# F#@% these union busters **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 28, 2011, 8:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896 "2011-02-28T08:41:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/261 "2011-03-03T01:14:11Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > It must be only public employees who have some lazy workers . Private companies like all the people on this board have nothing but hard working extremely competent workers who never stop working. > There used to be an unwritten understanding in the workplace. You were part of a family and had the same interests as your employer. If they succeed, you would. Now employees are a nuisance. If the company makes a ton of money they owe the workers nothing. The management is spending lots of time finding ways to cut your wages and benefits or replace you with someone cheaper. They will offshore your job and do it gladly. But you should continue to work hard until the day they broom you. Loyalty is a one way street. This is exactly what happened to a neighbor of mine who had put in decades of service to a company, only to get forced out with cut hours, weird hours, abusive treatment on the job, etc. to the point that he had to retire earlier than he had wanted. I also have a friend who is trying to find a job other than the paralegal one she has now, working for attorneys who don’t give a shit about any of their paralegals, throwing work at them at the last minute and expecting them to work hour after hour without so much as a snack or a bathroom break, sometimes till 1am. Sure, they could quit–but that’s not such a good idea unless there’s already another job lined up. There is an administrator of sorts that the paralegals have gone to with their concerns, but nothing has changed. The lawyers don’t care. If someone leaves, they’ll find someone else to chew up and spit out after a while. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/262 "2011-03-03T01:21:31Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > …Are you willing to state that unions can never be stronger than the company? That management can never be coerced? Don’t say it, **Bo**! It’s a trap! He’s looking to outsmart you! ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/263 "2011-03-03T01:31:22Z")
LOL _as if_ ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/264 "2011-03-03T01:45:52Z")
Just lookin’ out for you, son. He’s kind of a sharpy, might try to pull a slow one on you. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/265 "2011-03-03T01:46:30Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > There is no such thing as the “free market”. It has no principles to undermine. It does not now and has not ever existed. What sort of rational system loves a salesman a thousand times more than a firefighter or a teacher? Undermine it? Fuck that, burn it down, if it can’t do any better than this! > [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > You just never get over this old canard do Ýou, no matter how many times we quack about it. You also don’t realize there’s a shoe on the other foot–there has never been a just society, therefore anyone who tells you he is promoting social justice is just blowing smkoke up your ass. > [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Luci, I see you’ve (once again) ignored my response to your “there is no free market” canard. Ans no dount you’ll soon repeat it in some other thread (with or without the added tantrum). It’s taking longer than we thought indeed. > [@elucidator](#): > > You don’t know? Tucked away within pronouncements based on unimpeachable authority and knowledge, you gotta ask _that_? > > But of course a union has done so, if only by the sheer weight of numbers, even if only by accident. > > Unions are human institutions, hence flawed. So is government. Worker protection by unionization isn’t a question of efficiency,\*\* its a question of justice\*\*. Probably a case could well be made that an elite nobility might govern more efficiently than a chaotic democracy. But democracy, for all its flaws, is **more just**. Unions, for all their flaws, **promote justice**. There is no such thing as “justice”. It has no principles to undermine. It does not now and has not ever existed. Undermine it? Fuck that, burn it down, if it can’t do any better than this! ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/266 "2011-03-03T01:55:53Z")
You don’t do that very good. Its like you’ve memorized the lyrics but can’t sing the tune. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/267 "2011-03-03T02:01:35Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > Look, what you said is 100% true on the upswing. All employers and managers struggle with how to reward and retain staff. > > So my question for your dad and his staff: when times are lean, and consumers aren’t spending, do his employees willingly take a pay cut? > > They were happy to share in the profits, are they just as happy to share in the losses? > > That point won’t seem to sink in to many in this thread. Employees lapped up the milk from 2002-2007, just as they did in the 1920s. Unemployment was low, salaries were high, everyone was happy. > > Well, times are tough, and sales are down. Ask your dad how his annual sales figures compare from 2006 to 2009. Then ask if his employees willingly took a pay cut to match. My dad doesn’t have demand problems, he’s in the grocery business in a poor town, so “luxury” consumption pretty much didn’t change. He hasn’t had to cut anyone’s salaries. Truth be told his only problem is demographic–he can’t find anyone to hire who’s competent enough to rate the job, because those that are bail on the town as soon as humanly possible–can’t expect much less with a 215-person village in the Alleghenys. Me, I stay working for my company because when we had problems last year, the word came down from management: people below 100k/yr took a ten percent pay cut, and people above 100k/yr (the management tier) took a variable cut down to 90k–I know because I am one of the administrative team that meant the CEO and two owners took a 50% pay cut. Wouldn’t you know, no one quit, no one was laid off except for our two part-time employees who weren’t particularly put out about it, and it happens that in December we’d turned profits back up (largely, and perversely given that half the discussion started because of discussing government waste, on the strength of a DHS/DoD contract) to pay back all the cut income so that our cumulative yearly income was the same. There are some larger companies and state governments who wouldn’t have a shred of issue from their unions if their management had THAT combo of balls and brains. And sympathy? Please, I was just bragging about my daughter. You’re still a dick. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/268 "2011-03-03T02:10:05Z")
In point of fact, the places I see with the most union problems are places where the upper management is NOT willing to share in the losses, but wants to cut only from the lower tiers. See also the school board my brother’s fighting, who want to cut teacher pay by around 5%, raise health care contributions by 40%, and implicitly cut it by $5000 more (that’s the “expected personal contribution to classroom supplies” that they’re seriously kicking around). In a school district that showed a surplus from property taxes (to the tune of $5mil+ in the last five years, so says the state arbitrator) throughout the entire decade including the last three years, that has gone to the state championships of everything from quiz bowl to basketball. Because a few of them want to cut property taxes to personally benefit, or to hold on to being a big fish in a tiny rural pond, or to have the thrill of dicking around some hard-working teachers who aren’t even liberal–we’re talking rural Pennsylvania here. I hear about situations like that, where attacks on unions are based SOLELY on desire for power/cash, far more often than I hear about places where the unions are oh so demanding and unflexible. Hell, the unions in Wisconsin already agreed to every cut except the gutting of their best tool–if it was about fiscal realities and not about political power, that’d be goddamn well enough. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/269 "2011-03-03T02:26:58Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > You don’t do that very good. Its like you’ve memorized the lyrics but can’t sing the tune. It sucks to have your own ignorance shoved in your face, doesn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/270 "2011-03-03T02:29:05Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > It was the part about ‘general strike’ that confused me. You know, when a group of people block access to facilities, shut down operations, sabotage production. Is that what makes someone “free to refrain from signing?” Do they kick puppies and rape nuns too? Damn those unions! ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/271 "2011-03-03T03:43:28Z")
> [@AlienVessels](#): > > In any competitive environment, you either keep up the pressure or you will get steamrolled. As pointed out elsewhere, you need a large organization to counter the concerted efforts of an opposing organization. Or you could just make yourself an invaluable employee. No union needed. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/272 "2011-03-03T03:48:10Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Its a little hyperbolic but do you seriously contend that we wouldn’t see the steady erosion of workers rights without unions? I do. Now that the laws are on the books, fines and lawsuits can do the jobs you think unions need to do. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > No I think my analogy is more apt. It’s not. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/273 "2011-03-03T03:58:36Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > I do. Now that the laws are on the books, fines and lawsuits can do the jobs you think unions need to do. At the same time, as said upthread–we keep a military around sufficient to deal with another superpower even when there’s no particular threat of war with another superpower. Unions, having been necessary previously, ought to be allowed to remain around so that the idea of same doesn’t disappear and the skills involved atrophy. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/274 "2011-03-03T04:09:49Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > Or you could just make yourself an invaluable employee. No union needed. Not all jobs allow for that kind of individual ability, though. You can increase your value, sure, but there comes a point where you hit the ceiling of what it’s value to you is. So long as a company’s value threshold is lower than a person’s required value threshold, you’re incapable of increasing your worth. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/275 "2011-03-03T04:37:04Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > If your best argument is to punch someone in the mouth, then that’s your problem. > > Look, I haven’t said word one about what social programs we should or should not have to help the poor. That’s a completely separate issue that we, as a society, need to decide. > > But I’m not going to pay you more than the job is worth to me if there someone else out there who is willing to do it and do it well. Now, does that often mean that for business purposes it behoove me to pay my employees a decent wage so that they don’t have to live in cars and eat cat food? Yes. But if the market doesn’t justify a higher wage, I go out of business and there is no fucking job in the first place. We both starve. So you’re claiming most companies around here who pay shit wages are on the edge of bankruptcy? Because you’re last line is total strawman otherwise. If a company can afford to pay their employees a living wage, but instead opts to make their employees suffer than the people running that company are greedy jackasses. The kind history will piss on the graves of. Let’s define a living wage as food shelter, medical care access, transportation costs, and necessary incidentals. Here’s the deal, if you’re making your employees rely on social safety nets, then that job is being subsidized by the tax payer. You are externalizing your costs on the taxpayer. If their aren’t social safety nets and your job leaves your employees doing without vitals then you’re really a jackass exploiting vulnerable people in a bad situation. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/276 "2011-03-03T05:11:53Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > For many unions, striking is illegal. > > Blocking access to facilities is illegal and would result in the police arresting and detaining the offenders, so that the employer can continue business activities. > > Sabotaging a business is also illegal, and the police would apprehend and arrest any offenders. > > Not sure how a union could make a business stop operations as it’s up to management/the employer to determine whether or not he has the personnel to continue business operations. No worker is obligated to work for an employer, you know. > > So basically you got nothin’. You have bogeymen: fictions meant to cause fear; nothing more. Is that so? All that time I spent outside in line waiting to get into the facility? Fiction? Did I dream it? The airports shut down because baggage handlers are on strike, fiction? Walking to work because of a transit strike, fiction? Walking past You also avoided my question: If management is entering the agreement freely, what’s stopping the individual employee? As you said, no one is forced to work. If someone _wants_ to work for less than minimum wage, why do we stop them? If they _choose_ to work for less than a living wage, they do so freely. No one is forced to work in unsafe conditions, or for unpaid overtime. Under your premise, I don’t see why unions would be needed. I’d also like to point out how easily you went through my list and pointed out what was “illegal” as if that means it doesn’t happen. Yet earlier it was declared without unions corporations would disregard wage laws and safety laws. In summary: management is able to enter into contracts freely, without coercion, but employees aren’t. Unions will obey the law, but corporations won’t. Pick a theme and go with it or I’m going to have to get \*\*Bricker \*\*in here to nit-pick you to death. Any more waffling and I’ll need you to provide butter and syrup. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/277 "2011-03-03T05:21:25Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > > [@dba Fred](#): > > > > A “What if?” - What if unions vanished tomorrow? > > Would there suddenly be a return to children working 70+ hours a week in the coal mines for $1 a day? > > No, it would happen over a generation as people became more desperate and willing to work for scab wages. Now, if \*\*Snowboarder Bo \*\* had any integrity, he’d point out to you that we have laws against child labour, etc, and that violating them would be illegal. Then he’d tell you that you “got nothin’. You have bogeymen: fictions meant to cause fear; nothing more.” Not sure why he didn’t, must be busy. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/278 "2011-03-03T05:28:30Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > I’d also like to point out how easily you went through my list and pointed out what was “illegal” as if that means it doesn’t happen. Yet earlier it was declared without unions corporations would disregard wage laws and safety laws. The trouble with the “unions sabotaging” the company myth is that it is most frequently simply an apocryphal story. For example, way back in post #39 in this thread, where it was shown that a story of a “local paper mill (that) ceased operations as a result of an unyielding union” … Actually turned out to be a mill that closed due to an “unprecedented decline” in newsprint consumption in North America. " Yet the story is out there that the union shut the operation down. Unions are the boogeyman du jour, and there is a lot of untrue crap thrown around about them. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/279 "2011-03-03T06:00:21Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > Is that so? All that time I spent outside in line waiting to get into the facility? Fiction? Did I dream it? The airports shut down because baggage handlers are on strike, fiction? Walking to work because of a transit strike, fiction? It’s my understanding that public safety workers (police, fire, etc) are not permitted to strike. Ditto hospital workers. Basically anyone whose grievances cause more than an inconvenience. Don’t have anything to say about my many examples of companies and governments foisting all the blame on the unions while not dropping the salaries and bennies of the top management by any appreciable amount? Probably because you’re just as cognizant as the rest of us that such behavior is unconscionable and wish it’d go away if you ignore it. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/280 "2011-03-03T06:17:46Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > Or you could just make yourself an invaluable employee. No union needed. The problem with this idea, with respect to teachers, is that there is no contact between the employees and the people who set their salaries – between the teachers and the politicians. So one could be the best teacher in the world and the politicians would never know that she was invaluable. If the budget for teachers is cut, her salary would be cut along with all other teachers. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896.md?page=13) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896.md?page=15)