The unions need to be destroyed.

I have no problems with Unions. it is those that run them I have issue with.

+1

Why anyone, anyone, would like someone between themselves and their pay check they sweated for is beyond me.
The definition of fraud? Public Employee Unions.
It's our money, they take it for themselves now, have our children pay it back 10 times over.
Tell me please, how can a structure that does zero to pay the best workers most, while simultaneously protecting those with the least talent through retirement work successfully. Doesn't exist.
How can a assembly line of workers unhappy with current pay, shut down a Company someone else's risk,sweat and time built be legal. I happily walk a mile further and pay more to buy non Union made product.
Safe to say I for one wish they were ruled illegal.

Especially when they can hire professional negotiators for cents on the dollar.

Yes sir..

Unions are legalized extortion, extortion against both the employees and the employers.

Pay me $XX a month or you cannot work here.

Pay my members $XX or we will shut your business down.

No different than a Wiseguy demanding shop owners pay him “protection” money or suffer the consequences.

Unions were started by organized crime, are still run by organized crime and are protected by politicians (Democrats) that accept their blood money.

The worst is Law Enforcement Officers paying Organized Crime to negotiate their contract and “protect” them.

They were useful and needed once upon a time but they’ve long outlived their usefulness (for the most part).

I find it telling that so many long for the "good old days of the 1950s, and in the next breath decry the existence of organized labor.

Some are too young to remember that in America's glory years our durable goods were 60% union manufactured. Others are simply too ignorant or agenda bent.

Anyone can see the problem with govt employee unions and the disastrous contracts that they negotiated with the govts that employ them.
Government employee, government payroll, government union. What could go wrong?

On the other hand, private business and the business of private employees is and should be market driven.

The fact that we are down to about 8% union employment in durable goods manufacturing is partly due to imported goods which are price supported by offshore governments. The tariffs initiated against this practice is the real news, and the good news today.

https://m.ctpost.com/local/article/Class-action-lawsuit-seeks-refund-of-union-dues-13210481.php

John,
When you see people make blanket condemnations on a topic as multiple faceted as unions,
they are making a statement on on their intelligence.

Marge Scott once made the comment that "in the beginning, Hitler did a lot of good things".
The goofy old hag was right. He improved his countries infrastructure, and industry. We know
what his goals were, and how it played. But, he did do a little good.


Unions came into being because the steel and coal industries (frequently combined here) were making
Kings, on the backs and blood of workers that they managed to entrap in a servitude situation.
Only by bonding together, with appointed spokesman, we're these men able to ask for improvements.


I have worked more non-union jobs than union.
If management was fair, in everyway, non-union would undoubtedly be best.
But I have never worked for a company that wanted to give me their money.
Labor is a commodity, and a smart person tries to get the best deal.
No college, just a reasonably intelligent, hard worker, in an economically depressed area,
these personal negotiations people talk about are a joke.
Sure, I have been able to get raises, and to go up the pay scale for that business.
But when I was hauling gasoline in 2005 for $12/hr, I wasn't going to negotiate a 60% raise.


Yep, I chose where I lived.
Nope, that wasn't a "great" job. (I had been RIF'd, and this was the first/best thing I found)

Now, there's a factory job. Union.
Lot of problems with that union.
I hate what the national does with my money.

But even after I pay my $8/wk dues, there isn't a factory around that compensates the workers as well.

History is what it is, but that situation should have been handled legislatively through laws similar to anti-monopoly laws.

In the end, the market did about as much to end these practices as the unions.

I've been trying to tell these old bonehead azzholes on here that for years but they're bonehead's and can't get the picture. The ONLY factory/blue collar jobs around here that pay a decent living wage are all union.

Unions are part of a balance of power. When it gets out of balance in either direction it is bad.

Unions were the only solution to the appalling labor abuses of the 19th century. They were needed to offset the monopoly of capital. But when some unions became too powerful by the 1960s their abuse of their monopoly of labor drove many American industries into the ground. So I think they are like medicine, you need some but too much will kill you.

The worst abuse of the monopoly of labor by unions is the public sector unions. Abusive private sector unions can be countered by moving production to another area or another producer but public sector employers are tied to one location, one producer. You can't move your local grade school to Kentucky of let it go bankrupt and be replaced by a different school, the teachers unions have absolute power over their employers and abuse their monopoly to pick everyone else's pockets.

After working under UAW representation for 20 out of 23+ years, the impression I came away with, based on what I experienced with just that particular labor union, is their 'bread and butter', therefore their primary focus, are the 'Big Three' U.S. auto makers.

The smaller the workforce at a UAW represented company, the less time, money and true quality representation they are willing to commit. They're useful but only as long they don't challenge the UAW hierarchy and keep a steady flow of dues dollars going into the UAW coffers necessary to support the 'Big Three'.

Few UAW represented work forces ever get contracts allowing for wages, benefits and contract language/protections, anywhere even near, let alone equal to that of the 'Big Three'.

Most how long for the days of American manufacturing dominance are completely ignorant of the root cause of that dominance. It was World War II.

By the end of the war, the manufacturing capacity of every country was gutted, save the United State. By the end of the war, around 80% of the worlds manufacturing capacity was in the one major industrial powers who's homeland remained untouched by the war. Unions had nothing to do with this greatness, and precipitated the decline, by pricing American good's out of a world market place, intensifying the manufacturing flight from America.

Capitalism abhors corruption, and the current American Unions are corrupt to their core.

Well I just realized, thanks to this thread, that I have been working union for 39 years now, amazing, I’m getting old.

Ole Milton often defended Unions....or maybe cut them some slack.

IME (on all 3 sides of the union issue) the locals are useful and well run. The state and national level (depending) is where things go wrong quickly and badly.

Not exactly:

If you think unions are evil, do a little research on the conditions of and the violence directed at workers in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Check out the condition of Chinese labor today. Business will buy their inputs as absolutely cheap as they can. Government unions are one thing but for the life of me I don't see how these "right to work for less" laws are constitutional. A union agreement with a private business is a private contract for the union exclusively to provide labor very similar to the agreements that businesses make with temporary/employment services to provide their labor which in effect causes the employee to pay the temp agency a fee to obtain employment. Yes, the business figures that cost into what they are willing to pay. If it weren't for unions there would be no employer furnished insurance, workers comp, safety requirements, social security, and the list goes on and on. The sad thing is that now with anti-union sentiment so strong that the U.S. worker is forced to compete with slave labor overseas that works so cheap that raw materials can be shipped over and finished products shipped back at a price impossible to compete with if we are to have workers that live indoors and have food to eat. The U.S. didn't abolish slavery, it just farmed it out to foreigners.

Very well said !

I sure you are right, but I noticed when I visited Alaska that at the old, now defunct mining sites that all the heavy equipment bore names of U.S. companies from the industrial areas of the nation. Not a piece was foreign and it was all pre WW II

+1

Public Employee Unions are not real Unions. They are scam organizations who answer to nobody. Private Unions I am not a fan of but people have a right to them and the give and take between them and private business will sort things out.

As I understand it, Milton was quick to point out that Unions took the blame for too much....a scapegoat.

I agree that unions improved the lot of mistreated workers, but that purpose didnt remain their main goal. They are a prime reason our industry has moved overseas and were the driving force behind the destruction of this country by the part they played in pushing the dimocrap agenda. They have done their best to destroy the 1st and 2nd A though that was not the wishes of their members.

If they had their way Hillary would be in the WH for the simple reason she can be bought. They care not for Trump or MAGA though their leadership wants to benefit from it.

Several issues addressed here. Very succinctly.


If we are lucky, unions will come back into play someday.
I don't wish for things to get bad enough for people to want them, but they will.
It's started. Companies dropping pensions, now dropping 401 contrubutions.
The income rise in the top economic levels, the stagnation in the middle, the fall for the lowest.
Insurance taking more of a person's income. People are still borrowing to get what they want.
The time will come when they realize they are getting the shaft, and organizing is the only way to have real clout.

That's if we are lucky.
If we aren't, our personal freedoms will have been totally lost by then, or China will rule.
Then it will be work under the gun.

I am a registered Democrat and look in favor on labor unions, but I would bet that mine and your respective votes for national office and president in particular would match exactly. I also would bet that our views on the welfare state and 2nd amendment are pretty compatible. There are a bunch of us that gave Trump, both Bushes, and Reagan the margin of victory. We just don't appreciate our kids competing for jobs with foreign slave labor. The designation "labor union" indicates an organization of WORKING people. We don't mind business making money, they have to do that. We don't mind paying a little more for our consumer goods. We want a fair shake when it comes to splitting the loot.

I've yet to see a company, in my area at least, that has had it's employees vote for union representation, that couldn't have prevented it from ever happening, had they just offered reasonably decent livable wages and benefits, treated everyone respectfully, fairly, honestly and equally, and provide reasonably safe working conditions. Many examples of companies that have and continue to do so as proof.

The labor force at the company I worked for for 23+ years voted "NO" on union representation three consecutive years but voted "YES" the fourth year after being conned, and catered to in the weeks prior and up to the moment of each previous vote and then nothing but broken promises and back to the same old BS afterward.

As to a unionized labor force being used as a scapegoat, based on the way things have turned out in our situation, apparently that 'shoe' fits quite well. Over the past 15 - 18 years or so since they got rid of their, according to management, "troublesome - root of all our problems", union represented workforce, their stock fell well below $1.00 a share causing it to be removed from the NYSE twice. They filed corporate bankruptcy once (some really big bucks were made by a few select corporate level major stock holders on this one) and were bordering on a second bankruptcy just a few years later, until a private investment group bought it. Another very well known investment/consultant firm had owned it for a few years back in the early-mid '90s when it was still a union shop. They had the place running more efficiently and profitable than it ever had and still got along fine with the union. Middle and upper management literally hated it, too, because it showed how inept they were.

This manufacturing company was a well established company that had maintained never less than 60% and usually 70% or better world market share for years on products they manufactured.

I'm curious to see what happens to the workforce of all the nonunion auto plants in the south in the next 10-20 years. With no pension, they have to depend on a 401K. Very few people like saving for that far in the future. As their workforces age, many won't be able to do the physical work anymore. I foresee many terminated and corresponding age discrimination lawsuits. In unions, you gave up some upfront money in order to pay for your pension down the road.
If unions get much weaker, they won't be the watchdogs of OSHA and EPA regulations anymore and industry lobbyists will have a field day bribing (contributing) to politicians to get regulations rolled back to make us like 3rd world countries. Think it can't happen, think again. People here are all concerned about the weakening of the 2nd Amendment. Yet, it's a lot easier to roll back regulations than it is to amend the Constitution.