Posted on 04/04/2008 1:07:30 PM PDT by pabianice
wkeith999@yahoo.com
For most of my life I have held that labor unions are a poisonous left-over from the 19th century, when they did succeed in bettering the lives of working people and their families. In my careers in aviation and electronics I have had just two brushes with unions. The first came in the late 70s when a computer company for which I was working and which was failing (a common theme within the computer industry) responded by cutting everyones salary and commission while expanding work hours and company travel. In response, the sales force asked to join the Teamsters and called-in the NLRB to umpire. The company responded with threats and bullying and the union was defeated by a bare margin but not until the topic of unions had been thoroughly dissected by the work force. My second brush with a union came when I joined a professional writers group only to find that these scribes were in fact proudly aggressive communists and members of the United Auto Workers who sought to force the Government to mandate them a high salary and good benefits through their scribbling. I did not renew my membership. In all, my opinion of unions like that of the fabled incompetents -- started in a hole and continued to dig.
But I have recently been reevaluating my opinion in light of the utter collapse of the American service industry. Or more precisely, the service industry off-shored by the few remaining American manufacturers who have hunkered-down against the gale of destruction brought forth by the US Congress and its viciously stupid anti-business ravings such as Sarbanes-Oxley, one important nail in the coffin of US businesses competing in a world economy.
Whomever is the Democrat nominee for president this year, he or she will have the firm backing of the remaining US labor unions. As unions have seen themselves shrink to what would have been 20 years ago unimaginably small sizes, they have become more strident and recalcitrant, seeking rejuvenation from the party that promises to balm some of their wounds, many self-inflicted. Many union members see what was a good life for essentially mindless work disappear in the face of global competition. And most of these jobs are never coming back, leaving workers confused, frightened, and really angry at having been cheated. The end of US business as it has been ripples down through the factories, out into Main Street, and down into what was to have been the countrys savior, hi tech service work.
I try to do most of by buying over the internet. This is in tune with a world economy that uses the same methodology. But as every computer owner knows, this situation has left customer service in ruins. Everyone, it seems, has his or her favorite horror story of trying to trouble-shoot their PC or Mac over the phone with someone on another continent who is taking night school courses in English as a Third Language. My personal best was two hours 14 minutes dealing with Dell customer service one very unhappy night several years ago, which ended with the woman in the former Soviet Bloc nation of East Wretchnia saying, I am sorry. I have come to the end of my trouble-shooting tree. When I asked to speak to her supervisor she told me she was the supervisor, apologized again, and hung up. Yes, you really can "see red." And no, Dell will never, ever again cross my doorstep.
More recently, I bought a GPS through an online electronic discounter. The unit arrived in a torn, mangled box accompanied by a blank SD map data card (I confirmed this through my PC). I emailed NEXTAR, the manufacturer, and the next day received an email from them largely in Chinese accompanied by a helpful Microsoft box chirping, Do you want to download MS Chinese reader? I made the mistake of saying yes, which precipitated a lot of humming and clicking in my PC (emachines T3092), followed by my PC freezing and requiring me to reboot. When my PC came back online there were a great deal of characters (Chinese?) within an email from NEXTAR informing me in added English that I would receive an RMA (presumably in Chinese) for returning the unit. I tried to explain that I just needed a replacement SD card but clearly the language barrier was insurmountable.
I next called NEXTAR and, after calling four subsequent numbers given by the previous person, was told that, since I had ordered it from a discounter, I had to call them.
I called the discounter (Buy.com) and, after speaking to a young woman in Pakistan, was told I would be receiving via email an RMA for the return and replacement of the unit. Again, my explanation that all I needed was the database fell upon uncomprehending ears, so the next day I re-packaged the entire unit in its shredded box, put it inside another box, and returned it using the UPS Ground RMA, which estimates that the unit will reach the distributor in 7-10 days. Add another week for their paperwork, followed by another 7-10 days for the replacement unit to reach me and we have seen an entire month go by in a burst of complete frustration over something that would have taken one day if the unit were made and sold in the US. Customer service, 2008. If it works, anyway.
Which brings me back to unions. My old computer company barely defeated the Teamsters in part because some of my coworkers had had bad dealings with unions. One guy told me angrily that the Teamsters had murdered his uncle some years ago when he opposed their unionizing his shop. One day during negotiations his uncle had started his car, which exploded, resulting in an empty casket funeral. Such is a common tale, I find. But cant there be a better common ground between union abuse and an end to competent commerce? And what political power in the US can accomplish such a change?
Not that the right to bargain collectively is bad.
What's bad is that first and most importantly, unions simply do NOT care about the people they represent, and their whole basis for existence is that they're supposed to. Your shop steward might. If you have a small local your business agent or president even might, but beyond that, unions simply don't care about the people they represent.
Second, most rank-and-file union members are unaware of the degree of radicalization of their unions and wouldn't be able (Supreme Court rulings to the contrary notwithstanding) to do anything about it if they did. ALL of the major unions in the US are commie unions, with the possible exception of the Teamsters--but they're thugs-- and possibly the carpenters' union. I can't speak to the latter with any inside authority, but their political rep even at the highest levels has been better than other unions. I believe they even endorsed a Republican for President, once. Believe me when I say "commie unions" I'm not exaggerating: I had a discussion in the 1980's with an SIEU Local president who talked in all seriousness about putting people in gas chambers in order to put an end to "Reaganism." The SIEU (which was not my outfit) is about the worst although the teachers' union runs a very close second. I've heard things from NEA people over the years that would shock even most FReepers, and unlike the SIEU those folks aren't changing bedpans--they've got your kids 6 1/2 hours a day.
Third, Big Labor can't stop the outsourcing of American jobs, but it can accelerate it. One of the reasons for the continued loss of American jobs to oversees competitors is the hassle of litigation and regulation. Unions have played enormous roles in those disincentives.
If you really want to keep jobs in America, what you need to do is forget about collective bargaining, and start supporting candidates who will really--and I mean really--support small business. The competitive advantages our government gives to large corporations over small ones are anti-capitalist at best, and truly corrupt at worst. Small businessmen and single proprietorships won't send jobs overseas, won't ask for special protections from competition (only to turn around in a few years and sell everybody out), and most of all they do care about the people who work for them. I know: I am one.
The incompetent just don't give up, do they?
If they put as much effort into being competent, they wouldn't need unions.
The great many of those working for government, belong to various affiliated [and in some instances competing] unions, and make up a significant chunk of the nation's workforce, and electorate also, it should be remembered.
The dhimmocrat party promises to expand, expand, expand, the size, and scope of governmental authority over the rest of us, peons and big business both, including pretty much all those falling in between the two descriptive classifications given above.
They intend to fund this expansion by taking more from corporations, and their employees, too. The taking from the employees, is forced upon businesses, making them all tax collectors, at their (businesses') own trouble & expense, just the same as it has been, and has been expanding, for the last nearly hundred years.
The other portion of the "taking from", will ultimately be paid for by customers of businesses, hitting everyone alike, multiple blows, all at once.
Civil service employees simply must come to terms with the unavoidable reality, that one cannot eat their own supporting infrastructure (those who actually do the work that creates the wealth, in the first place), to pay for their own (union) expansion, unless such expansion actually helps those whom create the wealth, create yet ever more of it.
If one is fond of saying "unions ruined the railroads", then just wait...government largess, at the expense of business and individuals, cannot repay what they forcibly remove, since they take a large cut themselves, unavoidably being able only to return, no matter what noble of a product, one much diminished, much lesser in value, than one which can be more efficiently, simply bought on an open, non-government run free market.
National defense being the first [but arguably not only] of the exceptions to this unavoidable, and historically demonstrated set of facts.
Which old timer when asked what the union wanted replied “More.” At one time that meant more salary and bennies for the members. For the last 30 years it meant that and increasing political power. Some time ago unions jumped the shark.
We had a bit of fun with them, even did a little social drinking with the chiefs and honchos. Red diaper commies the lot of 'em.
Cognitive dissonance: in Pennsylvania there are between 1.5 and 1.8 million men under arms in the woods on the first day of buck season every year, but somehow, blue collar unions managed to convince something on the order of 60% of their membership to vote for one of the biggest gun-grabbers in the country in two consecutive gubernatorial elections. The gap among non-union employees in the same demographic is like 3 to 1 the other way.
Go figger.
He77, we see it here all the time: "Nobody owes you anything, if you aren't a bond trader on Wall Street, screw you ... you peon".
But I do enjoy reminding Demo'rats, that it was Jimmy Carter who ruined the truck driving gig for a lot of blue collar guys.
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