I am in a RTW state. Our center is around 50/50 union to non union in the full-time ranks and maybe 30% or less part-time. I wish it was 100% across the board. We have gained a few here and there and I can tell you that it helped that the rest of us that are members refrained from being pushy name calling jerks.
Our center is the polar opposite of what you described in yours when it comes to people faking signatures, skipping pretrips, etc.. It's the die hards here. They are also the ones that violate their own contract the most. Working through vacation weeks that someone else could have picked for example. There are exceptions but most of our drivers that don't pay dues are generaly the ones that seem to have more respect for the contract in that regard. They are also mostly straight as an arrow and fly under the radar. Many of them used to be members and their reasons for withdrawing would warrant a whole new thread.
Most of our drivers are fed up with the increasingly late hours and some of us are trying to use it as an opportunity to sway the non members into joining. Our problem isn't non members. One of the problems is everyone (whether they are members or not) that is afraid of filing out of fear of harassment or retaliation. And the BIGGEST problem we have here is greedy drivers. They are a dispatcher that's chasing a stops per car metric's wet dream and the rest of us are expected to follow suite.
Ostracism is a powerful tool, one that I don't feel we use enough in punishing non-members. Most of the actual picket-line-crossing scabs at my local faced very little retribution at my hub in the way of ostracism so they happily continue to feed like a parasite on our Local. A few came up later and apologized to me personally for crossing, and have been good members since. If those that crossed or got out were doing so out of some principled stance that they could explain to me I would respect that but the vast majority simply want to get something for free (and I find it ironic when they consider themselves die-hard conservatives railing against welfare and the entitlement mentality).
I have even less respect for those that I spent countless hours fighting Management to get their day reduced successfully in the time way before today's 9.5 language & triple time only to see them get out because they didn't like how the layoffs went during the Great Recession. That's pure greed & entitlement and shows what lack of character they truly have. I really can't understand how someone could go their whole career here without being a member then collect that Teamster pension check for nearly $60k if they were retiring today. I'd be fine with them not being members if the Company had to make contributions for them but they weren't allowed to collect any pension payments.
It was mentioned before that with our healthcare changing to a Teamster plan that our Local could require everyone to come to the hall to sign up for their healthcare, that there is no obligation for us to conduct enrollment by mail or internet. I'd like to see these non-members show up and do that.
Our dues are $22.50 per week, less than one hours work. Just using the legal plan once would pay you back everything you've ever paid in dues here.
