I don't know about how the plants you have been associated with work, but I do know that at the union shops where I have worked, we, the union members wouldn't tolerate the behavior you have described, as management would not either. One of the problems we had was when hiring new workers, they came in with the impression that they had a union job and didn't have to work. We had some not so subtle ways of making them see the errors in their ways.

The situations you describe seem to stem from problems in management. Blaming it on the union seems to be a cop out. You even said yourself that the management was chickenshi*. On many occasions I have seen management shoot themselves in the foot instead of admitting a mistake. Thank God most of the old time adversarial managers hit the road with the last round of cuts. We now have a management team that tries to promote an attitude of cooperation, and they realize that while they may steer the ship, we are the ones who make it go, and without us they are dead in the water.

Since management at our division has made change from being adversarial to one of cooperation, we have set production records, and are approaching are goal of 13% return on investment, and last year we were the only pulp mill in the US to turn a profit. Too bad they couldn't have figured this out sooner.