3.10.2005
Why I Think Unions are Bad
As a Christian with Conservative views, I find myself constantly confronted with the popular notion that I am a minion of the evil rich -- and that I have abandoned the Great Commission in my implicit support for the Republican Party's "oppression of the common man".
This point of view is particularly virulent in the area where I grew up, and where I still live. This is especially true of those who believe that unions are their only hope to obtain a 'good' life. People who are much younger than I, and who have never even worked in a union shop, are convinced that unions would magically open the doors for them to obtain a 'livable' wage. I put that last phrase in quotes because most of these people seem to be living quite well. They don't appear to be missing any meals, they drive automobiles, have cable TV, and their clothes seldom appear to be rags.
Having lived through the height of the United Steelworkers dominance in our local economy, I can attest to several destructive effects that is their true legacy.
1. Unions are prone to corruption.
Unions are democracy gone bad. Rampant cronyism and tribal politics often dictates who sits in the offices of leadership and at the negotiating table to represent the rank and file. The people who run unions no longer work in the shops they claim to represent, and their salaries and benefits are often well beyond what they could have hoped to earn in their former occupations. Like all political offices in this country, save the Presidency, these folk's primary concern after achieving office is often just to stay there. From these positions of power, political alliances are forged, often at odds with the values and preferences of the membership majority. The pilot's union is an excellent example of this.
2. Unions destroy workforce productivity.
In a union environment, how much you get paid and how much vacation time almost always depends on your length of employment under union contract. Performance rarely, if ever, figures into how much a union employee gets paid. All one has to do is maintain a level of performance high enough to avoid termination by the company and wait for someone to retire or orders to pick up in order to get more money. Of course, unions make it extremely difficult to terminate anyone for performance reasons, because the contracts are structured in such a way that it's easier to convict someone of conspiracy in federal court than it is to prove that a union worker isn't doing his job to agreed-upon standards. Human nature takes over at this point. If I'm going to get paid the same whether I bust my ass or sleep my whole shift, I am going to sleep. In the late 70's, this was the best way to actually get extra money in your pocket. Go to the mill on the midnight shift, make about $20/hour while sleeping, then take advantage of your rested condition to make money from a side business in one of the trades -- which, btw, you only know how to do because you learned it at the mill. It takes a person of rare character to do otherwise, given the opportunity.
Those who were even less ambitious often showed up for their shifts drunk or high. I myself spent many a shift in the mill under the influence of one substance or another. We often lit up right on the shop floor. Needless to say, more than a few accidents occurred under these circumstances, resulting in injury, loss of production time, and occasionally -- death.
The bottom line? The companies with union contracts were forced to function at less-than-optimal capacity, with higher-than-optimal labor costs, and with little recourse other than raising prices on their customers for a product of ever-diminishing quality.
BTW, these are not just opinions. These are observations of my experience of having worked 3 summers in a local steel mill while I was in college.
3. Unions seldom negotiate in the best interests of their members.
If one considers that the best interests of any community of workers means keeping the maximum number of them employed at the highest wages and benefits possible under current economic conditions, then unions fail miserably. Most major unions at the leadership level are practically indiscernable from the Democrat Party. They have a national, political agenda that runs counter to being able to effectively negotiate on behalf of workers in a specific location. Businesses exist to make a profit, whether for private owner or corporate shareholders. Raising the standard of living for the surrounding community is only a side effect of a either businesses functioning with a social conscience and voluntarily giving away a portion of their profits to motivate and retain a productive, loyal workforce, or the result of a healthy business climate generating enough local wealth and opportunity to create enough of a demand for good labor, that they are forced to pony up what it takes to hire and retain the best workers in the community.
Whenever unions begin to interfere in the dynamics of the local economy, one of two things inevitably happens: either an atmosphere of animosity and intimidation develops, making the working conditions worse, not better, for the workers (i.e. - retributive pay cuts or layoffs); or the companies simply shut down operations altogether and go looking for a more hospitable environment in which to conduct their business.
4. Union mentalities destroy local economies.
I live northwest of Pittsburgh, in a region that once employed over 30,000 people in the steel industry. Taking into consideration the satellite industries of transportation, fabrication and plant administration, the total number of people gainfully employed in that local economy was well over 100,000 in the early 1970's. Now there are less than 5,000 employed in similar capacities. The causes of the collapse of the domestic steel industry in the 1970's is a subject of much debate, depending on which side of the ownership/labor argument you want to support. The fact is that both sides were to blame. The world market got competitive while U.S. companies failed to re-invest capital to keep up, preferring instead to maximize payouts to stockholders, who in turn took their money elsewhere when the steel companies started to lose money. On the other hand, the unions refused to see the writing on the wall, refusing to give concessions which would have allowed the companies the opportunity to re-tool and stay in the race with Japanese imports.
In the end, the mills shut down, either because they didn't have the capital to stay in business or because the unions' unwillingness to negotiate forced them to relocate to places like Alabama or Mexico, or to simply abandon the older mills in Pittsburgh and concentrate on the more modern facilities in the Great Lakes region. Tens of thousands of people, who could have had remained employed at 2/3 or even 1/2 of their wages were now without jobs at all. And many were never able to find work at anywhere near the wages that were offered by the mills when things went bad. To this day, the county where I live has yet to recover to the point where people who live there can find career-type jobs. In the 20 years since I graduated college, I've only had one job locally that paid a good wage. The rest of that time, I either worked for subsistence wages locally or worked in the city of Pittsburgh.
Our region is unable to attract new business which offer the potential for large employment numbers, whether in the manufacturing or service industries, because even after two decades, the unions continue to insert their poisonous influence.
One recent example that supports at least three of my points is the recent strike by the PA Tollbooth Operators. These are they guys who sit in tollbooths on toll roads, hand out tickets and collect tolls. The only skills these guys need is the ability to make change and remain conscious while sitting on a stool for eight hours. I guess it gets cold sometimes, but it looks to me like these booths do have heaters. Anyway, these guys went on strike for several weeks this past fall for more money. I might have been tempted to sympathize with these poor schmucks, until I learned that they made around $19/hour and had FULLY PAID BENEFITS!
And the worst part? They got what they wanted. Why? Because they are employees of the Commonwealth, and their bosses, corrupt minions of the State Democrat Party that they are, will simply raise my taxes AND the toll rates rather than fire these ingrates and bring in the hundreds of thousands of people across this state who would LOVE to make that kind of money and have those kinds of benefits. So we are forced to endure one of the worst tax burdens of any state in Union to keep a sick economy on life support because the moronic political ideology of the Democrats refuses to admit that they are wrong!
To close out this rant, I am not against the concept of unions. I just think that their current functioning is harmful. Unions could be a powerful force for good in our society, creating an apparatus of accountability, decency and social responsibility to keep business' tendency towards rampant greed and environmental rape in check. They could be a resonant voice for ensuring that no man, woman or child in this country is without basic and necessary medical care. But they choose instead to pursue a hostile agenda towards all that is RIGHT with capitalism, simply because those in positions of power have much to gain from this largely fabricated class war.
- posted by The Drake @ 8:57 AM
Comments:
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AMEN!!! Preach it, brother!!!
This is striking a particularly foul cord with me today with all the talk of raising minimum wage, which would automatically raise the union salaries since they are tied to said minimum wage.
So, minimum wage is going to go up, people are going to get paid $7.00 an hour to do $5.00 an hour worth of work, prices are going to go up, and then the money I earn at my job, which I busted my ASS to learn the skills in order to enable me to do, will be worth less. In a very real sense, when minimum wage goes up, everyone who is NOT making minimum wage sees their wages go down. Think about that the next time you hear the left whining and crying about raising minimum wage.
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This is striking a particularly foul cord with me today with all the talk of raising minimum wage, which would automatically raise the union salaries since they are tied to said minimum wage.
So, minimum wage is going to go up, people are going to get paid $7.00 an hour to do $5.00 an hour worth of work, prices are going to go up, and then the money I earn at my job, which I busted my ASS to learn the skills in order to enable me to do, will be worth less. In a very real sense, when minimum wage goes up, everyone who is NOT making minimum wage sees their wages go down. Think about that the next time you hear the left whining and crying about raising minimum wage.
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