Posted on 02/22/2023 7:26:59 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Big Labor and its acolytes have been trumpeting a recent Gallup poll suggesting widespread public support for organized labor.
According to the survey, about 71 percent of Americans expressed a favorable opinion of unions, up from 64 percent pre-pandemic and a low of 48 percent in 2009.
Even more revealing, they say, are figures from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) showing the overall number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions increased by 273,000 — 1.9 percent — to 14.3 million during 2022 over the previous year.
If true, it would be the best showing for unions since the 1960s.
Both notions are undercut, however, by other statistics from DOL revealing that union membership as a percentage of the country’s total workforce has actually never been less encouraging.
The agency reports:
“The 2022 unionization rate (10.1 percent) is the lowest on record. In 1983, the first year where comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent and there were 17.7 million union workers.”
Can both trends be true? And more importantly, which is more noteworthy?
A Jan. 23 article on the Axios website, headlined “Why labor’s surging popularity isn’t translating to union membership,” relies on the views of labor-affiliated academics to explain the disparity.
“Critics say that Big Labor hasn’t adapted to the new realities of business in the modern era,” the authors assert, “nor have they given enough support to grassroots workers who are organizing on their own.”
In fact, the truth is much simpler: What people say often has little or no relation to how they act.
Yet another Gallup poll taken before the last election, for example, reported the Congressional approval rate had plummeted to dogcatcher status at 18 percent. But when the votes were finally counted, few incumbents were cast out of office.
As always, Americans make a distinction between their own scoundrel and those representing everyone else.
Similarly, respondents — depending on the survey’s methodology — might very well say they hold a favorable opinion of an entity that professes to fight for the rights and wages of underdog workers in their struggle against faceless corporate masters.
At the individual level, however, most workers are, by definition, satisfied with their own employment arrangement or they’d go elsewhere.
And like voters, they’re more forgiving of the scoundrels they work for than those rumored to be exploiting others elsewhere.
More to the point, the views of the 90 percent of Americans who aren’t unionized — and probably never have been — simply can’t be given as much weight on the subject as those who’ve had to make a decision about workplace representation in the real world.
For myriad reasons, workers in the private sector of the economy, who have traditionally had a choice about whether to affiliate with a union, have been declining that privilege in growing numbers for generations. But in the government workplace, many states made union membership and dues/fees a condition of employment.
On paper, at least, that changed in 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Janus v. AFSCME, affirmed that mandatory union participation in the public sector amounted to a violation of workers’ First Amendment rights to free speech and association.
According to LM-2 membership data for the nation’s four largest public-sector unions:
The right to opt out has always existed under the U.S. Constitution, but unions continue to suppress information about Janus and fight tenaciously against every brave worker deciding to do what’s best for his or her family rather than Big Labor and the overwhelmingly leftist political agenda it supports with other people’s money.
At the end of the day, it’s relatively easy to tell a pollster you approve of unions when you don’t have one taking dues dollars out of every paycheck and giving them to candidates and causes you don’t approve of.
But the only opinions that truly matter are those of union members overwhelmingly and increasingly voting with their feet.
Jeff Rhodes is the vice president of news and information for the Freedom Foundation. www.FreedomFoundation.com
Dues and outdated. Unions don’t provide much benefit anymore with all the regulation and Obamacare, etc.
Unions basically only exist in government, where they can milk taxpayers, and combine with the ruling party as a paid political force.
These were not people who got paid, these were people who were carrying for their own loved ones who suddenly found themselves in a union. And their "union dues" were being taken out of the Medicare, Medicaid and SSI checks that were suppose to be used to care for the patient.
It takes a special kind of louse to rip off the sick and dying for literally millions.
And so Michigan became a Right to Work state.
But the SEIU did not give the money that they had stolen back.
Sure, unions are popular with union leadership, organizers, stewards/representatives and slackers. The people who contribute the least to the bottom line in an organization.
Union = Thuggery and organized crime.
Based on personal experience.
Grandfather started a business in 1908. Teamster union in the 1930’s threaten and committed violence till the company became a union shop.
I saw first hand how the Teamsters and affiliates got paid off by my family after a strike was threaten. The drivers and affiliates found out in the 1970’s the fixed membership monthly amount became a percentage. The drivers got a raise then the Teamsters got a raise. Pretty much cancelled the raise for the drivers. The teamsters money went to the central pension fund which lent money to the casinos in Las Vegas.
“Unions basically only exist in government, where they can milk taxpayers, and combine with the ruling party as a paid political force.”
We have the winner here Alex!
Government made a deal with mob, to allow them to control the unions, better the mob than the Communists, as it is in most European Unions.
“Grandfather started a business in 1908. Teamster union in the 1930’s threaten and committed violence till the company became a union shop.
I saw first hand how the Teamsters and affiliates got paid off by my family after a strike was threaten. The drivers and affiliates found out in the 1970’s the fixed membership monthly amount became a percentage. The drivers got a raise then the Teamsters got a raise. Pretty much cancelled the raise for the drivers. The teamsters money went to the central pension fund which lent money to the casinos in Las Vegas.”
Jimmy Hoffa’s legacy.
Only 7% of the private sector workforce is in a union. Unions are a non factor.
As I understand it, based on the history of how employers were treating employees, unions were necessary at the time.
OTOH, I have seen unions protect employees who had no business staying at the company for the way they cheated the company, but hey, the union contract didn’t say they couldn’t nap on the job. I despise how the unions protect worthless employees.
I don’t know that that need is still with us.
Basically, if employers did right by employees, unions would fade away.
My experience with people that have negative opinions about unions are that they have never been able to get into one or have been in one and are unable to appreciate the importance of the inner workings of such a structured working environment. Labor laws and Unions exist because business owners tend to exploit human resources as much as they can to benefit the profit margin of the business. A non union worker will only make as much money as the minimum wage that it costs to replace him/her and that worker will often do the work of 2 or more people ie. a machinist will run 2 or more machines instead of one. The so called “prevailing wage” is often the only support a non union worker can lean on to argue his/her deserved wage and most managers will scoff at it. A union worker will make as much money as the collective bargaining power of the union tell the owner what the worker is actually worth to his business and that worker will do only the work of one person. ie. run one machine at a time. Union shops are pro-worker and at the same time not anti-management. Non union shops will almost always cut corners and the first people to get negatively impacted are always the workers. Union shops enforce rules that prevent workers suffering from such management cost cutting measures. Don’t want a union in your business? Pay your workers what they’re worth TO your business and respect them as human beings not human drones.
No union ever has, ever can or ever will create a single job.
Not one.
This is ludicrous. For many of these unions, it means the union leadership is working on behalf of retirees — even if it is at the expense of current workers.
The United Steelworkers is a perfect example of this. I think they have something like eight retired members for every active worker. So when it comes time to negotiate labor agreements, the union is perfectly willing to have active workers getting paid peanuts with minimal benefits — as long as the big steel companies keep the pension funds solvent and the generous retirement benefits in place.
It’s a recipe for failure all around.
Unions protect idiots.
Unions also have lots of outside benefits, like financial palning, lawyers, representation at workplace hearings.
It depends on where you live!
UAW & UMW have the same problem. They exist for the retiree not the worker now.
It’s almost analogous to SS’s problems!
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