# 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:** 18
**Author:** ![AlienVessels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ba8739/32.png) [@AlienVessels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlienVessels)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/341 "2011-03-03T23:56:33Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > As I’ve said a few times before, if your job is to push a button at a widget factory, and someone else comes up with a cheaper/better widget, your job is lost. So do you want the union to protect both you AND the widget you produce? Would you like the government to get involved and require everyone to buy 6 widgets at $10 each? No, I want the government to tax that widget that was almost certainly imported and protect the market until people can be retrained and factories retooled. It’s “infinitely” faster to find a dirt cheap source of “equivalent” product than to repurpose manufacturing of same. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/342 "2011-03-04T00:00:40Z")
> [@AlienVessels](#): > > No, I want the government to tax that widget that was almost certainly imported and protect the market until people can be retrained and factories retooled. It’s “infinitely” faster to find a dirt cheap source of “equivalent” product than to repurpose manufacturing of same. Why would anyone retool if the government protected the market? Cheap widgets don’t just become available overnight. ---
**Author:** ![AlienVessels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ba8739/32.png) [@AlienVessels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlienVessels)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/343 "2011-03-04T00:05:38Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Why would anyone retool if the government protected the market? Cheap widgets don’t just become available overnight. You can protect the market for a limited time. Cheap widgets DO just become available overnight. I had customers that operated commercial printing companies that took hits virtually “instantly” when people started figuring out that they could send out their jobs online to China and get them on their dock for far less than the local printer could do it. I also had asian vendors contact me to sell “equivalent” products to our product line for far less cost and they were ready to ship almost immediately. Of course, there were issues with the products, but that’s another story. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/344 "2011-03-04T00:13:23Z")
> [@AlienVessels](#): > > You can protect the market for a limited time. Good luck with that one. Protection is “infinitely” harder (to borrow a phrase) to get rid of than it is to implement in the first place. > [@](#): > > Cheap widgets DO just become available overnight. I had customers that operated commercial printing companies that took hits virtually “instantly” when people started figuring out that they could send out their jobs online to China and get them on their dock for far less than the local printer could do it. No, those folks just didn’t do their homework to understand who their competition was. And if you know the government is going to protect your job, you’ll have even less motivation to do so. ---
**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 4, 2011, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/345 "2011-03-04T00:44:13Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I’ve seen too many incidences where this was clearly _not_ true, especially in recent years, and I couldn’t let a statement so contradictory to my observations and experience stand. But you really have no way of knowing if this is true or not. Sure your buddy tells you he was a model employee, but he doesn’t tell you that hed steal stuff sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/346 "2011-03-04T00:47:28Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Good luck with that one. Protection is “infinitely” harder (to borrow a phrase) to get rid of than it is to implement in the first place. > No, those folks just didn’t do their homework to understand who their competition was. And if you know the government is going to protect your job, you’ll have even less motivation to do so. You don’t think much of the American worker, do you? I worked for the city for 2 years. People went to work every day and did their jobs. They were not trying to find a way to get out of work, any more than an industry job. There are screw offs everywhere. There are hard workers everywhere. You do understand there are promotions available in government jobs? There are merit raises. there are opportunities to get training to move up. Working for the city is really not much different than outside work. You swallow anti government lies quite easily. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/347 "2011-03-04T01:01:35Z")
Welcome to the United States of Wal-Mart, fifty unique working/shopping opportunities! Here in the Wal-Mart of Minnesota, our food court serves hot dish. I hear that the Wal-Mart Texas food court has bar-b-q. And ammunition. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/348 "2011-03-04T01:16:10Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > You don’t think much of the American worker, do you? Should we? ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/349 "2011-03-04T01:19:35Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > You don’t think much of the American worker, do you? Uh, he was talking about American **management** , gonzo,he’s riffing on protectionism now (and being historically correct). ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/350 "2011-03-04T01:21:55Z")
> [@AlienVessels](#): > > No, I want the government to tax that widget that was almost certainly imported and protect the market until people can be retrained and factories retooled. It’s “infinitely” faster to find a dirt cheap source of “equivalent” product than to repurpose manufacturing of same. So you want tariffs imposed to inflate the price of the domestic widget? That’s what it means to “tax something imported” in order to “protect” a domestic industry. Is this really the ultimate goal of unions? Get everyone earning the same wage, regardless of the job their perform? And at the end of the week give everyone a participation trophy. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/351 "2011-03-04T02:09:01Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > That’s nice, but has nothing to do with what I wrote or why I wrote it. > > **magellan** was claiming that if you do a good job, your job was secure, and when I called him on this, he still maintained that it was mostly always the case. I’ve seen too many incidences where this was clearly _not_ true, especially in recent years, and I couldn’t let a statement so contradictory to my observations and experience stand. > snip. Yep. Perhaps **magellan** lives on some planet where people who “shine” at their jobs get to stay there indefinitely, but I have seen the opposite happen too many times to believe that being awesome at a job gets you any security at all. For that matter, how about applying to jobs? I could name just as many situations where someone who should have gotten the job and deserved it was turned down, and the person who got it had far less experience, almost no qualifications, etc. and just lied and b.s.'d their way through the interview. I tend to think that the unqualified ones either knew somebody or blew somebody. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/352 "2011-03-04T02:13:55Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > So you want tariffs imposed to inflate the price of the domestic widget? That’s what it means to “tax something imported” in order to “protect” a domestic industry. > > Is this really the ultimate goal of unions? Get everyone earning the same wage, regardless of the job their perform? And at the end of the week give everyone a participation trophy. There is a significant difference, as I’m sure you can understand, between “get everyone at the same wage” and “make sure that no matter how lowly, if a job is worth paying someone to do it that pay is enough to support the worker doing it.” I understand that conflicts with “pure” free market capitalism, which asserts the market price for some jobs might be below a living wage. That’s fine–value conflicts are what make discussion fun. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/353 "2011-03-04T02:16:36Z")
> [@vivalostwages](#): > > For that matter, how about applying to jobs? I could name just as many situations where someone who should have gotten the job and deserved it was turned down, and the person who got it had far less experience, almost no qualifications, etc. and just lied and b.s.'d their way through the interview. Hell, I’ve been explicitly ordered to do that (hire the unqualified applicant over the good one) by my superiors (or by a company co-owner whose own org chart had no reporting line even remotely from me to him, except when he wanted to hire someone based on knowing him). In all cases, incidentally, it was either nepotism or age discrimination, commonly the latter. ---
**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 4, 2011, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/354 "2011-03-04T03:00:45Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > But you really have no way of knowing if this is true or not. Sure your buddy tells you he was a model employee, but he doesn’t tell you that hed steal stuff sometimes. Now don’t bring your brother into this either. ---
**Author:** ![AlienVessels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ba8739/32.png) [@AlienVessels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlienVessels)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/355 "2011-03-04T05:45:21Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Good luck with that one. Protection is “infinitely” harder (to borrow a phrase) to get rid of than it is to implement in the first place. > No, those folks just didn’t do their homework to understand who their competition was. And if you know the government is going to protect your job, you’ll have even less motivation to do so. I’m rather confused. Didn’t we at the Federal level just have to renew a tax break due to end because it had a built in expiration date? Nice circular definition there on the homework. If you fail, you just didn’t work hard or smart enough. Pretty convenient. In the real world, businesses have limited resources. Most of those are used to deal with local competition. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/356 "2011-03-04T12:33:11Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > The thing that bothers me most about that anecdote is that I KNOW that’s not fundamental to the idea of conservatism–my own father and brother exude compassion from every pore, while simultaneously believing that government spending and taxation are significantly out of hand, and (here’s possibly the key) that there aren’t any conservatives left to vote for anymore, just guys with a big label and a bigger anti-abortion plank who otherwise spend your tax dollars just as insolvently. I’m confused by your response, since being compassionate has nothing to do with it. Look at _Atlas Shrugged_. Hank Reardon (IIRC), when told “Don’t make any false moves,” replies “I never do.” I think conservatives really believe that if you hew to certain practices or qualities, bad things will not happen to you. In this thread, it is clear that some believe that if you work really hard and diligently, you will never be subject to employer malfeasance or shenanigans. If that does happen to you, all you need to do is pick up your kit and you will easily find another employer, who will apparently necessarily pay you precisely your worth. Just like Ayn Rand and my brother, the belief is that it is possible to conduct yourself such that you will never get lost or separated from others, never make any false moves, and essentially distinguish yourself from the characterologically flawed. And I do believe that they believe in a just-world hypothesis, in which if something bad does happen to you, you must have been deficient in some fashion. "They bought their tickets. They knew what they were getting into. I say, 'Let ‘em crash!’ " This doesn’t mean they cannot have compassion. As long as it is of their own choosing, they often readily help out others. The problem appears to arise from _systematic_ efforts to help out others. When helping others is taken out of the hands of individuals, then helping is provided to the characteroligcally flawed. Giving to the poor is a good thing, but welfare rewards the Cadillac Queens. Helping someone out when they are out of a job is laudable, but unemployment benefits reward laziness. I should have ample tax breaks for my charitable giving, because when I don’t have control over it, it goes to the wrong sort. In the same fashion, I believe, they regard systematization in the form of unions as festering pools of corruption, because the world is otherwise just, and employers surely would naturally pay employees their worth, and so on and so forth. Compassion has nothing to do with it. In this case, deserve’s got everything to do with it. (Where deserve is in the eye of the beholder.) ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/357 "2011-03-04T12:39:11Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > People who tell anecdotes like these always forget to mention that she has a crack habit and slept with the whole football team at the same time. I swear I hadn’t even seen this post before I composed my post above. If something bad happens to you, you must have been characterologically flawed. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/358 "2011-03-04T12:57:32Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > I think conservatives really believe that if you hew to certain practices or qualities, bad things \*\*will not \*\*happen to you. In this thread, it is clear that some believe that if you work really hard and diligently, you will \*\*never \*\*be subject to employer malfeasance or shenanigans. If that does happen to you, all you need to do is pick up your kit and you will \*\*easily \*\*find another employer, who will apparently \*\*necessarily \*\*pay you precisely your worth. Is that really what you think? Is there any value it making up some bullshit about what liberals think? Would it help the argument if I summarized the bullshit spewed forth proclaiming the virtues of unions? Did you really just gloss over 8 pages bashing management and the evil corporate giants? Way to help your cause, but next time quote Ayn Rand more, and maybe link to a few political cartoons to really drive home the point. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/359 "2011-03-04T13:21:01Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > Is that really what you think? > > Is there any value it making up some bullshit about what liberals think? Would it help the argument if I summarized the bullshit spewed forth proclaiming the virtues of unions? Did you really just gloss over 8 pages bashing management and the evil corporate giants? > > Way to help your cause, but next time quote Ayn Rand more, and maybe link to a few political cartoons to really drive home the point. You’re protesting as if those very things aren’t evident **in this very thread alone**! I’m making nothing up - I can only go by what conservatives themselves say. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/360 "2011-03-04T14:00:39Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > Did you really just gloss over 8 pages bashing management and the evil corporate giants? Did you really just gloss over eight pages of blaming the victim? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896.md?page=17) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896.md?page=19)