Yes, America Is O-V-E-R Unions
December 15, 2008 / 3:34 pm • By Dr. Melissa ClouthierWhen they helped the poor, abused, underpaid, overworked masses, unions made sense. Child laborers, sweat shops, and indentured servitude was just plain wrong.
We are soooo far from those days it’s not even funny.
Mexico, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, all have to worry about worker exploitation. Other countries like Zimbabwe should just make it a priority to not kill people.
In America, we have problems but bad work conditions and maltreatment are not some of them. The Economist says:
The waning popularity of unions is not just a recent phenomena. The UAW unsuccessfully attempted to unionise my fellow students and me when I was in graduate school. They launched an impressive lobbying effort, playing on the left-wing tendencies of the students in the humanities and social sciences (not the economists of course, they didn’t even bother with us). At the time I figured things must be pretty bad for autoworkers if the UAW had to turn to graduate students for union dues.
But it’s not just the UAW that has fallen out of favour. Teachers unions are a popular target, too. They’re held responsible for perpetuating failure in public school systems by opposing accountability standards and performance pay. When New York City transit workers went on strike even the most left-leaning, upper-west-side-dwelling New Yorker wanted Roger Toussaint’s head. Now if the actors strike (just when we need entertainment the most for pete’s sake), I don’t anticipate them getting much sympathy either.
Unions remain too powerful in America to disappear anytime soon. But I wonder if this recession will have the opposite effect of the Depression, and may make unions less relevant.
Have some freaking perspective Union bosses and workers. When the average worker makes more per hour than an accountant or nurse or teacher, people feel a wee less sympathetic. When union benefits rob companies of maneuverability and productivity, the small businesses that support the big giants get frustrated. There are new products and innovations out there and the Unions strangle the life out of them because of their rules and regulations. When small business people pay huge taxes and expect to work until they’re 65 because 1) they love their work and 2) they have to, it rings hollow to hear some young 50 year old guy bitching because he might lose his pension benefits. Um, hello? Get a freaking job!
Anyway, union sympathy has come and gone. It will be a huge mistake if the Screen Actors Guild decides to strike, but I kinda hope they do. Hollywood sucks on a good day. There is no better time than now to break a union.
Cross-posted at RightWingNews
8 Responses to “Yes, America Is O-V-E-R Unions”
December 15 2008 / 5:40 pm
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If accountants, nurses, and teachers make less than auto workers, it’s because they are underpaid.
If you think assembly line workers are overpaid, look at executive salaries.
Talk about rewarding failure.
December 15 2008 / 9:13 pm
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I used to work in an unemployment office, and I can tell you unequivocally that American auto workers are ridiculously overpaid. They are also arrogant and mean-spirited. If a teacher is laid off, he or she goes to the unemployment office. The auto workers expect the claimstakers to go to them–and in my experience have at times gotten their way.
December 15 2008 / 10:18 pm
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I used to be a card-carrying union guy, AFL-CIO. The $ per hour was obscenely great, but the small business owner couldn’t afford the huge wage increase (we voted in the union) and cut hours for folks, then eventually sold his business.
I do think unions have gotten out of hand. I don’t blame the union workers, but I do blame the union hierarchy for turning the unions into greedy machines that don’t want to partner with business.
December 15 2008 / 11:41 pm
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BrotherO–
You are so right. It’s not the rank and file who are at fault. It’s the “leadership.”
December 16 2008 / 6:38 am
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Wow, it is like fallacious argument central here today…
First, line workers are overpaid, period. If they weren’t, the jobs would not be leaving. The market will not bear their compensation.
Second, auto executives are over compensated because they are destroying value, not because of their paycheck. With as much as the executives make, it is still a drop in the bucket compared to the over payment of UAW folks (pay + benefits).
Third, it absolutely IS the fault of the worker. They are the ones supporting the leadership with their dues and their votes. When it comes to poor workmanship, who is to blame? I would say the engineers that design and the line workers that assemble. The leadership did not TURN anything into a greedy machine. The leadership is greedy, the workers are greedy, thus the Union is greedy.
Fourth, the Union leadership are scumbags. Always have been, always will be.
The “big” three need to pull on their big boy pants and break the UAW. Then they will need to break the Teamsters (since they always move in next). Or, they could declare bankruptcy, they could just shut down all manufacturing in the US, cancel those pensions and the “free” health benefits and start over… I would go with the latter.
December 16 2008 / 10:08 am
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Union leaders have a powerful incentive to keep union members unhappy. Think about it: happy workers don’t need unions.
As for a SAG strike, if it hadn’t made the radio news, I wouldn’t have known about it, and I probably won’t notice if it happens. I noticed back in February that the hour or so a month of TV that I was watching was costing about $30. Since my 2-year contract was up, and $30/hour is a bit steep for patronizing the electronic mind-suck, I pulled the plug (the electronic mind-suck company immediately offered a $15/hour package, which is still about $14.95 too high).
Now, I use my TV to watch DVDs (again, about once a month) and nothing else. TV, much like printed newspaper, has become nothing more than an irrelevant time-sink, and I don’t have time or inclination to factor myself in with the mouth-breathing epsilon-minuses.
December 17 2008 / 12:19 am
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Chalmers–
Not all the rank and file support the union leadership. There are many companies that are require an employee to join a union in order to work there. The auto companies are a case in point. Employees have a legal right to “core membership,” in which case they pay only the portion of their dues that directly supports labor-related union activities, and not lobbying efforts, but they still must pay to support the union.
That said, American auto workers are ridiculously overpaid.