These guys hire to fire and will literally ruin your life. I am currently posting this from my parent's house on the other side of country because I quit a good paying secure job and began working for them because I believe in the labor movement. I waited through a six month hiring process, bought a car required for that job, and was let go with no notice or recourse within seven months. Director literally said in a meeting after 2/3rds of my team was laid off that they "hired by throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks"
9 Month Probation Period used to evaluate if you will do your managers jobs for them, give up all your weekends, and never advocate for yourself. If you don't they will get rid of you.
Union promotes based on loyalty rather then competence, one of my immediate supervisors was a scab hire promoted up from a staff union bargaining position specifically to keep working during a strike. The other genuinely has no idea how to use any of the technology they expect their underlings to utilize.
Catty, unprofessional work culture based on gossip rather then results, training provided by other employees at your level rather then your supervisors because they're either on trips that you would be fired for taking or straight up don't know how to do the job.
Your bosses will make decisions that negatively impact the member interns under you, they will cut their pay, cut their hours and place unreasonable expectations on them, you are to carry those decisions to them and keep your members from complaining. God forbid you tell your members to expect more out of a union that's supposed to represent them.
Staff played off against member leaders, member leaders played off against staff to keep an overpaid elite cadre of leadership who never talks to workers face to face fat and comfortable and behind desks while we knock doors in the heat and fly across the country for them. Watch who you talk to because they will use your member leaders as scabs against you, and your member leaders will let you help edit their resume before launching a campaign to undermine you to take your job.
Management doesn't want intelligent driven organizers who will tell their members to demand more, they want drones to meet numbers so they can pay their salaries and make their kickbacks to the state Democratic party. However they're too lazy to actually train those drones and set coherent expectations so don't think you're safe if you keep your head down!
Union management also doesn't want their membership to be active beyond recruiting more members, they don't want them to have a say in union-wide decision-making, and they certainly don't want them to win a contract that would fundamentally change their lives, because if they did then they couldn't be used as strikebreakers against their own staff and they wouldn't have a labor force they could constantly fall back on to fill positions they make vacant.
Director level and above is completely enmeshed in a hydra of DNC consultants, establishment politicians and their lobbyists. They are not going to change anything, and you are not going to change anything unless you work with the staff union and the rank and file to take their power away. My only regret isn't taking their nonsense long enough to meet probation and become a thorn in their side on behalf of the members and movement.
Pervasive culture of chasing numbers rather then building member power, as if we're all trying to look good at our quarterly meetings rather then telling our members they deserve something more then a .50 raise every couple of years.
Performance reviews will be delayed and then utilized against you, document literally everything from day one so that they can't paint you into a corner. Told me I wasn't asking them for help enough and asking enough questions, told another coworker they were asking TOO many questions and for help too much. Mind you they didn't train either of us.
No member democracy, members not consulted over staffing decisions, political direction of the Union, or given agency in their own campaigns, organizers that identify this as a problem will be removed by a leadership too concerned with making sure the Democratic party gets its COPE payments instead uniting with a broad working class movement to resist the tide of Fascism outside their window.
