Читать книгу Prison Puzzle Pieces 3 - Dave Basham - Страница 68

A group at Stillwater got together and tried to get the union kicked out. We wanted to get in the association with the state highway patrol. We figured that we could get a more equitable contract that way. What we did on our job lined up a lot better with highway patrol officers that it did with secretaries. We didn’t need lots of the benefits that had been acquired over time. We needed a decent wage.

We heard that the highway patrol academy was eight weeks and that gave them qualifications that warranted them getting higher wages than us. However, I was not able to verify the accuracy of this statement.

The union was in a tizzy. They did not want to lose the gravy money that they did nothing to warrant receiving. Had they earned it with fair negotiations with the state, we probably would’ve let things slide. But the fact was, as long as we were in a union with a group of people that did a totally different type of job than we did, we would continue to not have a contract that met our needs and what we rightly deserved.

The union called up activists from other parts of the country to come to our homes. These guys like this job. They get to travel, drink and try to intimidate people that don’t see things their way. They like a job that is more like partying than working.

The three big guys that came to my house uninvited and unannounced started off cocky and arrogant. They knew they had the element of surprise, teaming up on me and being prepared with their spiel. They weren’t prepared for someone that wasn’t able to be intimidated and had informed himself on the details. They would bring up a point and I would tear it apart with facts. They couldn’t come up with any point that I couldn’t shut down instantly. The only way they could convince anyone to keep the union was by twisting facts and telling lies. Any informed person could see right through their technique. I actually had a good time shutting them down. Once they saw how our conversation was going, they couldn’t leave fast enough. They needed to go to another bar or find someone to let them in that wasn’t informed of the facts.

When the vote came up on December 17, 2002, we lost. Only a couple of people at Stillwater voted to keep the union. The problem was, the other seven institutions voted to keep the union. They didn’t have the balls to take a risk on something that could be much better. They had a comfort zone that they were in and were afraid of the unknown.

I voted to dump the union even though I probably wouldn’t have been able to retire at 55 if we switched to something else. I didn’t care; it was the right thing to do. Sometime you have to take a stand. The officers at Stillwater were intelligent enough and had the balls to try to do what could’ve made being a corrections officer in Minnesota a good job. Too bad those in the other prisons did not.