). We could drop to twenty percent of our membership showing up for a contract ratification vote and they wouldn’t give a rat’s rear-end about it. Bottom line is they still get our dues every paycheck whether our contract sucks or not. And with the seventy-five dollar initiation fees, they actually get more when Meijer has a higher turnover rate! Talk about an incentive for lazy self-centered union hall bosses to keep doing nothing!

Every single person I’ve asked said they want our union leadership to educate and inform our union brotherhood about the importance of every union member voting for our contract ratification. So to recap, UFCW 1099 is not doing what we want them to do, but is continuing to do what we want them to stop.

Perhaps Saddam Hussein will be set free via a type of Iraqi/ O.J. justice. And then maybe Fidel will retire. I hope Lenny and Steve will ask them to run our union hall; we need real Dictator’s in power instead of the phony cronies we’ve got. /\/\


    UFCW UNION LOCAL FACES FEDERAL PROSECUTION FOR DENYING RIGHTS OF CAREGIVERS TO MENTALLY DISABLED Union officials unlawfully refused to allow local workers to cancel payment of compulsory dues... more >>

 About Us
"... Under this scheme, union thugs are allowed to confront individual workers on the job and at their homes, and demand the worker sign a card giving the union exclusive rights to representation. Workers who refuse are subject to intimidation, threats and even physical violence for not agreeing. When and if the union collects a simple majority of the worker cards at a given workplace, all employees at the workplace are forced to join the union, have dues garnished from their paychecks and give up all rights to negotiate with their employer on wages or work conditions. The Kennedy bill even forces the employer to give the worker's home address to the union, so that the AFL-CIO's "fedayeen" can make a house call on reluctant employees..." MORE>>
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"The only reason that UFCW-1099 was put in place as the labor representation at Meijer's was in order to keep out the Teamsters; that is obvious." The above statement was made to me by an individual who has since quit his job at the D.C...more>>
Last year, Forbes listed Meijer as No. 11 on its list of the 500 best-operated private companies. The magazine estimates Meijer's 2000 revenues at $9.5 billion, an increase of 14.5 percent compared to 1999. Net profits were estimated at $190 million... more>>
NLRB finds Meijer Inc. "has engaged in unfair labor practices" against Robert Caldwell... more>>

Bob;

      I visited a Wal-Mart recently and found that some employees were old friends of mine from Meijer’s. I asked them about the differences between the two companies. Julie could not tell me about benefits as she had not been with Wal-Mart long enough to be offered benefits. Julie told me of the people she worked with who are going to work for Wal-mart. Beverly W. Was the hiring coordinator for one of the (Meijer) Stores. Beverly had been with Meijer’s for years. For her to make the switch to give up her (Meijer) benefits there must be some kind of reason.

Then again in all fairness, upper management always has benefits. Julie however is on the lower end of the spectrum. Julie worked in the Jewelry Department, but was never allowed to advance to manager. She had the skills and knowledge to be a manager, but not the body. I’ll let you draw what conclusions you will but I heard a Union official say this on that subject; “To manage that department, you need the body of a model and the morals of an alley cat. It seems the department buyer uses the brains that are in his pants!

     All of this is known by Union Officials who train your union stewards; that’s where I received my training. Actually that was after the lessons learned from my parents. My real brain washing was from union training. They wanted me to forget that my Bible said it is wrong to abort babies, just because you made a mistake or had no morals; any thing to advance the Union position in the struggle for life. The Union of this company is dying from this cancer of lies and deceit. They do nothing for you but feast on your dues.

Why would anyone wish to retain these bad habits? Why not choose a new union that does not have these bad habit as of yet! It would be up to each of you to decide how your new union would turn out. But like a drug addicted person your old union would want to return to the old ways! I am glad that our fore-fathers did not let their fears stop them from building a new nation. I am proud of our fore-fathers who built the unions, but we don’t have the same kind of people to run the old unions today. There are a few that stand up but they get ridiculed by both the union and the people they are trying to help.

What are you going to do for us Bob? What is your union going to give us? You people still don’t get it. Bob does not want to be your king or savior! It is all about what are you willing to do for yourself and your families! What are you and your co-workers willing to give to yourself? What can you do for each other? Have you been lap dogs for so long that there is no desire to be free people? Have you been so brain washed that you really enjoy being told what to do and when to do it? Are you so dead to feeling and thinking that you have become mindless and robotic?

Do you really feel that you are so worthless and you cannot help yourselves to a better life? Are you so simple minded that you have given up any hope?

       Every week, that goes by I keep telling Bob that you have become Turkeys. You are willing to let your company steal your strength and the Union steals your money! Are you so satisfied with being turkeys that you no longer dream of soaring with the eagles? Have you really become so dumb, that if it started to rain, you would look up and drown from the rain drops getting into your nose? Are you so stupid that you would not put your head down?

     I used to have faith in the people that Bob works with, but that is not the case now for me. Now Bob, hear it from me about how useless it is to try to help these turkeys! Bob, will tell me that I am wrong, that you have to have hope for the people! I used to believe that there was hope for you, but now I think that you are like dogs that have been abused for so long that you like it. When your master comes bearing a few scraps from his dinner plate, you will wag your tail and lick his hands. Are you so simple minded that you fail to realize that you earned those scraps ( A.K.A. your check and benefits) from his profit plate?

     When it benefits the employer to offer wages and benefits, they do so! And through time the employer feels that it is unprofitable and they are taking it away by shifting more of the cost onto your backs. What good is a retirement when they change the benefits at every new contract? Being retired leaves you without a voice! The present worker does not care for the past worker as they don’t see each other. Today’s worker does not remember that the past worker was the person who propelled your wages and benefits to where it is today. But in fairness you may feel like the past workers is taking away your health care as it is most likely that they are using up what they earned!

Companies and unions are selling away the retired workers. Throwing more of the cost onto your paychecks! But just like good old lap dog’s you will wag your tail and wait for what comes next!



Sincerely,
Phillip Thompson

 How  Do  You   Vote   On  My  Contract  Or;  How  Do  I  Vote  On  Yours? 

     There’s this line in the conclusion of the book by Peter Schweizer, Do As I Say (Not As I Do); Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy; “In short, they (liberals) seem more interested in compelling others to embrace their vision of social change than in acting on that vision themselves”.

     And I am compelled to consider the honesty of the above comment as I reflect on the far left ideology of our current union hall cronies from UFCW.

     UFCW constantly targets Wal-Mart as the big, bad, global retailer hell-bent on destroying every union job. And our company quietly goes about its business of being one of this nation’s wealthiest concerns (nearly $200 million net profit dollars annually according to Forbes).

     As our union hall insists that union jobs pay better, have better benefits etc. than non union jobs, we are faced with the reality that our wages are nearly identical with Wal-Mart, and benefit packages also have very little difference between us (except that we are forced to pay union dues as a condition of our employment with this company).

     If our union hall cronies were sincere in their desire that we be paid higher wages, they would insist on higher wages (and benefits) during contract negotiations. The reality is there is no chance of a strike with 1099. Our union hall probably wouldn’t insist that we vote to approve a contract because (they argued), by doing so, we would be “locking in” our health care costs for five more years and then re-open our contract for the sole purpose of changing our health care package (and increasing our pay out amount)!

     The bottom line? UFCW was once elected as the union hierarchy that would represent our interests. As long as they continue in that capacity they have every legal right to tell labor anything they like and there is legally nothing labor can do about it. If they think it’s in our best interests to bring in an outside group to vote on our contract, then legally it is. Whatever they decide, we are forced to live with. Want a new union steward? That only happens if UFCW wants a new union steward. And who cares what you think anyway?

     The reality is that our union structure works “from the top down” in terms of dictating policy and contract language. In short, everything that impacts our lives from- how much money we earn -to how much the doctor’s office visit costs us- to how much time we get off from work. In a Real Union the exact opposite is true. And instead of 38%of our membership voting on a contract ratification we expect to have over 90%. Please join up today.  And post a comment on the blog.

Bob 12- 15-05

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This effort is dedicated to my God. May it please Him to see us through the uncertainties that lie ahead; and may His wisdom, grace, and peace guide our every decision. - BC

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