[detbuch]

Originally Posted by wdmso

Sadly you assume history would have been the same if unions were not involved..

Obviously, I did not say that history would have been the same. If I assumed that, then why would I care one way or the other if unions existed or not?

And, perhaps, you did not notice that I said in-house unions in the private sector were perfectly fine with me. What I object to is international or national unions which bring outside influence, money, and power to muster against a company which by federal law is prevented from so called "colluding" with other companies to fight back. More reasonable wages and compensation packages which fit a particular company's financial structure can be arrived at when outside power is not involved.

An example which I was personally involved with is what the UAW used to do with every new contract negotiation. Back then the US auto industry mainly comprised of "The Big Three"--Ford, GM, and Chrysler. The same union, UAW, represented the workers for all three. The union tactic was to pick only one of the companies to bargain with. The company would put up as much of a fight as the union was willing to accept, but in the end, it knew that if the union did not get what it wanted, they would strike, leaving the company without production while their two competitors were cranking out cars to sell. The company could only hold out briefly during a strike, while the striking workers were subsidized by the collective union funds. When both sides came to the inevitable agreement, the result became the blue print for contracts with the other companies. Actual competition between the companies for labor, and the need to offer better wages and conditions, was eliminated.

The union would claim the victory of achieving a great contract, making them hero's to the workers, but two years later it would claim that the contract was not so great, that the workers were still oppressed. So the phony dance of workers who were so happy to get a job in the first place that paid them way more than their skills could have gotten them elsewhere, switched every three years and decided it was no good and the fight against a fictitious oppression would be repeated.

Naturally, the price of cars would go up a few hundred dollars, which would add to the inflation of the rest of the economy, so prices in general would rise, so when the new contract was due the gains from the old one were to some extent lost--a loss aided by their own demands.

Would a strictly in-house union even need to automatically have a new contract every three years? Could it not, without outside influence and agitation, recognize when some adjustments were needed and reasonably discuss the problems with the company? Wouldn't in-house negotiations which reflected a company's financial status be more reasonable?

if these wealthy compaines which you say paid them so we'll
why the need for unions Without unions, we would still be working 12 hour days, seven days a week, with no paid holidays, no paid vacations, no pay raises. Can unions price themselves out of a Job yes and many have accepted that reality

They DID pay them well in relation to general pay scales especially for unskilled labor. Factory jobs were coveted even before unions. It was kind of humorous to me after the 8 hour day was instituted how many workers were glad to get overtime so they could get a larger paycheck. Sort of like self-employed people who work way more than 40 hours a week to pay for a better life, or even to break even. Ford Motor Co. actually instituted the 5 day 40 hour work week in 1926 before it was unionized. And not long after that most manufactures in the US followed suit. They found that giving the time off actually added to productivity.

Maybe you're assuming that evil manufacturers are just out to squeeze the last ounce of life out of their workers in order to generate the last penny of profit. Maybe you're assuming that employers simply cannot be enlightened, or are slave masters, and that they must be FORCED to act like normal human beings.

The manufacturing segment actually lifted people out of the poverty of the pre-industrial age. Even with the initial long working hours, the workers had more time to themselves than they did when they had to eke out a life from the land. As technology advances, work becomes easier, production increases, the demand for human labor in time and effort decreases. Even without workers of the world uniting, technological advances along with increased understanding of human motivation and the importance of workplace satisfaction brings about better working conditions. And actual competition, an actually free market rather than an over-regulated one, creates the competition for labor which includes competitive wages and working conditions.

you act as if Union members dont pay taxes or contribute into their own retirement or provide a valuable service to the state or town in which they work

No I don't act that way. The taxes that public sector workers pay are taken from the money they get from the private sector taxes that pay their salaries. And their contribution into their own retirement also is derived from the private sector taxes which gives them the money to contribute. And all pension money they get is either from the taxes that paid for it or from their pension bureau investing in private sector sources. So all the money, in one form or another, is derived from private sector either through taxation or investment.

And the service provided to the state or town should be valuable, or if it is not, why should the citizens pay for it.

Public sector unions are the big issue now. That was the thrust of your article. That is the remaining "big" problem with unions now. As I've said several times now, the creators of enforced collective bargaining stipulated that the public sector must not be unionized. The very problems they, FDR and labor leaders of the time, foresaw have happened.

Your article didn't address any of that. It was all about public sector unions being tied to the fortune of progressive politics and those unions being the tip of the spear in the battle to transform predominantly Republican state legislative bodies into Democrat ones.
How that was supposed to solve the problems that FDR warned against and which have occurred was not addressed. Apparently, per the article, there is no problem.

When I first encountered public sector unionization, I worked for the Detroit Public library system. At the time it was one of the best in the nation. Before the librarians were unionized we had an in-house employee organization which elected library employees to negotiate compensation. Most of the management negotiators had worked their way up through the system. Bargaining was amicable and reasonable. The financial books were open, and everybody knew what was feasible without crippling our ability to serve the public.

The library, as well as the city as a whole, had a history of protecting its employees and paying enough to live comfortably somewhere in the scale of middle class America. Even in hard times, including the Great Depression, layoffs were unheard of. And, before unionization, we all had pension and benefit packages. Civil service jobs were sought after.

The city's non-management employees had recently become unionized, represented by A.F.S.M.E. or other skilled labor orgs. The younger librarians were not satisfied with the status quo, especially the wages which they thought were too low for their status as degreed professionals. So they wanted to be represented by a more powerful outside union. The UAW was chosen, a vote was taken, and the UAW was chosen over the old in-house professional organization.

I had been a UAW member before when I worked for GM. I thought, oh crap, the stupid three year dance with the antagonistic labor management relationship and the importation of fiscal problems that the auto companies had. And, yeah, all that happened. When I retired the library had shrunk from a staff of about 1,100 employees to a bit over 300. Many branch libraries were closed. Book collections were downsized. Service quality deteriorated. None of that happened before, even in bad times such, as I said, during the depression.

And the rest of the city began its precipitous fall from greatness to bankruptcy.

Was that all the fault of unionization? Obviously, it was more complex than one single issue. But unionization was a piece of the big picture. Unionization, in terms of big national and international organizations, has become a branch of political power. The politics which strives for collective power and identity finds its home in big centralized government, collectivism versus individualism, big corporations rather than scattered small or little businesses. And big unions thrive in that climate if they support it. And they do support it, financially and ideologically. They propagandize for it. I still get the UAW "Solidarity" magazine. The propaganda disinformation it publishes is astounding. One issue proudly proclaimed that the Constitution protected the "right" of collective bargaining. No, the Constitution doesn't, but big progressive government with its crony judges does.

So, yeah, the big unions played their role in destroying Detroit. They are part and parcel of the politics which created business flight out of the city and even out of the country. And without that tax base, the intransigent employee demands became too onerous to sustain.

As an aside the inflation graph of the US by date shows a peculiar rise when compared to the advent of expanded unionization, especially public sector unionization. Right about the time when manufacturers were more generally becoming unionized, inflation begins to show a bit of a rise. And just about the time public sector unions began to take hold, the graph shoots up dramatically. Are correlation and cause connected? I don't know. I think there is some correlation/cause connection.