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Labor Unions
On another forum I frequent, a discussion about unions started up. Also, I'm bored at work today, and it's Friday. That means I'm going to start a flamewar about unions, hahahaha!
Back in the industrial revolution days, unions were necessary. Most people were forced to choose between incredibly dangerous death-defying labor and abject poverty. Even with the death defying labor, their financial situations were still pretty bad. Unionizing the labor was the only solution at that time. By teaming up, they made life livable. By forming unions they made America what it should be. The economic and technological situation prevented people from attaining life, liberty, and a pursuit of happiness. Unionizing broke the economic lock and allowed the pursuit of happiness to continue.
Nowadays we have things like OSHA, Medicare, Medicaid, 401k, social security, etc. Just about every decent job gives health benefits whether you are union or not. In the United States people can easily maintain life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness without joining a union. There are so many investment options available that nobody who is smart and saves money should have to worry about retirement. Thus, labor unions in the US are largely obsolete, and have outlived their usefulness.
But not only have they outlived their usefulness, they are actually now harmful. For the most part, unions benefit only two groups of people. One group of people they benefit are the union leaders who get mad moneys from the unions. The other group of people they benefit are people without any marketable skills who would be unemployed without the union.
What groups of people do unions hurt? First, they hurt their employers. They restrict their employer's freedom to conduct business in the manner they see fit. Imagine owning a store with some employees. Now imagine if the employees unionize and force you to decide between letting them run the business, or not having the business. It's the same dilemma that the evil companies of the past once forced on the exploited workers. The unions are in fact engaging in exploitation, the very thing they exist to stop. It doesn't help the fact that the government has laws preventing exploitation of the workers. Thus, the unions do not really need to exist to fight exploitation, the government is doing a fine job of it.
Who else do unions hurt? Customers of companies with union labor. Imagine a company that develops a new machine allowing it to produce better widgets in half the time at half the cost. Now a union prevents that machine from being put to use in the factory because it will mean fewer jobs for union workers. However, it also means customers continue to get overpriced shitty widgets. How about convention centers. The fact that convention center labor is union jacks up prices to insane levels. You literally have to pay the BCC a large fee for every power outlet you use because technically only union people can plug things into those outlets. The convention center could be making a lot more money, but their prices have to be set inordinately high due to the union.
Who else do unions hurt? The environment. Take the case of the more efficient factory machine above. That machine also require less energy to run. Oh well, unions blocked it. Take the example of an office building that wanted to install waterless urinals in all the men's rooms. It would have saved an incredible amount of water as well as lowering the water bill significantly. Too bad it would mean fewer jobs for the plumbers union, so they prevented the building from installing it.
Who else do unions hurt? Non-union employees. Let's say you go to apply for a job somewhere. You come to an agreement with the employer. They want to hire you, you want to work for them. You like the terms of employment they are offering. Wait, there's a union! They force you to decide between joining the union or not working there. Now you have to pay union dues and participate in this group even though you are perfectly happy without it. Imagine if you went to a store and the owner offered to sell you something for $5. You also agreed, and got out your wallet. Then suddenly someone comes over and forces you and the store owner to either change the price to $10 or not conduct the sale. That's what unions do to non-union employees.
Who else do unions hurt? Union employees. Imagine you join the carpenter's union. You do your union carpentry at your job, and you make your union paycheck. Then you also want to do some extra work on the side and remodel some kitchens. The union doesn't let you do it. They restrict the freedom of their own members to do what is best for them on an individual level. Of course, this group of people doesn't get much pity. They knowingly agreed to sign the union contract, thus they agreed not to do work on the side. However, the existence of the union does prevent them from achieving their maximum potential in life.
The only dilemma I have with unions is this. On one hand, ideally, I think we need to strive for technological and scientific progress in all things. We should conduct business in the most efficient and cost effective way possible. However, if we achieved this ideal in the United States right now, it would mean a ludicrously high unemployment rate. Everyone but the most highly skilled laborers would get decent pay, or jobs at all. Unions are one thing which prevents this potential situation. However, it is also a dilemma in that they help prevent a potential economic collapse by making things shittier for everybody else.
Let me just add one more note about freedom. I believe strongly that people should have the right to unionize. If workers want to form a union, let them. I just also think that unions should not be allowed to restrict the freedoms of others. That includes the employer's freedom to fire anyone, at any time, for any reason. I think that people should be able to unionize all they want, and if it works out great. However, if it doesn't work out, tough shit.
In conclusion, I submit that labor unions in the United States of America have lived too long. For all the good they have done in the past, and for what little good they do now, they presently do much more harm to society than good. I respect people's rights to unionize, but I would be much happier to see them go. In my life I have never been part of a union. I never have needed, nor will I need, a union. And many times in my life, the existence of unions has made life worse for me.
So let's get flaming! I know for a fact that at least some of you are in unions. I'm willing to bet that at least some of you are pro-union. Bring the heat, save my workday boredom.
Back in the industrial revolution days, unions were necessary. Most people were forced to choose between incredibly dangerous death-defying labor and abject poverty. Even with the death defying labor, their financial situations were still pretty bad. Unionizing the labor was the only solution at that time. By teaming up, they made life livable. By forming unions they made America what it should be. The economic and technological situation prevented people from attaining life, liberty, and a pursuit of happiness. Unionizing broke the economic lock and allowed the pursuit of happiness to continue.
Nowadays we have things like OSHA, Medicare, Medicaid, 401k, social security, etc. Just about every decent job gives health benefits whether you are union or not. In the United States people can easily maintain life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness without joining a union. There are so many investment options available that nobody who is smart and saves money should have to worry about retirement. Thus, labor unions in the US are largely obsolete, and have outlived their usefulness.
But not only have they outlived their usefulness, they are actually now harmful. For the most part, unions benefit only two groups of people. One group of people they benefit are the union leaders who get mad moneys from the unions. The other group of people they benefit are people without any marketable skills who would be unemployed without the union.
What groups of people do unions hurt? First, they hurt their employers. They restrict their employer's freedom to conduct business in the manner they see fit. Imagine owning a store with some employees. Now imagine if the employees unionize and force you to decide between letting them run the business, or not having the business. It's the same dilemma that the evil companies of the past once forced on the exploited workers. The unions are in fact engaging in exploitation, the very thing they exist to stop. It doesn't help the fact that the government has laws preventing exploitation of the workers. Thus, the unions do not really need to exist to fight exploitation, the government is doing a fine job of it.
Who else do unions hurt? Customers of companies with union labor. Imagine a company that develops a new machine allowing it to produce better widgets in half the time at half the cost. Now a union prevents that machine from being put to use in the factory because it will mean fewer jobs for union workers. However, it also means customers continue to get overpriced shitty widgets. How about convention centers. The fact that convention center labor is union jacks up prices to insane levels. You literally have to pay the BCC a large fee for every power outlet you use because technically only union people can plug things into those outlets. The convention center could be making a lot more money, but their prices have to be set inordinately high due to the union.
Who else do unions hurt? The environment. Take the case of the more efficient factory machine above. That machine also require less energy to run. Oh well, unions blocked it. Take the example of an office building that wanted to install waterless urinals in all the men's rooms. It would have saved an incredible amount of water as well as lowering the water bill significantly. Too bad it would mean fewer jobs for the plumbers union, so they prevented the building from installing it.
Who else do unions hurt? Non-union employees. Let's say you go to apply for a job somewhere. You come to an agreement with the employer. They want to hire you, you want to work for them. You like the terms of employment they are offering. Wait, there's a union! They force you to decide between joining the union or not working there. Now you have to pay union dues and participate in this group even though you are perfectly happy without it. Imagine if you went to a store and the owner offered to sell you something for $5. You also agreed, and got out your wallet. Then suddenly someone comes over and forces you and the store owner to either change the price to $10 or not conduct the sale. That's what unions do to non-union employees.
Who else do unions hurt? Union employees. Imagine you join the carpenter's union. You do your union carpentry at your job, and you make your union paycheck. Then you also want to do some extra work on the side and remodel some kitchens. The union doesn't let you do it. They restrict the freedom of their own members to do what is best for them on an individual level. Of course, this group of people doesn't get much pity. They knowingly agreed to sign the union contract, thus they agreed not to do work on the side. However, the existence of the union does prevent them from achieving their maximum potential in life.
The only dilemma I have with unions is this. On one hand, ideally, I think we need to strive for technological and scientific progress in all things. We should conduct business in the most efficient and cost effective way possible. However, if we achieved this ideal in the United States right now, it would mean a ludicrously high unemployment rate. Everyone but the most highly skilled laborers would get decent pay, or jobs at all. Unions are one thing which prevents this potential situation. However, it is also a dilemma in that they help prevent a potential economic collapse by making things shittier for everybody else.
Let me just add one more note about freedom. I believe strongly that people should have the right to unionize. If workers want to form a union, let them. I just also think that unions should not be allowed to restrict the freedoms of others. That includes the employer's freedom to fire anyone, at any time, for any reason. I think that people should be able to unionize all they want, and if it works out great. However, if it doesn't work out, tough shit.
In conclusion, I submit that labor unions in the United States of America have lived too long. For all the good they have done in the past, and for what little good they do now, they presently do much more harm to society than good. I respect people's rights to unionize, but I would be much happier to see them go. In my life I have never been part of a union. I never have needed, nor will I need, a union. And many times in my life, the existence of unions has made life worse for me.
So let's get flaming! I know for a fact that at least some of you are in unions. I'm willing to bet that at least some of you are pro-union. Bring the heat, save my workday boredom.
Comments
I was part of a union for a job that I did for three summer back in college (so about 8 years ago). One of the good bits of this union was that a days worth of labor will get you paid the same amount no matter how long it took you. This discouraged dawdling, because there was no need for workers to pad their hours. In order to prevent workers from haphazardly tearing through their work, there was a rule that you could not come in before a certain time. Another good thing, the union reps were your fellow workers who are familiar with the job. If a customer called and complained about you (which happened with me once), you would have a rep - someone who is familiar with the field work - come and talk with you about it, not some stuffy manager whose knowledge of the job is limited to an HR brochure. If you were guilty of some major infraction, you got canned.
After I graduated with college, I worked for a DoD contractor, and I got to meet the members of the illustrious government worker's union. They were so secure in their jobs that a good 75% of them did nothing all day long. Actually, they would do stuff, like play video games, look at porn, and sleep at their desks (with large amounts of snoring involved) - all openly. There were a couple who literally did nothing all day long (like "stare at the surface of your desk for 8 hours" nothing) - those scared me the most.
Another union story. There once was a trash collector. Unlike other trash collectors he really cared about his job in a somewhat obsessive-compulsive kind of way. Every day he would figure out new techniques to speed up his route. Eventually he was able to do the route in half the usual time. The union forced him to take it slow or leave. He made all the other workers look lazy, and he made it apparent that they were currently employing twice as many collectors as necessary.
The point I'm trying to make is that the power of unions, like all power, can be used for good or for evil. However, the good things unions do can, and probably would, be done without unions if they were truly beneficial. Meanwhile, the bad things unions do would not be done without the union.
Unfortunately, with this specific company, a labor union was needed to enforce these policies.
There are still many companies that are short-sighted and only see the immediate bottom line. They have an adversarial position against giving the employees anything that does not give an immediate, palpable benefit to the company. Look at Wal-Mart, for example.
That being said, there are some really good places that offer jobs to unskilled laborers (Wegmans, Trader Joe's, Starbucks, and Whole Foods come to mind). These are great examples to the *marts of the world, but there are really too few of them to employ each unskilled laborer who needs to eat.
I am not necessarily pro-union. I'm pro-moderation.
Before I got my current job at the phone company it was nearly impossible to get a job there. I'm talking jobs were literally handed down through a family. the only way to get into the company was to be related to someone or go the grueling "operator" way. That way took years and years and you may never get out of the hell of being an operator.
Just before I was hired the company offered a huge buy out offer. They wanted to thin the ranks by a few hundred people. Several thousand people took the offer.
Do you know which people took it? It was not the lazy non-skilled types, it was the highly skilled, highly paid people who left. This was 1995, the Internet bubble was in full swing and the stock market was sitting near 2,000 (14,000 today).
All those people who left with half million dollar buy out offers were offered jobs back at the company within 6 months. Those who stayed were royally pissed off. Within 5 years those people had their time bridged and they were back to drawing full pay and 5 weeks of vacation.
The company had tried to get rid of its dead weight but failed. Those useless workers were not going to leave the safety of a salary and a job from which they could not be fired. The ones with the skills knew that they could get jobs elsewhere so they left.
The problem I see is, as is the case for many institutions, what was once a coalition organized by people has become a somewhat self-sustaining entity that doesn't actually reflect the wishes of the people it supposedly represents.
This is not to say that a union doesn't have benefits; I'm a member of PEF (Public Employee's Federation), and we have at times wielded the union to our purposes. We get other membership benefits as well, like discounts at stores, amusement parks, and movie theaters, but for the most part, the union just generally sucks money out of my paycheck for little return.
The real question is whether or not various standards already in place would be altered or disappeard if unions went away; while they're a pain in the ass, they're also always watching to make sure that safety and work regulations are followed. Is it possible that if such an organization weren't watching, the regulations in place would eventually fade away?
"You will refer to other union members as Brother/Sister"
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A person who rents his home and buys his food is very dependent on having a job, far more dependent usually than the corporation is on his particular skill set. Corporations pool the resources of their individual employees, so tend to have larger reserves of cash than individuals do. This allows them to wait out situations that individuals cannot afford to wait out. When corporations get into wage wars with individuals, corporations usually win, because they have the resources to sit on their hands until someone with the required skill set comes along who needs the work badly enough to work for below a fair wage.
Corporations also have built-in infrastructures that allow more effective collaboration between skillsets. (Economy of scale) This often allows them to offer their services more effectively than freelance individuals can. A college that employs many teachers can often gather and support many more students than a lone English professor could hope to.
Both these facets of corporations put individuals at a distinct disadvantage when competing with them. Through unionization, individuals are offered many of those same resources, allowing them to compete on a more even playing field.
Additionally, unions are often the only sources of reliable training in fields without formalized education. In this case, union membership can act similarly to having a college diploma in a field, certifying that a certain minimum level of competence is there.
When unions become bloated and corrupt, they lose their effectiveness and become harmful, much like bloated and corrupt colleges, much like bloated and corrupt businesses. To say that the concept of unions themselves have lost their effectiveness is to make sloppy generalizations.
There is one thing though, that I just realized due to your comment. There are some cases where there are no alternative employers. As a software engineer, there are many potential places of employment, and a great amount of desire for my skills. Now, what if I were a train engineer? What if I were a professional baseball player? In those jobs, there aren't choices of employers. Train engineers in the US can work for Amtrak, and that's about it. Baseball players can work for Major League Baseball, and that's about it. Thus, as crazy as it is, I think I do see some value to having a union in certain industries. Otherwise MLB, for example, could decide that baseball players will be paid $10k a year, end of story. Baseball players would have nowhere else to go for employment with their skills, so they would either work for beans or not work, or move to Japan. So without a baseball union, we might have much lower ticket prices, but we'd also have shit baseball with only the desperate people playing.
If there are a large number of skilled individuals, but the conditions are otherwise the same, the wage isn't as favorable, because while the company still doesn't have the ability to wait people out, they don't need to pay above a fair wage to snap up a limited number of people. The employees need a job, to avoid eviction, and the startups need skilled people, to avoid bankruptcy.
When you're dealing with slightly larger more established companies however, their bankruptcy risk goes down, while your eviction risk remains the same. Let's say you quit. Very few people have more than a year's living expenses tucked away. (If you do, your bargaining position increases, but to get that sort of surplus money, a person needs a favorable job to begin with, in which case, why are you quitting? :P) Unless they can find more favorable employment in that year, they'll be forced to accept a pay cut if they want to avoid calls from the collections agency. It wasn't always like that, but that's the reality of it today. In an agrarian society, a farmer who owns his own land and grows his own food, and has his own well can live a poor but reasonable lifestyle quite indefinitely without new influxes of cash, as long as the crops do ok and nothing essential breaks down... in an industrial society, the city dweller has no such luck; if there is any interruption in his cash flow that lasts longer than his saved reserves, he's wiped out almost immediately. So you end up with skilled people working below market wages because their demand for cash is more inelastic than the industry's demand for their labor, and not necessarily because of an actual drop in its true value.
By grouping together to pool resources, (ala unionization) individuals are able to equalize the same effect that is going on when small startups are conquered by or band together into larger more stable companies, leaving the bargaining positions of both roughly equal. A moderate sized company faced with a moderate sized union is in the same position on a larger scale as it was when it was a startup dealing with individuals. Basically a union is just an incorporated version of an employee... like those giant mechas that are formed out of smaller mechas to fight with those giant monsters that are formed out of smaller monsters.
On the other hand, large unions in declining industries can cause trouble if they are run selfishly. Whenever corporations or unions forget that they depend on each other, even if the elasticity of that dependency varies based on who is bigger, things tend to blow up. The airlines had a lot of trouble with that when their industry went bust, because when the company needs your skills more than you need its cash, but the profit margins just aren't there to make up for the cost of your inflated salary, the entire industry shrivels up and dies unless it can merger itself into a position where it can once again deal with the union on equal terms, which it just might not be able to do if there isn't enough money to be had in the industry as a whole. In those cases, mutual disarmament is required by both parties for the industry to stay afloat.
I live in Ohio, where the United Auto Workers have priced themselves right out of the car-making market. It's resulted in Ford, Chevy, and Chrysler being too high-priced and too crappily-built to compete with leaner adversaries Honda and Toyota. In turn, the American auto makers have been forced to downsize, leaving their union employees without jobs.
This recently played itself out in the form of the Chevy UAW strike. The workers demanded a list of salary and medical benefits increases, and walked out when Chevy wouldn't commit to a moratorium on overseas outsourcing. Chevy folded just two days later. Guess what? Car prices won't go down, or even remain stable. They're going up.
If unions get greedy, they will profit in the short run, but eventually cause their employers to collapse under the union's weight.
My problem is that it all comes back to an attitude of entitlement. The union workers feel they are owed certain conditions. They feel they have the right to make demands on salary and hours. That attitude really grates on me. It stinks of organized crime -- if you can't get something by virtue, take it by force.
I have another issue -- an elitist one. This applies to blue collar union members; I'm not so sure that an unskilled laborer who gets OTJ training and hasn't invested anything in a job (paying for the extended education necessary to gain specialized skills) deserves to be paid the wages that many unions procure for them. I don't think that a press stamper or a brake welder deserves to make as much as a civil lawyer, an accountant, a programmer, or a psychologist. I just don't. There are allegedly mobs of custodians at a local Ford plant who sleep during their shift and make $80,000 per year; I don't think that should elicit that kind of a paycheck.
Reform unions, don't abolish them. Group representation for workers, and a labor movement as a whole, are a neccessary part of our economic system. Certainly, we should try to eliminate abuses, but there's no reason to eliminate unions as a whole.
I highly suggest anyone thinking about this topic should read chapter VIII of The Wealth of Nations. The chapter is titled Of the Wages of Labour.
There are many mid-range companies where the top workers and management have salaries that are comparable.
Think about it. If you were working at McDonalds for $10 an hour and your shift manager was making $300 an hour, would you consider that fair? As a union worker myself that is the big problem as I see it; wage disparity.
Unions following the same anti-trust laws as corporations? That doesn't really work. I think if anything, unions should follow the opposite of anti-trust laws. When there is a trust, the laborers of the trust need to make a union. When there is not a trust, the laborers don't need one.
The anti-trust laws we have in place I think are very effective. What is not effective is the enforcement of those laws. It really bothers me when people think new legislation is the answer to everything. We already have laws about breaking up monopolies. Making more such laws isn't going to help. What will help is if we have better enforcement of the existing laws.
For the most part though, while anti-trust law enforcement isn't perfect, it's pretty decent. You notice how congress always gets involved when baseball players are taking steroids and such? It's because baseball is a monopoly, that's why congress can get all in their face. And that's why I think it's ok for baseball players to have a union. While they use that union to make a zillion dollars, only the really good players make a zillion dollars, based on the merit of their skills and their ability to sell tickets. No-name players make average money. And without a player's union, people with baseball skills would be better off doing some other job besides baseball because owners would keep all the megabucks and pay the players crap.
If you claimed you had a stress disorder though look out. That's pretty much a free ticket, take a month off. Do whatever you want. File for FMLA and get partially paid. The union will fight for that tooth and nail. These people are making $23 + / hour to work in a call center doing sales and service. Many that have been there for years get 4 - 5 weeks of vacation + 8 paid days off + "appointment time" and they have to take a month off for stress leave. The union fights for them, gets them the stress leave. If you try to better yourself lookout you'll get knocked down.
Long story short, I had to leave the company and apply from the outside to get the IT job I wanted. The local union has focused on keeping borderline employees in their jobs I think that's all they know how to do.