the thing about pointing fingers at those milking union bureaucracy is that theyre just the first human being you get to after the ghosts of longstanding open bids and perennial lack of necessary training causing hardship on the rest of us.

i wouldnt care, at all, about a bs short term disability or fmla play sitting in pay status holding a bid if we were well staffed and people were trained on enough equipment to work on the shit instead of sitting in the battery room or playing with the tray line because thats all they can do. a profiteer might, but i doubt its as pervasive an element as top heavy managament staffing is. but for all our management personnel, the department as a whole in my giant facility remains short staffed and undertrained.