Resolved: Unions are Big Smelly Bullies

Great Debates
1

OK. Before I even start, I’m going to admit that my knowledge of Unions is basically anecdotal and from the outside. I do know a bit about their origins and practices.

My friend is a Union President and is studying to be a Labor Lawyer. Naturally, to him Teamsters and Jesus Christ walk hand in hand.

So when I say to him: Unions piss me off, and they’re all big bullies, he calls me a “typical middle class white woman living in the lap of luxury” (apparently the lap of luxury is hand me down furniture, a four year old car and $30,000 of credit card debt)

So here’s why I hate Unions and I’d like to be a) educated and b) fairly heard.

  1. My husband is being courted by the Actor’s Equity Assocation (the actor’s union). They claim it’s wonderful to be in the Union because you get paid. Never mind that it means you can ONLY work in Union theatres, which in Chicago is a ratio of about 15 to 1 Non union vs. union. So basically, what they’re saying is “pay us dues, join Actor’s Equity and we’ll restrict where you can work! It’s great fun! We’ll track you down and sue you if you work in your wife’s theatre company!”

  2. THE GREAT UPS STRIKE of lo so many years ago…Screwed me and my business up royally, and I fail to understand (no matter how often it’s explained to me) how making the entire country suffer because you want a 1.00 raise isn’t bullying. You’re essentially holding us hostage. I understand you’re unhappy in your work, you certainly DO deserve more money, and your CEO DOES make disproportionately more money than you. I had a job like that too. YOU KNOW WHAT? * I quit that job and got a new one that was better. * If everyone started bailing on UPS they’d realize that they’d better pay more to keep up with competition.

  3. My husband used to work in a bookstore. He was in charge of taking books to outside conventions and selling them at speaking engagements and so on. At one such engagement, He was unable to load or unload books from his own car because the Teamsters said THEY had to do it on THEIR TURF. And in an almost comical turn of events, when he said OK, they said “not now though, we’re on break”. When he claimed he needed to get into the convention before a certain time or he’d be late, they swore at my husband, told him to hold his f-ing horses and threatened him with legal action if he tried to unload the books himself. Bullying? You bet.

It is my understanding that in the beginning, Labor unions were created to protect the worker from greivous work conditions, unhealthy work hours and other atrocities. And that’s a wonderful thing.

But in my opinion, they have evolved into this gang mentality where it’s “You give us what we want or 50,000 of us will show up and put you out of business”

I don’t get it. That seems like street mob justice, not ‘compromise with higher ups’

jarbaby

2

I don’t know about the rest of it, but I do know that one of the reasons that UPS workers went on strike was because UPS has been trying to go to a part-time workforce so they don’t have to pay anyone benefits.

I’m sure you have seen the ads in the Tribune and the Reader for UPS part-time in Hodgkins, etc.

3

So because someone wants health benefits, I can’t send a package to California? Almost doesn’t seem fair. I worked in a restaurant that didn’t have benefits, so I left and got a job at one that did. It was simple enough and no one was inconvenienced.

jarbaby

4

I tend to agree with you. Much of what the unions were originally created for has been usurped by the government. We now have minimum wage laws, OSHA safety standards, unemployment benefits and the like. You don’t need a union to avoid the days of The Jungle described by Upton Sinclair.

About the only thing I occasionally see as a use for a union is in maintaining certain standards. You see this with things like electricians and having a union electrician means you can almost count on at least some modicum of knowledge and professionalism. If you hire a non-union electrician it is possible that you get some guy who needed drinking money and figured he could make a few bucks wiring things because he once replaced the batteries in a remote. Of course, on the downside, that union electrician will cost you a fortune.

Here’s two other anecdotal stories that show the joy of dealing with unions:

  1. I was helping to setup some booths at a trade show at McCormick Place in Chicago. No sooner had I plugged a PC into an outlet then a guy was telling me to unplug it. Only union electricians are allowed to plug things in at McCormick Place. I thought he was pulling my leg but he disabused me of that notion right away. The client I was working for got to pay me and two other guys to sit on our asses for 45 minutes (more than $300 cost for no work to the client) till an electrician could be bothered to come by and stick a plug in its socket (the guy who told me to unplug the thing couldn’t do the work right at the moment and would return later)!

  2. My dad bought a bookshelf for his office from some local furniture store. He paid $50 extra to have the delivery guy assemble the thing upon delivery. The delivery guy shows up and starts the assembly when he realizes he’s missing a screwdriver. He asks my dad if he has one and my dad asks a secretary to get one (they still had secretaries in those days). The secretary called the building maintenance man who comes up and immediately asks the delivery guy for his union card. The delivery guy was just some college kid doing some summer work and was not a union member. The maintenance man tells the kid to leave and tells my dad he has to use the building’s laborers. My dad literally doesn’t know one side of a screwdriver from another so he does this and ends up paying $200 for the bookshelf to be assembled by a union worker (in addition he lost the $50 he paid the store to have it assembled).

5

It is unfair, but it is UPS’s mgmt that is to blame, not the union. The idea is, rather than just quit and leave things as they are, you stand up for whats right and make a differance. If nobody stood up, eventually there would be no other jobs to go to, they all would be screwing thier employees.

6

A little hyperbole, please.

There are, what, 50 different ways to send a package. It was a little inconvenient. Management could have settled it as quickly as the union. They chose not to.

And the McCormick Place union was ridiculous, but I believe they renegotiated the contract now.

7

Yes. Because they want benefits, you don’t get to send that package to California. You have no God given right to make UPS workers deliver that package to California to you. Those workers that you expect to run off to California for you have decided that the work they do ought to be comensated by benefits. As they are the ones doing the work, they are the ones that are in the position to make the demands. If you don’t like that, you are free to walk to California and deliver the package yourself. If the higher-ups at UPS don’t like it, they are free to develope delivery robots or something so that they are not indebted to the labor of their workers. As it stands the workers hold the power. as they are the ones that do the actual work.

Unions are a solution to the prisoners dilema. When faced with the prospect of someone trying to screw you, you can either take a comprimised position and get paltry benefits, or you can put some trust in your fellow man and you all win. Of couse this carries the risk that your fellow man won’t put their trust in you and you end up double screwed. Unions are a way of getting rid of that risk.

Yes. If you don’t give in to the workers demands, 50,000 of them will come to screw you over. That is because there are 50,000 workers who you are indebted to for your enterprise to actually run. Those workers have the power, and there are times when they might have to use it.

8

It’s not exactly fair to hold other unions up to AE’s shining example. Pretty much all of my dyed-in-the-wool pinko-liberal actor friends think that AE is the most corrupt and ineffectual union in the country and ought to be abolished.

9

From my own experience as an employee benefits consultant, I can tell you that when management is thinking about cutting benefits they think long and hard before cutting union benefits, and more often than not they don’t even bother trying. White collar workers, by contrast, have their benefits cut all the time (this is likely to increase, given the state of the economy and the rising cost of healthcare).

OTOH, I’ve been told by other consultants of occasions where the unions refused to accept enhanced benefits if they were not given as part of the collective bargaining agreement. (The idea being to avoid suggesting to the membership that perhaps the union was not the only thing standing between the ruthless management and the poorhouse). But I’ve never encountered this myself.

I don’t see how this is so. The government licenses electricians and plumbers etc., not the unions.

10

Well, I can simplify this whole thing, JB, by explaining that unions are basically a Good Idea that is frequently misused by greedy, stupid, power-mad people.

Like sex. Or drugs. Or Rock N Roll.

It’s a Good Idea for working folks to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and tell the bosses, “Nope, you won’t get anybody to work in your coal mine/textile mill/chicken plucking plant for starvation wages, while you live in the big house on the hill”.

It’s a Bad Idea for the Teamsters union to be nitpicky about who moves what chair, when.

So.

Personally speaking, for the Goose family the National Association of Letter Carriers is both (a) a Good Idea, and (b) a Bad Idea frequently misused by greedy, stupid, power-mad people.

The NALC is the main reason why I sleep better at night, knowing that there has never been a strike at the Post Office, because somewhere up at the top, there are some good people on both sides, of Labor and Management, who always manage to find a compromise and get the new contract settled.

The NALC is also the main reason why the Better Half, who is Workman’s Comp representative for the local chapter, comes home from union meetings both fuming and laughing at the a-holes who run the local chapter, and the nitpicky things they find to get upset about.

There isn’t really any way to simplify the whole issue down to “unions good/unions bad”.

11

Yet another compelling reason why white-collar workers should end cubicle slavery and unionize. :wink:

12

It’s that the government steps in and interferes with the market. If laborers want to get together and withold their services until the employer sees their value better, that’s their perogative. The problem that I have is that when they do so, the employer is not allowed just to fire them all and find new employees. If I were an employer in a free country and the workers struck (striked?), I would begin firing them one-by-one until the strike was called off.

The moral problem I have with the whole union concept is that the government would not allow me to do that.

DuckDuckGoose, would the NALC be allowed to strike? I’m asking since their employer is the government, who is not bound by the same labor laws. I thought Ron Reagan handled the air traffic controllers strike perfectly, and I wonder if NALC would meet a similar fate.

13

The unions’ only function today is to extort higher wages from companies, ultimately at the expense of consumers. If the unions ceased to exist, there are other people who would do the same jobs for a lot less money. So, we’re all paying a “union tax” without getting a say in how they work.

For example, in Orange County, California, the garbage collectors want a 50% raise to $61,000 a year over the next few years. How else can uneducated, unskilled workers make that kind of money?

The idea that by banding together people can prevent low wages is only meant to mask the mafia-like tactics that unions like to employ. If I were a mine owner, and I wanted to employ people for almost nothing to work in my mines, then they have the choice of not working for me. As an employer I have no obligations to provide a minimum wage. If what is offered is too low, then refuse the job. Eventually supply and demand will dictate the “fair” wage. If the idea of price-fixing is so good, then why businesses are prohibited from doing it?

Also, the notion that unions are arbiters of good work doesn’t make sense. Safety codes should be (and are) set by the government; which is accountable to its people, and subject to the government’s checks and balances. Not by unions that are only represented by its members. To know if someone is qualified to do a particular job, one can check see if he/she is licensed by the state.

14

Collective bargaining ought to be viewed as a right in a free market.

So if a union wishes to strike, they ought to strike. Management must deal with the demands made by the group, and adjust their practices accordingly.

However, where I believe unions cross the line - no pun intended - is in their extra-legal intimidation of scabs - persons wishing to cross a picket line to work. When such people are physically attacked, or harrassed, the union has gone from exercising legitimate collective bargaining power to thuggery.

Equally, of course, I believe in management’s right, if they wish, to fire striking workers, unless such firing is forbidden by contract. The workers have every right to withhold their labor until they get the conditions they wish; the employers have every right to employ whomever they wish.

  • Rick
15

Oh Morpheous, drving a 25-cubic yard garbage truck is not exactly unskilled labor. This ‘unskilled’ person has to know how to drive no less than 3 different types of vehicles, and be licensed to drive each type. Many of the sanitation workers have chauffer’s licenses, in case they have to carry personnel from place to place. They have to conduct a daily examination of the truck they are to drive. Then they have to know procedures of collecting different types of garbage, be they in bags, dumpsters baskets or recycling containers. The sanitation worker daily is subjected to hazards and conditions which could potentially debilitate him in the future, as much as cops and firemen facing immediate danger. They are subjected to nasty surprises such as ammonia and bleach mixed in jugs, and commercial enterprises throwing out potentially fatal solvents in residential zones. Nah, I don’t envy the job they do, and they do deserve to get $61,000/year.

Morpheous, your attitude was what precisely led to the advent of unions. Supply and demand has no effect on paying wages, witness Nike.

16

Unions are like any other organization with purposeful aims: they can be good or bad, dignified or sleazy, badly managed or held together like a commando unit.

It’s true that most of the security unions provided when they were first invented has been taken over by the government–not just minimum wage laws and OSHA, but grievance procedures and arbitration boards.

To the company that stays on the right side of those laws (as the company for which I work does), the laws protect us as well. We had a woman quit and sue us for sexual harassment (specifically, being notified of sexual harassment and doing nothing about it). When the EEOC investigated, they found out that she’s basically batshit nuts, and denied that there was grounds for a claim. EEOC usually finds for the plaintiff in about 95% of the cases they investigate, so when they said we’d done nothing wrong, it was like Jesus kissed us on the forehead. Her ambulance-chasing, contingency-fee-gambling weasel of a lawyer gave up right there.

I think that the proper place for that security is the federal government. Why should employees in one industry have job security and a living wage, when their neighbours down the road got screwed by corrupt union stewards who took a kickback from management? The ideal of fairness embodied by unions is best applied uniformly across the whole country, by legislative fiat rather than Teamster intimidation, governed by the electorate.

Another union story: the local electrical union tried to unionize our facility. The lawyer advising us said the fastest, cheapest way to keep the union out was to… get this… treat the employees well. We fired a lousy manager, implemented reasonable benefits sooner rather than later, wrote an employee handbook, and stuck to uniform grievance procedures. We also started sharing more financial information about our (private) company so that employees would know more about their situation. Now, all those things probably wouldn’t have happened without the threat of a union, so I can’t say that unions are intrinsically bad.

Jarbaby, you’re missing a crucial point: if UPS is on strike, use Fedex. The free market cuts both ways.

17

They’re still necessary for that purpose. I’m not talking coal miners and asbestos workers, either. My mom is a teacher, and a card-carrying member of the Cleveland Teachers’ Union and the American Federation of Teachers. Yes, there’s laws that regulate exactly what the school board is allowed to do to the teachers… But those laws aren’t enforced unless someone sees to it that they’re enforced. The Cleveland school board’s idea of fair negotiation is “We’ll cut your medical benefits, eliminate dental, increase your workday by an hour, decrease your pay, and increase class sizes. In return, you get to keep your jobs.”. There’s zero hyperbole there: That was the exact deal offered just before the strike several years ago. Yes, several of the provisions of the contract offered were illegal. They still would have gone through, had the union not fought back.

Several folks are saying “Well, if I don’t like a job, I just won’t work there”. What do you think a strike is? It’s a bunch of people not working there! Or, you complain about unions increasing prices for the consumers. Union members are consumers too, you know. If you think they’re getting such a great deal, and you’re jealous, well then, unionize! Nobody’s stopping you.

18

Question: How can a union force a company to accept union influence?

19

Look up the Homestead Strike of 1892, or the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory of 1911.

Then tell me that the workers should have been “fired?”

(IN the latter case, that was literally true.)

20

Do you mean legally, or practically?

Practically, the union campaign itself influenced us, and we had no choice in the matter: there was nothing we could do to stop the union from its (legal) actions. So in that sense, they forced us to accept their influence.

In general, unions are legally recognized entities, and if a business is unionized, management is obligated by law to negotiate with the union and to manage through the union. If the business doesn’t, it’s subject to a load of legal actions that can destroy it. I don’t think that the union-busting of seventy years ago is even possible today.

One tactic that unions are reputed to use is to get employees at a place they’re trying to unionize to sign “union authorization cards”. The cards are sold to the employees as a vote of support for the union, and as a ticket with a low number. In other words, if a union does get in, it’s implied that the cardholders will be treated better.

To unionize a business, the union convinces the workers to vote for unionization in a legally recognized referendum; if the union gets 50% + 1, then the union can declare itself the legal representative of the workers, and management is obligated to negotiate through the union alone.

The trick with the cards is that signing it is authorizing the union to represent you. If the union can get 50% + 1 of the employees to sign the cards during the campaign, they can go to the federal agency regulating this (I forget which it is), and declare themselves the legal representatives of the employees without holding a vote.

Thus, our means of fighting against the union legally amounts to showing a video to the employees explaining this trick with the cards, telling them to vote their conscience on the union, and telling them what we’re doing to make a union unnecessary. That, and reigning in managers like Morpheus who would say things like “if we unionize, we’ll go out of business.”