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Meanwhile, at the Magic Kingdom down in Florida, we would clock in after taking the bus from the employee lot to the main park employee entrance and then get our uniform, get changed, walk to the attraction, etc.

On leaving, we would leave our attraction 20 minutes prior to the end of our shift, walk back, get changed, etc, and then clock out.

Unions matter. I'm shocked that any union would allow off the clock work like that.

How is the conclusion that unions matter when they both had unions?

More likely the cause of the disparity -- because this is actually a difference between the companies -- is that Disney tries to maintain a certain image about the wholesomeness of their enterprise which isn't worth compromising to avoid paying 8% more to workers who still aren't really making altogether that much money, and they also charge enough of a premium to be able to afford it.

Flight attendants have unions but still don't get paid unless the airplane door is closed.

Grew up in a town dictated by a union... they aren’t all good. Watched a lot of people lose their only source of income because they couldn’t reach a unanimous vote during an economic downturn.

One union dictated the entire town?

Just like it is best not to hold romantic notions about corporations, it is also best not to hold romantic notions about unions (which are just another type of corporation), non-profits (same) and bureaucracies in general.

Some unions serve their members very well. Some are leeches. In either case they tend to stick together to raise their political power when possible.

> ... signed-in to start being paid at the next 15 minute interval from when we arrived at our game.

> ... signed-out for the previous 15 minute interval when we left our game area.

This is actually the most surprising thing to me in your story. Usually the laws about rounding in time keeping state that the rounding must go the same direction. So if they round to the next interval on start, they should also be rounding to the next interval on end.

The reason why this is the most surprising part to me, is because that's a pretty cut-and-dry labor violation. Compared to the rest that would have to go through a court case like the one in TFA.

Employers, even large ones, regularly conduct large scale wage theft and nobody fights it.

Truth. God forbid though you steal from the employer. We have collectively allowed the government to approve private prisons for people heinous enough to commit crimes like that.

As a teenager, I worked at a Kmart. It didn't take too long to be "promoted" to cashier. They never let anyone near the money room without already being on the clock.

You got your till loaded with cash, counted it out, and walked to your register. All on the clock. When done, you took your till back, counted it out, and handed it back in. All on the clock.

I'm only writing this as a counter example - not every place was awful about it.

That's a lot.. an hour a day is 1/8th of your pay. If this was year around, that would be (260 work days) $1600.. out of $12800/year total gross pay for full time.

You say it's not a lot, but that's only because the job doesn't pay a lot and (I assume) it was short term.

>Of course, we were also only paid $6.15 an hour and had to pay union dues out of that, so in total, it didn't add up to much...

Not to you, but it definitely added up to a noticeable amount for your employer.

It's stunning your union would permit this shit. It's no wonder Americans in general are so sour on unions if this is a representative experience.

Unions are hard because employers can basically do whatever the fuck they want to fight the union and they usually only get the NLRB injunction/penalty months/years later, after everyone originally supporting the action has been removed by the company.

Some unions are also just in the pocket of management. I have friends who are teamster organizers and they've told me some managers in some industries will actually request unions.

> Some unions are also just in the pocket of management.

I honestly believe you on this point, but that is just so crazy that I'd be curious as to the turn of events that would turn out to the union selling out its soul so completely. Unless, of course, that was their intended goal. It just seems so antithetical to the theoretical principles of a union.

I think it's not the union that has sold its soul so much as targeting specific individuals who are important in governing a certain local or something, and getting them to sell out.

See, for instance, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/business/gm-fiat-chrysler...

> General Motors has accused Fiat Chrysler of bribing union officials to get a leg up on G.M. in contract negotiations, contending in a lawsuit that its competitor paid for the union’s negotiating team to have a $7,000 dinner shortly after concluding a labor agreement. Fiat Chrysler has called the suit meritless.

I think many are interpreting my comment as anti-union, which it was not meant to be. Unions can be coopted by management, but better to have some sort of worker council/representation than none at all.

To expand a bit, a union is supposed to be democratic - the workers themselves organize to promote their own interests. But many unions that remain these days have become professionalized. They have their own well-paid administration and lobbyists, and their levers of power are political contributions and signing restrictive long-term contracts with employers.

Here is an article I found that goes into this: https://www.labornotes.org/2002/06/corporatization-unions

> their levers of power are political contributions and signing restrictive long-term contracts with employers.

I'm curious how you think this differs from traditional practices, generally i think of signing security clauses + political influence as basic union 101.

There've always been professional organizers as long as there've been unions. They're hardly "well-paid" by private standards.

Both styles of union have a long history, but the alternative practice is to rely more heavily on strikes and other workplace actions, and less on pay-to-play politics.

It may be "union 101" to sign no-strike clauses but there are unions like the IWW that have always rejected them.

What you need is a union law similar to germany. In germany, when you apply to a job where a union has created a union employee contract (ie, standardized pay, standardized hours & benefits), then you can choose to use that contract even if you are not part of the union and you are entitled to still do your own contract even if you are in the union.

The only time you have to accept certain parts in your contract no choice is if they are mandated by the worker's council, which is voted for democratically by workers from and for a specific company and they can veto anything the company does or demand changes with a 50% share in board votes.

I don't see how this is different from a US union contract, which is approved by the majority of the local.

Generally, the union will not make the dues optional because that is how unions collapse in the US.

I didn't realize you were referring to no-strike contracts, that's not what a security clause is. That is definitely not a good practice always and not union 101.

From what I’ve seen with friends in the amusement industry, the unions don’t really work for them and in some cases are run by the company itself (not directly but with directors that have obvious conflicts).

I’m more ashamed of the legislature that allows this to happen. There’s no reason an employer should not have the pay the minute they expect something of the employee, assuming it’s a position paid per unit of time.

The problem is that you get into things that aren’t part of your duties that are still expected of you. Such as commuting to and from work; It’s necessary to commute, but it’s not part of your duties.

It’s unsettled (in America) what’s the right answer to that, but an argument against it I’ve heard is: if you get a job and the employer agrees to pay for a 10 minute commute twice per shift, but you then move 30 minutes away, why should the employer be on the hook for that extra 20 minutes (40 per shift)?

Commute has pretty much not been on the negotiating table as far as I understand for most positions. The only time I've seen commute being paid is for workers who need to travel to the job site.

Even then it's generally that you travel unpaid to the office, then you are paid for the travel time from there to the job site.

Commuting isn’t expected of you. Being at a certain place at a certain time is. Once you’re there at that time, the clock starts, but I’ve never heard anyone argue that an employer is responsible for your commute.

My point was: if we take the “expected of you” further, someone will argue that we should pay for your commute.

And yes, commuting isn’t expected, but unless you’re living at your job, you have to commute. So, saying “a commute isn’t expected, but being on time is” doesn’t make sense.

Not to mention, there are times where an employer is required to pay for your commute. The biggest is travel that is required to do your job, such as a door-to-door salesperson. That could lead to: if a commute is practically required to do your job (your house to your place of work), why not pay for that?

I personally don’t have an opinion on this; I’m just playing devil’s advocate.

The moment you're at your job is when your clock should start, unless your employer has demanded you do a 2+ hour commute or something. Ie, the moment they control what you do and can order you to do things like putting on a uniform.

And the moment they can no longer do that is when the clock stops, ie once you've finished getting out of uniform and left.

Not to mention the mafia ran most of the powerful unions in America before the feds destroyed that type of organized crime.

I sometimes wonder if despite the brutality of their tactics, did the mafia help the working class more than hurt it?

> Of course, we were also only paid $6.15 an hour and had to pay union dues out of that, so in total, it didn't add up to much...

I'm half joking but if your union dues were higher you would have been paid for that hour :-P

had to pay union dues out of that

Rhetorical question, but what the hell was the union doing while this wage theft was going on?

Some unions basically 'collect' members by unionizing a bunch of small-medium size companies which are completely separate from their 'main business(es)'; they proceed to basically ignore these members, and just collect dues from them.

Agreed. I worked for a private ambulance company as an EMT and paramedic. We were "represented" by the Teamsters.

Any grievance? Usually resulted in us having to request a steward/rep from multiple counties away, who knew nothing about EMS and had our contract for reference. You would know more about what the issue was or why it was inappropriate that the union rep.

You'd usually have to "pre-game" and explain why a certain thing was appropriate or inappropriate because they were used to representing truck drivers with disputes about haulage, hours, etc., and had no idea about emergency medicine, or DOT provisions for emergency vehicles.

We eventually decertified (or rather, left the union).

If only wage theft were pursued as viciously as other forms of theft.... The amount that happens is frankly quite disgusting.

https://i.redd.it/grnr8kxbl6zz.jpg

I’ve seen this chart before, and I believe it, but how is the wage theft number calculated? If employers are underpaying workers, how does one find out how much without a court ruling against the company?

Just the overtime and minimum violations could pay every US citizen a roughly 3000$ sized paycheck.

Huh. I did the exact same job for a competing park, owned by a fair, and we got paid from when we showed up to the main office to when we ended at the main office.

The only unpaid time was the walk to/from the very back of the parking lot to the main office.

Over 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year, that's a loss of ~$2000 in 2020 dollars, not counting the dues