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WHO ARE WE • BCTGM LOCAL 19 • BCTGM INTERNATIONAL • NOSTALGIA
Who are we?
Like most Americans, you work for a living. If you’re fortunate enough to belong to a union, chances are you enjoy a pretty decent standard of living. You have a voice at your workplace. There is a proven way to air grievances and settle them. You work with a contract which provides a measure of economic security for you and your family.
But what is your job like if there is no union and you’re left to represent yourself?
You come to work and learn that the plant manager has been fired. New management arrives and tells you you’re superfluous; they want younger empIoyees, who will be paid less. What can you do? Can you stop this on your own?
What can you, as an individual, do to protect yourself and your livelihood? Who has the final word if you disagree with your employer’s decision?
Some people say you can’t fight city hall. In a non-union workplace that’s generally true. But because you belong to a union and have a union card you can fight arbitrariness. Unions establish industrial democracy on the job. They represent the interests of workers when the company’s interest conflicts with it.
Without a union, the individual employee has virtually no voice. Without a union, he or she is subject to every arbitrary decision management makes. Where there is a union, workers together have a voice and individuals have rights. These rights are established and protected by a union contract and are enforced through the stewards and local union officers you elect.
By banding together, union members have the strength that comes from numbers. Through the union, workers bargain collectively with the employer to establish wages, hours, promotion and layoff policies, just discipline procedures, health and safety procedures and other provisions which ensure fairness for each worker.
Only as part of a group can you have the economic strength that balances the power of the employer and permits bargaining with the employer on a basis approaching equality.
Your BCTGM
Your union is the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers
International Union. It represents workers employed primarily in those
industries and other related food processing industries.
Your local union is made up of workers in a particular plant or geographic
area. The closest expression of your voice on the job site is your shop
steward. He or she is backed by local union officers, whom you directly
elect. The local is affiliated with the International Union, which represents
more than 130,000 members in the U.S. and Canada.
You and your fellow union members are the union – when you take part in local union meetings and voice your opinion on policies and programs, elect local officers and shop stewards, you are exercising your rights and responsibilities as a member of the union. While there is not always unanimity, you have a right to be heard, as unions are democratic institutions, where the majority rules. From the ranks of the membership comes the leadership of the local and the International Union.
The supreme governing authority of the BCTGM International is the Constitutional Convention, which is held every four years. The next one will take place during the summer of 2002. Representatives from each of the 317 local unions, elected by the membership, are delegates to the convention. Through them, the membership elects the International Union executive officers and the General Executive Board and has the opportunity to amend the International constitution and set policy.
The accompanying chart illustrates the structure of the BCTGM International Union.
