Many of our members often ask the question, "what do we get out of the National Union?" This question is heard more often at the time of contract negotiations than any other time. Perhaps it is because that is the time when the individual member thinks most about the Union as an organization.
If one were to think of a "family" of children without parents, being strictly on their own, you can readily picture the confusion that would result. Each youngster would strike out on their own, with no accountability to the other or anyone else, for that matter. In such an arrangement mass trouble would soon result. Without the proper parental guidance to channel the efforts of each individual toward some productive end, there would probably be no productivity whatever and most assuredly no accountability. In the final analysis, things would soon get out of hand.
On the other hand, where parents carefully guide the daily activities of their children, the talents of the children are best developed and utilized. Parents offer the type of advice and guidance that can be found nowhere else. They administer the sharing of the families good fortunes as well as administering the sharing of the families misfortunes. The parents of the family are also responsible for the settling of any disputes that may arise among the members of the family.
A Union, by comparison, is much the same as a family with the various Locals and Councils being bound together under a National or parent Union. The National Union offers to the Locals and Councils certain organizational policies that are developed for the general good of all who belong. National unions also maintain informational data that is gathered on a nationwide basis and disseminated to all for whatever use that can best be made of the information.
National Unions are also heavily engaged in political activity on a national level to see that the best candidates available for public office are made known to the membership thus enabling them to vote on an informed and intelligent basis. National Unions are also heavily engaged in congressional lobbying where it will benefit the Union membership. Without these activities and services, local Unions would be at a distinct disadvantage in trying to deal with management, who in their own right are highly organized into manufacturing and business groups, and who also are the recipients of vast amounts of informational material relating to the political scene as well as trends in national contract negotiating.
National Unions also publish monthly, and in some cases weekly, a newspaper for the benefit of its membership thus enabling the individual member to be aware of national trends and in general, what the Union is doing.
All of the National Union's activities do, of course, require financial support of some nature, and this is supplied through the contributions of each Union member, through its local organization, paid on a "per-capita" basis.
This brief description of National Union activities is by no means an accurate description of all of the activities that are engaged in, but merely a brief resume.