A Tale of Two Unions

I'd like to tell you a tale of two Unions. The first one has ceased to exist. The reason? It did too little too late.

In New York City we used to have an agency called “OTB” or Off Track Betting. It's employees were members of AFSME (Local DC37) which is a huge clerical/administrative, and public service union. Technically OTB was a chain of city and state government run, horse race betting parlors. It was originally started to take the illegal revenue out of the hands of the MOB/Mafia and legitimize it.

Like lotto tickets. Instead of going to your favorite number spot or “number hole”, or bookie, as we call them in New York City, you'd go to your local deli, grocery store and by a Pick Six Lotto ticket, or what ever. No more middle man or woman to skim off the profits.

Off Track Betting was also established back in 1971 as a convenient way for people to bet on the ponies without shelping all the way out to the tracks at Belmont or Aqueduct. In addition, a certain portion of the profits were earmarked to help generate money for the race horse industry, and state/city funded projects (ie: public schools).

OTB did well in the 70's, 80's and 90's but towards the late 90's into the 2000's New York State and City auditors found out it was starting to lose a lot of money. Why? With the onset of the internet, naturally people took their business elsewhere. Additionally, interest in horse racing waned because there were so many other options available.

Not to mention there were community complaints from some of the neighborhoods where these betting parlors were established. To wit: they tended to attract seedy/sleazy clientele, thus diminishing the value of of the local real estate. This was a typical case of NIMBY. Not In My Neighborhood.

The real story is the fact that New York State got tired of propping up the OTB boondoggle. Like the Post Office, New York State was pouring millions into a Money Pit and getting no payback.

There had been announcements and threats in the past that OTB would be permanently shuttered and the so-called local the workers were a part of, did nothing for their members. In some cases workers had been working for OTB for twenty plus years. Yes, of course they had been dues paying members in good standing.

You'd think with the cash flow they were ….. er.... confiscating from members paychecks, they would've initiated some kind of program to transition their workers into other city agencies. After all, they did have enough prior warning.

However, in 2010, the plug was officially pulled on OTB, 50 parlors were shuttered and over 1,000 workers lost their jobs. But wait there was more. Not only did the workers lose their jobs, they also lost medical care, and their pensions. Why? Because the OTB cooperation had claimed bankruptcy a year prior and the court had seized members pension monies in order to pay of old company debts.  The union and the members went to court to appeal and lost handily.

The irony is, after existing on member support for approximately thirty years. That particular union local ceased to exist. No tikkie, no shirty. No membership, no union/local. A sad and ignominious end to one union. I would say fitting, but the members suffered needlessly for their incompetence.

Fast forward to 2012.

It was the height of the Election 2012 and my union (the same mentioned above) rallied around Obama to get him elected.

As I've mentioned before, I was not in favor of this. Though I am a member, I do not subscribe to group think.  I should have a right to decline giving a portion of my dues to electoral champagnes, but as a union member I don't.

However, I still have a right to make my own decisions. If I don't like the product, I don't have to buy it. If I don't like the man running for office, while this is still a free country, I have a right to NOT vote for him and likewise cast my vote for who I feel has the proper values and is competent to run this nation. 

Yes, I highly disagreed with my unions choice to take part of my membership dues and arbitrarily hand them over to fill Obama's champagne war chest. 

With that said, I must give you some background about my particular union. It is 90% minorities, and unfortunately, many are as clueless as a box of rocks, and easily persuaded for a few freebies. They bet heavily on Obama to the point of giving him millions of membership money. Every union rag I received during the champagne period bragged about how much money they gave Obama. Yep, sickening and disgusting.

Along comes Hurricane Sandy, and my union's headquarters is situated right smack dab in the middle of Zone A.

Cold Hard Fact: Zone A is an area in New York City which WILL flood if there is a Hurricane or NorEaster. If you live or work in that area, you are strongly admonished to evacuate, period.  

Hurricane Sandy rolled in and flooded Lower Manhattan with a vengeance. It flooded and shut down subway stations, caused a total black out of Lower Manhattan for five days. It destroyed businesses, tore up South Street Seaport's boardwalk, and flooded numerous basements. Landmarks were not excluded.

My union's headquarters was hit very hard. I heard from several friends that the basement was flooded so badly that there were “live fish” swimming around down there! The sad part about this is the fact that it still remains that way today. Very little has been done by way of clean up and rehab.

Why? They are waiting on FEMA money to start the clean up. After all, didn't Obama fly to New York City and promise help and money?  Help is on the way.......  

Huh? You rightfully query. What about all of that money they "confiscated" from millions of members?

I hate to say the obvious, but, “If they hadn't given all of that money to Obama, they would've had an emergency fund to clean and fix their headquarters.”

With stories like these you can see that unions have, in my scathing opinion, outlived their usefulness. 

They are far too large, they strong arm their members into radical activity that many don't want to be a part of, they confiscate far too much money from hard working member's paychecks (in the guise of “dues”), and they spend money and waste resources like drunken sailors. Heaven forbid something should happen to your or your job, you'd better have your own sad trombone. . . . . . .

Sounds a lot like our government, doesn't it?