Category: News and Views
I'm probably going to make Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, look mild by comparison on this one. I would love to see a bill drafted to repeal the Taft Hartley Act, which allows American workers to unionize. We are beyond the point where it can be afforded. Mr. Sponge & I, workers for the same private company, got a microscopic raise this year. Unionized teachers, paid by the taxpayers, on the other hand, received 11%. ELEVEN PERCENT?! The largest allowable raise for a long defunct private company where I worked was 8%, the average around 4-6%. If private sector employees are giving up benefits, so should public sector. With taxpayers losing benefits, raises, even jobs, we can no longer afford this nonsense. Also, why are we paying the cost of these employees' health care & pensions? These aren't indigent who couldn't work or pay for things, we are paying our own cost of living as well as theirs.
Unions were originally formed when workers, men, women, & children, worked in squalid conditions, and disasters like New York's Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire occurred, from lack of ventilation, sprinklers, blocked exits, and clutter everywhere that helped the fire along. This took place in the early 20th Century, when families worked 12,14 hours a day for little pay. Americans...unless you're talking those who don't have the money to pay union dues, generally immigrant workers sewing in sweatshops or migrant farmworkers picking & packing crops all day...generally don't work under such conditions any more. Rather than going to the U S & the developing world where their efforts are sorely needed, today's unions serve mostly the public sector, and the union that represented my government former employer strictly picked its members pockets, offering terrible benefits by comparison to the private sector. Even when then President Bush authorized a pay raise for federal employees, I still commanded a higher salary working for private business. People complain about modern day outsourcing to India & China, but the first outsourcing actually was a 20th Century one, from Fall River, Massachusetts to nonunion South Carolina. IMO unions cause trouble for businesses & cost workers their jobs, for example the union picketers for the Shaws grocery chain have in many cases lost their jobs. Time to do away with these bloated, time consuming, money wasting organizations. Any thoughts?
Sing it!
High 5!
Right on and a you go girl thrown in there for good measure.
I hear you. Unions have now become the very thing they were created to stop. They had their purpose once upon a time: they needed to fight collectively for the common worker's rights. Back then, it was necessary. But, now it's gotten way beyond reasonable. Now unions have become just as greedy and power-hungry as they claim their employers are. They have become hypocrites, claming to look out for the common worker, when often their actions hurt thecommon worker who happens to not be in their little club. Or, as a specific example, the Auto unions demand more and more pay and other benefits, which in turn makes the price of cars go up, which the average American winds up paying for when they buy a car. I have a friend who works out East, and union dues get taken out of his check automatically, whether he wants them to, or has any desire to be in the Union or not. I know that happens to a lot of other workers, too. That's just wrong. It should be a choice, not involuntary.
All that aside, I admire Governor Walker. Whether you agree with his position or not, I have to give it to him that he's stuck to his guns. Most politicians are only concerned about their popularity, and whether they'll get re-elected. Governor Walker is taking a stand, and keeping it, in spite of the hit this must have on his approval rating and possible re-election. I admire a politician who does not cave into the other side's pressure. So, go Governor Walker!
So, if unions are taken out, who is to fight against the 200000 dollar pay raise for all the executives while 1000 workers are laid off and their jobs outsourced overseas?
In NC they are expecting up to 200 IBM workers to lose their jobs, despite the CEO getting an obscene raise and IBM making record profits.
Of course the unions, more or less, shot themselves in the proverbial foot by becoming ineffective and concentrating on the wrong things, as well as corrupt and money grabbing, the real problem is that they got out of touch with reality and stopped fighting for the important issues.
I think a more purely capitalistic economy will not bring anything good, just look at American health insurance system, where the average American pays 4 times more for health insurance than compatible top-rated European system costs, and that has nothing to do with unions (I think the American system barely rated in the top 30).
We need a social system of checks and balances, but the unions should have reinvented themselves.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this, but aren't there 3 types of states when it comes to unions: 1) open shop, where you can join but don't have to, and I believe MA is one as I never joined but co-workers of mine who did voluntarily dropped out 2) closed shop, where, like Sister Dawn's friend, you must pay union dues whether you want to or you don't, and 3) right to work states, where union membership isn't considered at all for employment purposes & unions don't have much activity there.
As far as who is going to fight lay offs of common workers, like those in NC, I can't see that the unions are doing that now, as the grocery chain workers protesting in the union lost their jobs. For me to support the existence of unions, they would have to TOTALLY reinvent themselves to represent those truly in need of it. I know a woman who managed to get herself disability pension (most likely as a union member) from the USPS. The disability? Alcoholism and aversion to authority. She hasn't been a drinker in a long time, yet we the taxpayers are still paying "Paula"'s disability pension. For a good look at government work that mirrors my experience, in part because of largely public sector unions, read Linda Chavez' THE MOST HATED HISPANIC IN AMERICA. She'll tell you how these organizations delayed the completion of her job with a particular agency, as unions can even limit the amount of work their members do. She might need, for example, documentation typed up, which wasn't her job, and it couldn't be done that day because the secretary's union membership limited her output.
For me to change my mind about unions, they would have to go out & find those truly in need of representation, like Mexican & other than Mexican migrant workers who live in perpetual debt to landlords of large corporations & work in slave like conditions, or Indian children forced to do work like removing needles from syringes to help feed their families. I don't know that they would have much effect on the American health system, as I had a terrible health insurance plan under a unionized employer...dental was a complete waste that wasn't that unreasonable for an individual, but family coverage meant once every quarter you got virtually no paycheck as it was deducted on a quarterly basis. The health plans covered your 2 cleanings per year, but if you actually needed work done on your teeth? Forget it, you're better off in my experience working for a private employer with whatever dental or lack of dental they offer, as oral health is relevant to your general well being & practitioners are generally willing to work out payment plans for those maxed on their plans or uninsured. These organizations should, iMO, be given a time line to reinvent themselves & stop ripping off the taxpayers or be forced to disband.
Squidward and others, I can appreciate your feelings against unions.
I, at age 21, felt the same.
However, I work in an industry with zero representation for the workers, where we all sign ridiculous contracts stating we won't work in a competitive field for any number of months or years after leaving a company, where many of us become ghetto-ized overspecialized into a profession, so that we can have some value to the current employer, while that value lasts.
We have no representation. None, period. However, I'm not here to say that unions are the answer, but this digital on/off response makes me feel like the union and anti-union people really do deserve each other.
Why didn't the unions help in Raleigh, North Carolina? There *aren't any* for the industry in question. There *is no * representation at all for workers in that field.
It's easy, and even fun, to just bash out at a particular group, even if it is one lame-footed group that deserves some bashing - without positing any real solutions, any real innovation, to resolve the situation.
Progress is made not through bashing but through innovation. If the response is just to bash the other side, you deserve what you get. However, innovation (not excuses citing one system or another) will solve the representation problem.
Add "motivation and maturity" to "innovation." If workers aren't willing to put in the time and energy required to fight for their own rights, then nobody else should have to do it for them. That said, if people are indeed willing to advocate for themselves, they should be heard, communicated, and worked with to reach a fair compromise. This situation in Wisconsin is appalling and childish and is going to damage everyone.
Ok, solution, that's a good thing to ask for, so here we go.
Lets use the example of having to sign a contract you don't like, the oh so simple solution is... don't. Don't like your wages and want more, go to a different job where you can get paid more. If the government would simply stop having all these requirements and restrictions, the job market would be much more competative. Case in point, Ford, (early ford that is, we're talking model T here) paid more than any other employer in the area. Gave better benefits, and while the work was extremely tedious and no one really wanted to do it, he had workers flocking to his workshop. Not because he required them to, or the governemtn said he had to do all these things, but because it made logical sense.
The reason unions have gotten out of hand nowadays, is because they've gotten away with them. Some employers have started saying, "we won't hire union workers" because it hurts business. Now, if an employer, whose job it is to make money, is refusing the means by which they make money, doesn't that tell you something in the logic center of your brain?
Is capitolism perfect, no, but history tells us it lasts a lot longer than communism or socialism. Again, case in point, the fact that, when we were capitolist, we weren't broke, the european socialist union, which is only slightly socialist, is broke, hong kong, the most purely capitolist country in the world, rich as hell. Logic, its a wonderful thing.
i don't like unions at all and don't think they should exist, myself.