Posted on 09/03/2018 2:31:20 PM PDT by Perseverando
As long as I can remember, unions have attacked as “scabs” those willing to accept work for wages and conditions those unions reject, even if it involves crossing union picket lines. In fact, that usage goes back centuries, from English slang for a mean, low, “scurvy” rascal or scoundrel. As Stephanie Smith put it in Household Words:
From blemish…to strikebreaker, the history of the word scab…shows a displacement of meaning from the visceral or physical to the moral register…Just as a scab is a physical lesion, the strikebreaking scab disfigures the social body of labor.
Those union attacks have included some real “fist in your face” examples, such as the following, generally attributed to Jack London:
After God finished the rattlesnake, the toad, the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab…No man has a right to scab so long as there is a pool of water to drown his carcass in, or a rope long enough to hang his body with.
Few current examples can match that level of vituperation. But “scab” remains near the surface. For instance, when Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner responded to a 2017 AFSCME strike authorization with a website enabling citizens to apply for government positions, the result was “cries of ‘SCABS’ filling the public airways.”
Union rhetoric asserts that scabs are harmful to workers. But they offer no proof of harm. So as we come to another Labor Day of union claims to advance workers’ interests, perhaps that name-calling should be considered more carefully.
Debaters know to advance their most convincing argument. However, calling someone a scab is an ad hominem (against the man) attack, not an argument. It amounts to “You are bad, therefore your argument/position is wrong.” But “bad” people sometimes have better arguments than “good” people, who can sometimes argue nonsense. Consequently, asserting badness implies nothing about the rightness of any particular argument/position. Given that yelling “scab” is the most frequent, and often only, “argument” unions offer against such people, one could conclude they have no real argument.
Further, even if someone considers you bad, you still retain your unalienable rights from the Declaration of Independence and a guarantee of equal treatment under the law from the Constitution. Those must be equally held by all. Yet denying others the ability to offer their labor services in competition with union members who reject their employers’ offers denies both their economic liberty and their right to equal treatment.
It also denies employers’ rights. An employer holds the right to decide who it will hire or continue to employ. Prior to signing a contract, a worker has no claim to a job. Workers acquire ownership interests in their jobs only if their contract creates one. But unions treat a certification vote as giving members rights to their jobs that would be violated if a scab took them. How did workers, without any individual ownership rights to deny competition from others, conjure up those rights right for themselves as a union, overriding employers’ rights?
In essence, the basis of calling someone a scab is only their willingness to work for less than union demands. But is that bad? If a store offers you lower prices for what you want to buy, you don’t call them names. You seek out bargains, which are the fruit of competition. So what makes monopoly good when your union labor is involved, but bad otherwise? (remember, the Wagner Act had to define labor as not a commodity, or antitrust laws would have made unions illegal). The only reason is narrow self- interest. You don’t want anything to undermine the current terms of your job, even if it was extracted with government-delegated coercive union power. But such a possibility only threatens unions, not workers’ interests.
In fact, it is special treatment of unions, not scabs, that harms workers. At the higher wages unions extract, fewer jobs are available. Those crowded out of such opportunities go elsewhere, increasing labor supply for non-union jobs. That lowers the earnings of existing workers as well as entrants seeking such jobs, which makes up the vast majority of workers. Because higher costs result as well, workers also pay higher prices as consumers and taxpayers.
In other words, scabs should not be demeaned. They are part of the solution to unions’ bleeding compensation from employers beyond what workers could get in an open labor market.
Blame and defamation belongs instead to unions whose “assault and battery” cuts against employers’ interests create “scabs” of those whose only offense is seeking an open market for their livelihoods.
Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University. He is the author of The Apostle of Peace: The Radical Mind of Leonard Read.
So, illegal alien workers are the Ultimate Labor Day Hero? After all, they out-scab EVERYONE!
No one said anything about illegal aliens. But since you brought it up, maybe you can enlighten us on why your union loving politicians want to over run the USA with illegal aliens.
Burn.
Those nasty Progs, stabbing their union thug friends in the back. I expect nothing less from a Prog vermin.
>>No one said anything about illegal aliens. But since you brought it up, maybe you can enlighten us on why your union loving politicians want to over run the USA with illegal aliens.
Same reason why the union-hating ones want illegals: to lower wages for Americans. This is the entire basis for the Deep State resistance against Trump. Trump is ruining everything for the Globalists who have worked very hard to slowly degrade the economy. Frankly, I’m amazed that you even had to ask after the events of the past 30 months.
It has been my vast experience working alongside union members that their loyalty belongs to the union. Most don’t give a rip about doing their job well, coming to work, or even care about the product they are giving the customer. It’s all about undermining the evil company’s efforts to get them to do their job so that goods and services can be provided to the customer on time and on budget so that all can have some job security.
Union membership is a crutch for the sorriest of society which is touted as the solution to American industry by the sorriest of politicians and big labor bosses.
Why is it in unions the scum always rises to the top?
My first exposure to Union workers was as a contractor in a paper mill. We were using a scissor lift to access the steel rafters and moved to an area that was occupied by a bunch of empty carts on wheels. We started moving the carts out of the way when a man approached us and told us to stop because we were “doing someone else’s job”.
Had to wait 10 minutes for another guy to come over who pushed the carts out of the way in less than one minute.
Scabbed 3 times.
Helped payed the mortgage and put food on the table.
I am in no way a fan of unions. Being a programmer/analyst I almost lost my job at a utility company when the “slacker” programmers and operations room staff wanted to take a vote to join the Clerical Union (I was going to quit is the vote was to join the union).
BUT ......
In their defense down the road from me is the IBEW building and these guys are the the Linemen for the area. They have a great training facility (poles, transformers, the whole 9 yards) and they work those guys tirelessly and they are out there when the power goes out getting the lines up and the electricity back on line ... snow storm, rain storm, whatever terrible weather you can imagine.
That job does not allow for one slip up and they do one hell of a job training their guys.
>>It has been my vast experience working alongside union members that their loyalty belongs to the union. Most don’t give a rip about doing their job well, coming to work, or even care about the product they are giving the customer. It’s all about undermining the evil company’s efforts to get them to do their job so that goods and services can be provided to the customer on time and on budget so that all can have some job security.
I live in the South, so I have experienced what you describe in transplanted Yankees who bring their poison down with them. But, the typical southern union employee is just another employee working for a paycheck. Industries in the south use unions as a way of avoiding negotiating with and evaluating individual employees. I’ve worked in non-union companies. I’ve worked as a union employee. I’ve worked as a manager of union employees. A southern union employee is as dedicated to the bottom line and customer satisfaction as any non-union hourly employee.
Unions have too much power. Union violence is not prosecuted as it should be.
Learned some carpentry in a right to work state. Was obliged to move in a union dominated area, so I had to go talk to the union about being allowed to work. The deal was I signed up, paid my dues and it put me in line for when work started picking up again with no guarantee it would be anytime soon because I lacked seniority. Had no money to pay rent, pay for food, or pay for dues, so I had to change careers to one the unions did not own.
Jack London, syphilitic son of a whore, let’s worship the ground he soils upon./s
I, Pencil is an article written in 1958 by Leonard E. Read. It is the source of Milton Friedman’s related discussion on the topic of the subtlety of capitalism in assembling resources to maximize utility. “Nobody knows how to make a pencil."
My father was a proud scab. He worked at GE for 38 years. Crossed the picket line one night and got the crap beat out of him by his so- called friends. But he said for being out of work for 6 months for a measly 10 cents an hour was plain stupid.He said they’d never make that up in wages. He had a family to feed. My father was a hero.
And if it was like the union plant I worked in, the guy would have got a subtle ribbing from his union co-workers about either:
1. Working too fast, thereby working himself out of a job.
2. Working too hard, thereby doing the job that 2 or 3 union members could have helped him do.
3. Working too eagerly and being a suck up.
Unions are one level away from being a government employee (think DMV), unless they are a member of a government union which should be against the law.
As a young boy, I sided with scabs: freedom of choice.
I was never a collectivist even when I was naive.
Twelve.
Do you have a problem with that?
When Union is on the label, unemployment is on the table.
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