[Publius]

There is another angle on unions.

A century ago, 10,000 employees died every year on America's railroads. The railroad companies simply wrote this off as the cost of doing business. Life had no intrinsic value.

It was the unions that forced safety on the railroads, defining safety standards that still are in effect today.

[Still Thinking]

That's kind of my take as well. When they were founded there was certainly a problem crying out for a solution. And, as I noted before, saying the concept of a union is evil as my conservatives do, seems inequitable. But the real-life implementation is often very bad for all involved.

[r-q-tek86]

I have a friend who is a big ol' flaming liberal... nearly a Marxist. He always throws the "unions as a means to ensure a safe workplace" argument at me. I'm not sure of the answer.

**SPOILER ALERT**

I don't think that life as described in the next few chapters is any more realistic than the worker's paradise view from the collectivists. I concede the need for unions when that balance of power tips too far toward management's favor. But how is management protected when the balance shifts the other way?

[Swiss]

**It was the unions that forced safety on the railroads, defining safety standards that still are in effect today.**

Actually much of the safety devices that saved the most lives was invented before Unions got big such as air brakes and the automatic coupler. Consumer desires for safety and government regulation lead to their adoption more than the unions.

In fact capitalist desires to improve profits has lead to changes as switching from more dangerious steam power to diesel and electric. When you take in account the amount of traffic the railroads continued to improve in safety from their earliest days until around the 1970’s. In the 70’s the union stranglehold and government overregulation caused an increase in train derailments due to poorly maintained tracks and poorly trained crews. Bankruptcy of railroads and deregulation and the weakening power of railroad unions ended the increase in derailments and other disasters and train derailments is much less common now.

It is like the auto industry. I saw a photo in an old life magazine of painters in safety garb painting cars on the assembly line in the 1960’s. Today it is done by robots with fewer long term health risks to workers. The auto unions fight to delay labor saving robotics on the line may of cost some workers their health.

As labor saving technology such as switching away from steam on the railroads reduced the workforce the numbers of workers killed or injured on the job would go down.

[ml/nj]

A century ago, 10,000 employees died every year on America's railroads.

Can you provide some references to back this up?

ML/NJ