Tradition of Brotherhood

The UA has fostered a phenomenal brotherhood/sisterhood. That means that we look out for our fellow UA members. We care about their well-being and we try to keep them safe, teach them when their skill set is not up to UA Standards of Excellence and we try to help them when they are going through difficult times in their lives.

What brotherhood should not and does not mean is shielding them from consequences at the expense of our fellow UA members or our contractors. When we are working with fellow UA members that habitually harm the nature and the name of the UA we can’t protect them. That is “being a brother” to them at the expense of all of those who work hard and work with integrity and pride only causes more harm than good. When you think about it, protecting the individual when they aren’t willing to make the necessary changes to meet the level of professionalism expected, is detrimental to the motto of brotherhood. We need to send a clear message that lets employers and end users know, we hold our own accountable and we are not willing to sacrifice ourselves and our tradition of excellence for someone who could not care less about the negative effects of their actions.

We need to step back and re-evaluate what it means to look out for our brothers and sisters. We need to hold our brothers to the highest standards of integrity. We can do this by helping them identify weaknesses and absolutely try to help that person change their behaviors or train them on skills that they don’t currently possess.  What we cannot do is turn a blind eye to their actions. That does not help sustain our brotherhood/sisterhood in the long term. We show our brotherhood/sisterhood by doing what is best for the majority of our members.