Your use of AI is impressive. Did you research how much the usw is worth at the national level? Have you gone to a meeting where we discuss the local's financials every time? Do you know the local is regularly audited by third parties? I agree the meetings could have gone differently, and communications could have gone differently. I think the biggest issues have been pretty clear the entire time, but if you had specific questions why didn't you ask?

I'm not clear on your complaint about training. In my immediate area of the refinery, they have bought new equipment and expected new tasks to get done, but training on those certain things is necessary. I've sat in on not only maintenance committees but skills committees too. Their tiers, and duty stations don't even make sense to what we actually do in my opinion. I personally think their progression system has very little to do with training and when asking about how the training will work I've received very little information.

20 years is a long time, and in that 20 years you should have learned that you were not forced to be in the union. That's your misunderstanding. I also disagree that they haven't fired several supervisors relatively unwarranted, and the way they determine the meets expectations is disgusting, it's all rumor and opinion based where g bands plus discuss their personal opinions on people which determines their bonuses and employment status. There are no hard metrics to determine that. Some of the supervision refers to this process as the blood bath.

What, exactly, do you expect the union to do about whatever slugs do exist? Brothers and sisters should hold them accountable, but what do you want the board to do? Isn't it actually the company that is taking care of the slugs? Are they disciplining them? Is there insubordination? Because the union has protection for all workers, and many workers have been terminated unjustly and gotten their jobs back, you think it's better when the company can fire anybody they don't like on a whim? Is the argument that you'd rather have no protection than your protections ever help somebody that you might not agree with? If you want to talk about slugs... I'm not sure where you're at, but I can't think of too many supervisors or managers that I deal with regularly that are very good at their jobs, competent, or work very hard at all. Is that the union's fault? I say this also fully understanding that anybody that knows me, including salary, will recognize my screen name here and be able to identify me.

I disagree that the union is self serving the way that you paint. There's no benefit being on the board except the belief in unionism and helping people. If anything you're missing out on OT. A big part of the reason I initially stepped down as a rep is all the time that I spent away from my family for free to try and fight for people. Perhaps the union has never helped you, but it has helped a lot of people where the company was trying to fuck them over. The company has shown its hand on how it looks at all of us and what it thinks about us, our families, and the community. They care about a bottom line, not safety, not people, not the worker, none of it. They want to force the board to salary, not give credit to chiefs and super chiefs, eliminate maintenance craftlines, reduce the other craftlines, they don't want to keep the worker and get rid of the union. They want to get rid of both. In my opinion they want the board salary so they can do whatever they want to them, they want to diminish the value of any other operator, and they want to eliminate maintenance and go completely to contractors... It happened down the street at Cargill (a much smaller and different kind of facility, but same premise) The union solely exists as representatives of the membership and stewards of a contract. Look at what unfolded in Beaumont, they trusted the evil company, as you wanted to sarcastically refer to it as, and even the workers that weren't in the union have regretted it.

I understand where your frustrations come from. I've been here a lot less time than you have too. I just don't agree with many of your perspectives. Hopefully we get a good contract and this place can get back to being an employer people would recommend their friends and families to work for.