(Serious) What is a great career path that kids in college aren't aware exists?

threaten to make things difficult for management

That's really their one big tool. If you couldn't make anything difficult for management or shareholders, why would they consider negotiating with someone they could just as easily get rid of?

A friend of mine is high up in a union, and fought for two months so a worker could keep his job. He was going to be fired (after six years of employment) because he used the restroom at a customer's home, went back to work, and had forgotten to zip his pants. The customer called the company and claimed sexual harassment or exposure, I can't recall.

They were going to fire him on the spot, and one tool the union used to stop the employee from getting fired was to threaten to pursue several other grievances (grievances they didn't deem worthy of pursuing because no one was going to lose their job, and no one was exposed to danger, etc) but this would have cost the company a lot of time and expense, and in the end the guy ended up keeping his job.

On one side you can see the company's point, not wanting to get sued for "indecent exposure?" on the part of the employee, but on the other end, he was going to lose his livelihood for forgetting to zip-up after taking a leak.

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