(no subject)

[pensnest]

Is there anyone around who lived in New York State in the 1990s and could give me some advice for my bittybang story? The ideal person would have some knowledge of how unions work(ed). Or I'd be happy to have a word with someone who knows about unions in other areas?

Comments

[justhitstatic.livejournal.com]

I can help! I'm in HR and have staff all over NY - unionized folks and whatnot. Ask away!

[pensnest]

Excellent! (I assume from your username that you're primarily a BSB fan, which is good too...)

Okay. What I'm trying to do is write a BSB AU using 'The Full Monty' as the basis of my story. I don't know if you're familiar with the original film, which was British and set in Sheffield, a steel town, in the 1980s. There is also a musical version, set in the USA - specifically, in Buffalo, NY. The guys had all worked in the steel mill and were out of work. I believe it's set mid-1990s, but if I have my chronology wrong and you can tell me when the big steel mills went into decline, so much the better.

In the musical, the ex-employees all meet up every so often (I assume weekly) and collect money. I'm pretty sure it's their union representative who hands out little envelopes and tries to give them ideas on how to find work, but obviously, it's a musical, this basically happens in the middle of a song, so it isn't exactly 'background research'.

I've tried to google for this kind of thing, but all I get are generalisations and overviews, and I need to know what specifically happened to these people. Did the union provide them with some kind of paycheck? If so, what kind of amount would it have been relative to their wages?

All my guys are, obviously, quite young and wouldn't have built up a lot of seniority, so it would have been a hardship to them to be thrown out of work, whereas I get the impression (she says cautiously) that for older men who'd worked in the steel industry all their lives, being made redundant (is that a phrase you use in the USA?) would have been a nice opportunity for them to retire, with a decent amount of money coming in from the union.

Would there have been state-provided 'unemployment benefits' of some kind as well?

If you can help with any of these questions I shall be enormously grateful.

[puszysty.livejournal.com]

A lot of unions are national, though I think there are some state or local ones depending on industry. Never lived in NY, sorry I'm not much help there.