Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Being on strike sucks,butthis is worse!

These union guys are telling a rose colored version of the truth. When the union gets in, the contract is between the union (which is, after all a business) and the company. The workers have no rights. The screwy laws make it almost impossible to ever throw out the union. It's like trying on a shoe that you can't take off if it does not fit.

In its first contract, the union wants more than anything else the dues/checkoff, which means management agrees that all workers must be members whether they want to or not and their dues are automatically deducted from their pay and forwarded to the union goombahs. The union is often willing to give up pay for the workers in order to get this.

Favoritism etc. is no worse with or without a union. The difference is that the company usually "favors" you if you are more productive. In a union shop, you get "favored" by the union steward based on kissing his a** and politicking. The union steward, incidentally, gets paid extra and does very little work.

In the union-free shop, you can get ahead by doing the work better. In the union shop, you can't. The emphasis is on security and the determinant is seniority. So why work hard? Different people tend to be attracted to union-free companies which, not surprisingly, are growing faster.

Contrary to popular opinion, workers at union places do not get paid more than union free people--in like companies, at least not in the private sector. I grant you that the UAW people at GM get paid more than union free people at Wal-mart, but they don't get paid more than union free people at Toyota. The basic extra cost of a union operation stems from all the inefficient work rules, rewards based on seniority instead of competency, and the like. So it is that GM's market share has dropped from 50% to 26%. Thank you UAW. Our local Ford plant, incidentally, has everyone under 46 on layoff, because even the high pay that does occur is at the expense of closing down the more inefficient of their operations. The older UAW members are willing to put up with this. It's called "eating your young."

Most unions are disappearing in the private sector (though not in the civil service). A case in point is Caterpillar plant in Peoria. The union struck so the company hired permanent replacements (the poster above had a relative who was hired as a temp, not a permanent replacement). After four or five years, the union settled on Caterpillar's terms to preserve a few of its jobs and, more importantly, the union goombah's salary. Caterpillar then built a new plant--union free--in Georgia. Over the years, you will no doubt find expansions in Georgia, lay-offs in Peoria. Substitute the name GE for Caterpillar and you get a similar story. And other names, like the Bear Archery Company.

One good thing about unions is they make it very easy to lay off people. Enrons notwithstanding, most CEOs feel a real responsibility toward their workers, and try to avoid layoffs. If there's a union, to the extent that the workers support it they are basically enemies of the company, so the CEOs feel less compunction.

Mandatory union membership, against the will of the workers, is illegal in about 20 states. This is called the "Right to Work." The Right to Work states currently average higher pay and more rapid economic growth than the union-bound states. Virtually every large plant expansion you have heard about in the last 20 years has occurred in a right to work state. Honda's union-free plant in Ohio is an exception.

Interestingly, the workers at large union-free employers show little inclination to join unions or even have an NLRB election about it. This is true at high-paid firms like the transplant auto plants and low paid firms like WalMart. Mostly they think they are better off without unions. Even in the union-bound states.

The basic problem in the union point of view, at least in the North, is this: If unions are such a good deal for the workers, why do the unions have to make membership mandatory? It's sort of like the rhetoric of the old Iron Curtain: "Our country is a workers' paradise, honest, and by the way there's a fence to keep you workers from escaping."