Your union contract is important to you as a worker. It tells you how much you should be paid. It lists your benefits such as medical and vacations. It spells out your rights on the job.
We looked at one of our contracts and found it had a reading difficulty level of over 350. One sentence on sick leave contained 96 words!
Documents are more difficult to read when they contain long sentences, when they use unfamiliar words not found in everyday language, or when they try to cover too many ideas in one sentence. The 99 word sentence on sick leave contained eight different ideas. It would be easier to read if the sentences were shortened and covered a single idea.
Union members often joke that it requires a law degree to read the contract, but this joke comes very close to the reality. College graduates can read and understand materials with a difficulty level of 314. People with a Masters or Doctors degree scored around 327. College graduates have a higher reading score because they are familiar with the words used in their area of study and are used to reading technical documents.
The average reading difficulty score for adults is around 270. This doesn’t mean the average adult can’t read and understand the union contract. It would just take them longer. They would have to read slowly and more carefully. They may need to read a sentence several times. They would need to look up unfamiliar words in a dictionary. They would need to learn the meaning of some of the specialized language used in union contracts.
This is why it is necessary for the ILWU to hold education classes for members who are more active in the union. These classes teach them to understand the terms used in the contract. These are terms such as “work opportunity”, “just cause”, or “union recognition.” These terms are not part of our everyday language and most people would not know what they mean.
Every union member should still try to read their union contract. You should, however, ask your unit officers or business agents to explain the terms you don’t understand. ◆
Win a prize for longest sentence
Read your union contract and find the longest sentence. We’ll give an ILWU T-shirt to the person who sends us the longest sentence.
Send us your name and address. You can write out the sentence or just tell us what section number of the contract. Mail to: Voice of the ILWU, 451 Atkinson Drive, Honolulu, HI 96814. Or just give it to your business agent or drop if off at your ILWU Division Office.
The Guinness Book of World Records used to have an entry for the longest sentence in English. That sentence was 1,287 words and came from William Faulkner’s novel, Absalom, Absalom! In 2001 Jonathan Coe wrote a 13,955 word sentence that ran on for 32 pages in his novel, The Rotters’ Club.
The record for the longest sentence in any language may belong to Czech author Bohumil Hrabal in Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age: A Novel. In this story, a slightly drunk old man tells his life story to six young women, sun-bathing on the beach. The old man’s story is a single sentence of around 20,000 words. ◆
