I get why coal miners & truckers benefit from unions: the power of a union can be useful when trying to establish and maintain humane and safe working conditions when the employees could easily be replaced by compliant (extremely needy and grateful for the opportunity to get the lash if it means they don’t have to drink rock tea for dinner again) sources of muscle power. The good of a union protects the employee from unfair and inhumane treatment–and that is a good thing.
But I take exception to:
Useless Unions:
I was once union dues-paying a bag boy at a grocery store–worked with the band saws in the meat room after hours doing clean-up with no safety training and watched as my union ceded acidental death & dismemberment benefits wondering what this might mean for me.
I have a friend who drove the city bus breathing diesel exhaust for 14 years, hurt her back in an altercation with a stoned passenger 4 months ago & missed a lot of work as a result, got canned 2 weeks ago for responding politely & incorrectly to the command, “Your medical leave is over, we need you to get back to work tomorrow or you are terminated.” She’s without health insurance–guess who found Mr. C in her lungs yesterday. Her $95/month Union: “We can’t help you. Good luck”
Dad works ramp service for a major airlines (Machinists Union) after 30 years of service, he takes a punch to the face by a drunk mechanic–knocks him 20 feet to the ground from a loader. Mechanic has been in trouble for being drunk at work before, but since alcoholism is a DISEASE, he can’t be FIRED for having it! Even though his actions could very well kill a coworker or crash a plane.
The pit accusation:
Unions DO breed a sense of entitlement because, through a culture of employer-bullying, the workers are essentially bulletproof and able to make and expect unreasonable demands (“retain the drunks,” “Easy Hours” etc) and expect them to be met.
Unions are little more than a leech on the paycheck of many employees who would either not ordinarily encounter dangerous work conditions (grocery-boy), or do not provide adequate protection from those dangers in the first place (lung cancer & assault story).
I like the underlying objective a lot better than the implementation.
I’d like to see unions demand collectively owned shares of stock, in the name of the union, benefits distributed to all union members; and wages always negotiated as a percentage of gross profits insulated with a safety net for bad years. Now the workers and the unions themselves have a vested interest in seeing the business itself thrive. Also, what was a fair wage agreement two years ago is more likely to continue to look good two years from now, instead of being a flat sum that drags as cost of living increases. Even concerns like workplace safety regs and health insurance would probably be negotiated in better faith.
My brother’s steel plant closed down. Everyone got fired. The union told them they wouldn’t help out because they needed to use the closing of that mill as a bargaining chip to help out another mill. Yay.
Funnier- My friend’s fiance came from another country where, as she puts it, “You were either involved in tourism or organized crime.” She came here to get away from it… And immediately becomes part of the Teamsters. Just struck me as ironic, somehow…
America does indeed work less. Before unions, factory workers put in 16 or 18 hours a day, six days a week, with no overtime differential, vacation, or insurance. In fact, six-year-old kids don’t work at all any more because of unions.
The examples in the OP would seem to argue for stronger unions, not weaker ones.
At one point unions were very much needed, and they did great things. But now in a lot of cases they have too much power and only act in their own interests. Of course this can be said of any organization that gets too big and powerful, whether it be business, religious, government or union organizations.
I use to think that we should get rid of unions all together, but then, after being treated crapy where I work now, and actually wishing that we had a union (this being my only exception to generally hating unions) I’ve just come to the conclusion that unions should just loose some of their power and be knocked down a notch or two. At times, they can be useful, but they just aren’t as needed as they once were.
Don’t be fooled, OP. The coal unions wrote the book on corruption and laziness. The only people benefitting from big coal are the ones at the top of the heap.
No one would argue that unions were a bad idea when they first came about. They were desperately needed, actually.
But I agree with the others that have said that in the recent years, unions have become entirely too powerful. I’ve had quite a few friends who have been union members (forcefully so) and every one of them has despised it. More than one has been screwed over by their union.
Now then. You just wait till county finds his way in here, Mr. OP! He’ll show ya!
I couldn’t agree with you more. What I wonder about are unions for groups such as grocery clerks, doctors, teachers, and other non-blue collar labor. I can see where the UAW is a needed group (although their costs drive up the cost of labor, and thus drive jobs to Mexico…) but the National Union of Produce Handlers? WTF?!
ArrMatey!,
Your friend’s fiancee is from Canada? Thats disgusting! (j/k)
Frankly, I think anti-trust laws should apply to unions. One union has too much power? Break ‘em up! Imagine all the bumpy parking lots we’d get if there were three or four Teamsters’ unions out there. Jimmy Hoffa would be spinning in his asphalt at the idea.
What’s the difference between auto workers and grocery clerks? Some people in non-blue collar jobs are able to negotiate their salary, benefits and working conditions on an individual basis, but not nearly all. Look at which doctors, grocery clerks, etc. belong to unions. It’s not the doctor working in a three doctor office owned by the other two - he can negotiate on his own. It’s not the clerk at the grocery store with three clerks. It’s those working in larger institutions - for example, doctors working for government agencies or clerks working for large chains. They don’t really have the ability to negotiate individually- my state probably has at least 200,000 employees. It would be expensive for the state to enter separate agreements with each of those people, so that won’t be an option. The only options are to enter into agreements covering large groups of people (union) or work on a take it or leave it basis.
Sorry, in my experience management is at least as responsible for the sense of entitlement as the union is. I’ve belonged to three different unions. Every contract had a different procedure to follow in cases of disciplinary action, but they all had a procedure. And in every union, there were people who should have been fired, but weren’t because management didn’t do its* job. In one case that I know of, a supervisor was going to recommend that an employee be terminated at the end of his probation period. Shortly before the evaluation was due, the supervisor found out that he would be transferred to another unit and she would no longer supervise him. She changed her recommendation and he was retained. In another case, an employee was at least an hour late every day for two years and complaints were made by other employees about his sexual comments. He was fired, went to arbitration and ended up with a two week suspension because his supervisors didn’t follow the disciplinary procedure ( they never wrote him up, or suspended him. Went straight to firing after ignoring the problem for a couple of years) and the last straw, by itself, wasn’t bad enough to justify termination. Is it the union’s fault he’s still there, because they held management to the contract, or is it management’s fault because they didn’t follow the contract to begin with?
Although I didn’t belong to a teachers’ union, I did belong to professional organizations that did serve a similar purpose: the National Education Association, the Tennessee Education Association, and my local organization.
Teachers are not known to have high paying jobs, especially considering the amount of work they put in. (Most of my work was outside the classroom.) But I would have been paid less without these organizations. I would not have had time to plan at school, my class sizes would have been larger. I would have had to do more physical labor such as moving heaving equipment and boxes of books. Teachers who taught AP classes in upscale neighborhoods would have been paid more because their students’ testing scores were often higher than those who taught fundamental classes in more difficult neighborhoods. (This is just an example; these schools have AP classes too.) A principal could fire you if you refused to falsify records for athletes. I would have continued to teach in a second story classroom with no air-conditioning and no fans provided. Forensic coaches would have had no stipend, but softball coaches would.
The list is endless. And many of the things we negotiated for were for the children – more paper for drawing, etc. It is very hard to judge why a union or professional organization is necessary unless you are within that job or career.
Can I interest anyone in a four day work week? Six hour day? Five weeks annual vacation?
Bill H.: Your skepticism aside, the terrible working conditions most people experienced before the advent of labor unions and the rise of socialism are well documented historical fact. I suggest you read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, then remove your head from your ass.
I have a lot of admiration for many of the things unions have managed to achieve, and given corporate America’s pervasive power I’m not sure we need weaker unions - perhaps more ethical and committed ones?
OTOH, I temped for a union once, doing payroll - it was a branch affiliated with the Teamsters. And while the Comrade atmosphere was interesting and different (when it was time to stuff envelopes, EVERYBODY stuffed envelopes), I sensed Ayn Rand and Harrison Bergeron waiting in the wings. For example, I found a better and more efficient way of using the software to capture data, and I discovered a couple of opportunities to save costs with their phone bills. But rather than appreciating my efforts at helping their business, the bosses were threatened by innovation and treated me quite rudely, to the point where I walked out in tears. Definitely a “no one’s allowed to be any better than anyone else” environment, which is scary.
I certainly agree that unions filled a vastly needed role in American society at one point. Whether those same unions are getting the job done now is a much dicier proposition.
But what really gets me in the provincialness of it all.
Where the hell is the AFL-CIO in Mexico? Or China? Or Thailand?
You’d be hard pressed to find a worker in the United States even half as beat down as those poor folks overseas. Yet I rarely, if ever, do I hear about efforts to unionize those workers.
And if organizing the downtrodden isn’t what a union is about then what IS a union about?
On NPR last year I heard this brought up and the union rep said it was too difficult (and dangerous) to try to organize in those countries and that it wasn’t really in their bailiwick (being outside the United States and all).
Man, does that piss me off. Either you’re for worker solidarity or you’re not. But choose!
Remind anyone of a certain political experiment that turned out to be a spectacular failure?
This illustrates one of my problems with unions. They destroy incentive. Just as in a communist system, everyone is being paid the same, so why in the world would someone put out extra effort? No reward is coming and you will threaten those who are comfortable in their negotiated seniority-gained hammock.
And for all of you that are getting ready to scream that the workers will put forth extra effort because of “pride”, I’ll concede that when you concede that management is concerned with the well-being of the workers as well as the bottom line.
Which leads me to problem number two. The presence of a union automatically breeds an “us against them” atmosphere. You are either in or out. If you are in, I have to support you even if I think you are wrong. If you are out, I have to oppose you even if I think you may be right.
For those who may be wondering, I have worked in places that have had unions and in those without them. I have never actually been in a union myself.
Right now, I work in a public school system that is in a severe financial bind. We’ll see if that matters to the two unions involved when the contract is up for renegotiation next year.
As long as unions are not using illegal measures in their quest for power, I have no problem with them - they are simply another market force. When they threaten “scabc” with physical harm, vandalize the vehicles of replacement workers, and intimidate people who choose to cross picket lines, they are going too far, and need to be reined in.
I suspect that what Americans really need is something more all encompassing, more politically powerful and less coercive than traditional unions – I’m thinking a Workers’ Trade Association organized along the lines of the AARP would be the ticket. Instead of seniors, they’d represent everyone who worked for a living below the senior management and business owner/operator level. If they could grab a significant portion of the work force and get them voting as a block as the AARP has, they could act as a counter to what is at the moment the unrestrained political power of large corporations.
Of course, they’d have to be nonpartisan, as the AARP is going to find out to their sorrow now that they’ve rolled over and spread em for the Pubbies on the drug benefits issue.
