[Amberdawn]

Yes. I remember a man being assaulted in Philadelphia a few years ago by union goons and of another man who was hired for a job in Philly who had all his tools and equipment thrown into the Delaware River for daring to work on a job the union wanted.

[vpintheak]

Yeah. There are bad examples out there for sure. But you can bet your behind that if it weren’t for labor unions, there wouldn’t be a Labor Day, and we’d be working for pennies and 6 days a week.

[Pollster1]

I was cornered by union goons decades ago when I was a teenager and threatened with broken bones if I did not do what the union wanted (I quit that job immediately). I was threatened by union goons again two years ago and I suggested that they might want to back off (for reasons that I’ll leave out of this post) - and they backed off permanently. It’s amazing how good it feels not to bow down to evil thugs!

[American in Israel]

Unions have sabotaged jobs I have worked at and used government corruption to shut down my work on one job. Sad thing was I was not even competing with them. They just hate free American workers.

I despise Unions for the Leftist Thugrocracy they are.

However I have worked alongside some Unions that are professional and meet the quality standards I consider essential. But invariably they are slow, expensive and repressive to their workers.

[Perseverando]

Bump

[sauropod]

bump

[Hot Tabasco]

Here in metro Detroit, a friend's nephew was a member of a local sheet metal workers union. He was without work for over two years because they are forbidden from seeking work from non-union companies. The union finds them work and when the work ends, they go to the bottom of the job placement list.

Another thing, if they are caught working for a non-union company in their trade, they are fired from the union and the union has the right to sue them for the cost of their apprenticeship training.

In other words, the union owns you for the rest of your working life.

[super7man]

I believe that a group of people should be able to bargain as a unit for their labor and business should consider what advantage that will bring to the business. Business should then be able to act accordingly to accept or reject the collective Union offer. However; my experience with unions has not been good. I spent time as an engineer in aerospace and the unions did nothing to create innovation, streamline processes or insure quality. Their sole purpose was to maintain and expand the existence of the union. They promoted inefficiency, protected incompetence and created a hostile relation between the production/service workers and the engineering/management team.

I was often the subject of a Union Grievance, at first, because I did not understand their rules governing the control of their employees. And later just because they needed to teach me a lesson. Any time I entered the shop floor to discuss a design with the machinists, the Union Steward would interject himself between me and the person I wanted to see. I had to ask the Union Steward my question, he would decide if the question was valid and then ask the machinist. The machinist would reply. The Steward would then repeat the answer to me.

The only thing the Union ever did for me was give me a day off. The Machinist Union had gone on strike. While pulling into the company parking lot, one of the machinists yelled that I would be lucky to have a car at the end of the day. This was a guy that I had worked cordially with for 2 years. I turned around, went home and called in saying that I had been threatened by the Union and was not coming in. I went to the beach.

The environment created by the Unions was part of the reason I left aerospace and moved on to Union-Free Silicon Valley and had a great career.