Ahem!! I was in a union, in fact the president of a local OCAW 7-513, and frrankly you are full of s--t sometimes.Employers hire, and direct the work force in almost all manufactoring jobs. They have the right in ALL cases to terminate a worker before his probation period,so this GOOFING off was condoned, there are several reasons that this happened.One the initial cost of hiring, training,, and then starting all over again. Next where production is involved, the work has to get done,unions dont like having to prod lazy SOBS to hit the ball, in fact in many cases its ground for termination under the direct the work force clause in many labor contracts.I imagine you work with trade unions, different world.I started iron working when I got out of the army,the skilled workers came from a hall,that means that they aquired the skills in most cases to do the jobs that were rather more than just digging holes.You didn't hire a crane operator off the street, and expect him to boom beams up five floors, keeping it from knocking you off a scaffold.You didn't hire a yahoo to weld stainless steel high pressure pipe where hazardous processes were involved, you wanted a journeymen.I'm not to going to go into nepotism, federal employment quota hiring, and some other peculiar situations I had , You cannot deny a person union membership. I DIDN'T GET PAID BY THE UNION, HAD TO BE BONDED, AND MY EXPENSE ACCOUNT WAS AUDITED SEVERAL TIMES A YEAR. So when I see you spout this crap about all union workers just loafing it pi--es me off.I was brought up on charges in front of the NLRB four times, for race descrimination, sex descrimination and failure to deligently persue workers complaints, always cleared by the way. And why did this happen, finally the company took action, and fired a F__koff,Two cases they wound up paying anyway.I was also a technician, and did some non union construction work.Most americans are hard honest workers, not lawyers or politicians.