I recently received an e-mail from a Republican candidate to replace Kosmas. I approve of replacing Kosmas ASAP, but if I had my choice, I would want someone to replace Kosmas who doesn't stand for unions as strongly as this candidate. I mean, "STAND". He's adamant.

 

Which is his right. He has the right to think that unions are the cat's pajamas if he so desires. That doesn't mean that I have to think the same thing. He has experience with this union, lots of it. He thinks that the union keeps his industry safer. I understand that it is his right to believe so. He is considered an industry expert and as an expert, perhaps I should consider his opinion.

 

Problem is: I think for myself. I always do that. Nasty habit of mine. Been doing that — thinking for myself — since I was a kid. Bad me.

 

This expert seemed to think I was bad for doing so, too. He wrote me an e-mail that said as much in thinly veiled hostility. Not a good thing for a candidate for political office. Of course, this guy was defending his profession that he has been in for many years of his life and he is just now trying to get into politics (his words, "not a career politician"). I suppose I understand that. At least, I understand that he is defending his profession against my "false assumptions about some unions". That's also his right considering the First Amendment: not smart as a political candidate (thinly veiled hostility), but his right.

 

I think the problem I have with all this — and the reason I decided to write this blog about it — is that the strength of his convictions may lead to unions having an upper hand with this particular candidate/politician (not "career" politician, but acting like one already). If he has this strong a conviction that unions are a good thing — think $1,200 bonuses to the Tax Collector's employees IF they approved the union in that office: of course they did and you and I paid the consequences (literally) — then we have a Republican candidate who is already beholden to unions. That's not a good thing. It has already cost the taxpayers of Brevard County many, many dollars to pay for a Republican who was pro-union.

 

I have had a problem with unions for a long time, so I suppose that's part of my disappointment in this particular candidate. My history with unions teaches me that they aren't always a good thing; this candidate's history is apparently the opposite. Maybe we are just seeing the same issue from a different standpoint. That's fine and dandy. But when I see a candidate running on the Republican ticket and staunchly defending unions and willing to give up votes in favor of that union, then it does give me pause.

 

I want to remind people that unions in the past have been a good thing. When companies found out that publicity was even worse than union organizations, they started straightening up. When I had the gall to stand up and tell this particular candidate that unions were not what was doing it for his industry and that he needed to think about what he was saying, he all but lost it. If that is what unions do to people who are in them for long periods of time, it's no wonder union members buy the stupid books that the unions want them to, and go blindly into that dark night and vote for the political candidates they do. Which, I suppose, will get this particular candidate a lot of votes: just not mine.

 

This candidate says of the union, "It is not some faceless group of back room cigar smoking thugs. It is made up of [people] like me who actively [participate in that profession]." It's not as though I don't understand that. I was actually in a union once, for a very short period of time. I joined it as a civil servant cashier to find out if it could help me get the right to not just be held accountable for the money in my cashier's drawer, but to be able to count the money and to hold the management accountable for the money they said was in my cashier's drawer. Problem is, the union did get me that, but I did all the work to make it happen. I researched the rules, spending my lunches (and sometimes after work hours on short days) reading the regulations and then making sure that management knew of the regulations and would stick to them. Then the union just backed me up a bit. That's what the union did; that is all the union did.

 

Oh, unless you want to count the fact that they told me I couldn't post union info during my off hours, I had to do it on company time. It was my time, no matter what the union said and if I wanted to do that then, it was my choice. No employer or union can tell me what to do with my off time. But they tried. Thanks, union!

 

While I was in that union, and was going through training to become a union steward, the one training session I went to was over early and when I asked what I was supposed to do since I was on the clock until later in the day, they told me to go home. I couldn't comprehend that the union — the thing that was supposed to enforce the rules (and in my mind, abide by the rules) — was telling me to break the rules. I was on the clock. I was being paid for that time and until (if I remember correctly) three or four in the afternoon and it was only noonish. That was three or four hours the union wanted me to steal from the American taxpayer. I was told several times by union officials to go home, but I went back to work. That caused all kinds of havoc. I got the union into all kinds of trouble and handed in my resignation from the union. I couldn't be a member of an organization that wanted me — instructed me — to break the rules. I don't do that.

 

The thing is, after resigning from the union I still had the ability to count my cash before I went to work (on the clock), I counted each pull they did (and management did as well), and I still got to count the final amount in the drawer at the end of my day (as did management) on the clock. That was my doing, though, not the union's. I did all of that before the union got involved by going up the ladder, not taking "No" for an answer, not giving up, looking up the regulations and knowing my rights.

 

I also turned in someone there who was embezzling from the place I worked. I got an investigation started and kept the investigating agency informed as to what I knew was happening there. Without a union I did most of this. Without a union I made a change and without a union, I protected those who worked with me from being held accountable for the cash in their drawers when, previously, the cashiers didn't actually get to count the money in their drawers so they had no idea if management was counting it properly or doing anything else wrong.

 

My point is: It wasn't the union that made me strong enough to change things there. It wasn't the union that made it possible for me to make management obey the regulations. It was my determination. It was me. I did it. I did it because it was important to me and because it protected myself and those I worked with. That's what made the difference. It wasn't the union that made the difference. They had no one in the cashier's section — no representative, no one who was interested in them — until I joined and found out that that particular union was interested in making management obey the rules, but not obeying the rules themselves. It was the union who could break the rules, steal from the taxpayer (yes, it was in a civil servant job, so it was taxpayer money) and it was not the union that made things better. It was the determination and resolve of one person.

 

I am not saying that this particular scenario is reflected in every union. I am saying that unions, to me, are not always the best answer. A candidate who seems to think that a union is the only answer in this particular situation and to decide to do without my vote because of his hostility due to my disagreeing with that particular belief and assertion, is not a candidate I want anything to do with.

 

Honestly, that candidate is not someone I think should be associated with the Republican Party, either, but considering that I am no longer a member of the Republican Party, I don't think it's my problem. He's your problem now. I won't be voting for him because I don't think he's the right candidate.

 

Now, all I have to do is find the right candidate. I know it's not Kosmas (although in his hostile e-mail, he suggested it would be). The right candidate to me will be someone who is a True Conservative in the strictest sense of the word. J. Roger Shealy, what you doing for the next few years of your life?