Posted on 11/19/2012 10:51:01 AM PST by jazusamo
Killing the goose that lays the golden egg is one of those old fairy tales for children which has a heavy message that a lot of adults should listen to. The labor unions which have driven the makers of Twinkies into bankruptcy, potentially destroying 18,500 jobs, could have learned a lot from that old children's fairy tale.
Many people think of labor unions as organizations to benefit workers, and think of employers who are opposed to unions as just people who don't want to pay their employees more money. But some employers have made it a point to pay their employees more than the union wages, just to keep them from joining a union.
Why would they do that, if it is just a question of not wanting to pay union wages? The Twinkies bankruptcy is a classic example of costs created by labor unions that are not confined to paychecks.
The work rules imposed in union contracts required the company that makes Twinkies, which also makes Wonder Bread, to deliver these two products to stores in separate trucks. Moreover, truck drivers were not allowed to load either of these products into their trucks. And the people who did load Twinkies into trucks were not allowed to load Wonder Bread, and vice versa.
All of this was obviously intended to create more jobs for the unions' members. But the needless additional costs that these make-work rules created ended up driving the company into bankruptcy, which can cost 18,500 jobs. The union is killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
Not only are there reasons for employers to pay their workers enough to keep them from joining unions, there are reasons why workers in the private sector have increasingly voted against joining unions...
(Excerpt) Read more at creators.com ...
I’m distressed by the fact that the emerging narrative on unions, (even among conservatives, and this is horrifying for what it means for the future of the country) seems to run like this,
“Public sector unions are REALLY bad. There are some bad things in private sector unions, too, but they aren’t pure evil like public sector unions. Private sector unions, especially at the turn of the century, were actually pretty good.”
This is pure BS! It is very, very, very scary when, even here on FR for Pete’s sake, people do not recognize the following two things:
Unions can ONLY!!!! exist because of government force applied selectively against private property owners (evil rich people),
ALL UNIONS REPRESENT GOVERNMENT SANCTIONED THEFT OF PRIVATE PROPERTY FOR THE PURPOSE OF BUYING DEMOCRAT VOTES.
I expect ignorance of this fact elsewhere, but here on FR??????????????????????
Here’s how the purely evil, anti-American, communistic, welfare-begging private sector unions work…..
I set up a business, using MY PRIVATE PROPERTY (my capital and/or cash money).
I pay for the space, using MY PRIVATE PROPERTY.
I pay the taxes using MY PRIVATE PROPERTY.
I supply the parts and inventory, using MY PRIVATE PROPERTY.
I pay for the insurance, using MY PRIVATE PROPERTY.
I pay the labor, using MY PRIVATE PROPERTY.
I recruit, hire, and advertise, using MY PRIVATE PROPERTY.
Oftentimes an entire life’s savings (MY PRIVATE PROPERTY) is at stake.
My future, my standing in the community, my credit, and MY PRIVATE PROPERTY are all at stake.
If I fail, I stand a good chance of being economically crippled for life.
One day, on MY PRIVATE PROPERTY that I own and acquired using MY PRIVATE PROPERTY, one of my employees, who is only in my presence because of the risk of MY PRIVATE PROPERTY, comes to me and says, “Here’s the story, Bub. From this moment forward I am going to begin organizing YOUR OTHER EMPLOYEES, to work AGAINST YOUR PRIVATE INTERESTS and do everything in our power to TAKE BY FORCE AS MUCH OF YOUR PRIVATE PROPERTY AS WE CAN GET OUR HANDS ON. We are going to spend a great deal of time and effort ORGANIZING AGAINST YOUR INTERESTS TO DO EVERYTHING IN OUR POWER TO GROW STRONGER AT YOUR EXPENSE, IN ORDER TO TAKE YOUR MONEY. You might as well have your business competitors working here on the shop floor. If you do not agree to our demands, we will go on strike, make your life miserable, harass and threaten and/or MURDER IN COLD BLOOD anybody you may want to hire in our place.”
Now the one and ONLY way that such a thing could EVER take place is for the government to step in and say, “Mr. Employer (rich, white, capitalist, male), if you fire this union man, you are going to jail.”
Plainly and simply, no union could ever exist in a free society. Yes, in a free society, you should be able to form and join a union of any type at any time for any purpose whatsoever. AND YOUR EMPLOYER SHOULD BE ABLE TO FIRE YOUR HAPPY ASS IN A HEARTBEAT FOR DOING SO.
FREEDOM IS A TWO WAY STREET.
I find this ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. Truly. A man strolls onto the PRIVATE PROPERTY of another man and tells him how he will employ his PRIVATE PROPERTY going forward, OR ELSE!, and hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people the world over think that the first man is not only somehow better than sub-human filth, they actually see him as a hero! To me, this is one of the most perverse and mystifying examples of twisted human thinking the world has ever seen. I can’t say it enough; you come onto my PRIVATE PROPERTY, and bargain with me, using the THREAT OF GOVERNMENT SANCTIONED FORCE, about how much of my PRIVATE PROPERTY you will allow me to keep! And this is somehow acceptable?
As I say, even conservatives, (who have escaped the liberal brainwashing that begins when we are still in the womb on guns, race, US history, etc., etc., and do not subscribe to the easy notions that are so readily picked up by the unthinking) seem to fall for this trap. Seem to believe that…
“The work place is filled with mean managers and mean bosses who were/are really mean to kids and women and workers and paid them pennies instead of the legitimate millions that they were REALLY worth, making evil white male capitalists even richer, and they enslaved them and coerced them and made them work real hard and were really, really mean. THANK GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! for the government stepping in and saving women and children from mean bosses and really mean white capitalist men.”
Needless to say, each and every single word of that narrative is as totally false and ridiculous as the liberal narrative on US history, or bad guns, or evil white men. If you know people who believe that stuff, you cannot help them. DO NOT waste your breath on them, DO NOT do their research for them; have them read Sowell or Williams or von Hayek, or von Mises, or Friedman, or even Stossel when they write of “sweatshops” either in today’s 3rd world or in America at the turn of the century.
” Plainly and simply, no union could ever exist in a free society. Yes, in a free society, you should be able to form and join a union of any type at any time for any purpose whatsoever. AND YOUR EMPLOYER SHOULD BE ABLE TO FIRE YOUR HAPPY ASS IN A HEARTBEAT FOR DOING SO.”
Bingo
In nature as in our lives, parasites can kill the host(ess).
Public sector unions have to be dissolved.
How ironic that the hero of this fable was named “Simpleton”.
I think there are times when unions have done good, in improving working conditions and safety and such, but like civil rights groups and such, there is no need for their indefinite existence. Much of that oversight is done by the gov now anyway.
Absolutely...Dr. Sowell lays out the problem with them perfectly, the public sector unions are breaking the taxpayers.
When the baby boomers are all gone the states may have to look at budgets a little differently.
This is simply not true. There is reason for collective bargaining, even from the perspective of the employer; else companies like ManPower and ADP would not exist. The factory owner would rather not deal with personnel details.
There were real problems before the union movement that primarily stemmed from abuse of the courts via the Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific interpretation of the 14th Amendment of corporations as persons. People without money had no recourse in civil cases against such large entities.
The real problem with unions is monopoly power. If we restructured the NRLA such that unions were corporations competing in the business of supplying skilled labor, a lot of these problems would vanish.
From what I can tell, you don't think free association is an unalienable right.
Precisely, and the RATS are their enablers and that’s why RATS control CA and other big states, all of which are going BROKE or already broke.
What has ManPower and ADP got to do with unions? I don’t see any connection.
Santa Clara, 14th amendment, civil cases, NRLA, unions = competing corporations???? Smokescreens.
How’s this for a solution — If I am on your private property, your rules apply. Period.
As do private sector unions. All unions are unadulterated evil as stated so well by jazusamo in the second post of this thread. That was true in years past, today and in the future. The rise of unionism in America was due to foreign socialist influences, as revealed by the IWW ("Wobblies").
The leftist narrative builds falsehoods around such manufactured incidents as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory of 1911. Similarly, liberal-infested Hollywood paints oh-so-sympathetic fairy tales in such movies as Matewan and Norma Rae.
Quite simply, unions are a collectivist cartel with Big Labor nothing more than an organized crime extortion racket. The full force of RICO laws should be brought down hard to exterminate every last vestige of this anti-American, anti-liberty evil force.
Jim Robinson said it best in post #249:
Unionists be damned!! Unite against the damned unionists!!
“As do private sector unions. All unions are unadulterated evil as stated so well by jazusamo in the second post of this thread.”
I think you mean “stated so well by ME, DR2Brains!”
That’s cool. I forgive you.
That’s what I keep saying. These Hostess brands are nearly double the price of the competitors. I don’t buy this stuff often but when I did, I never bought the Hostess stuff.
I take a no compromise stand when it comes to unions. And, as I have posted elsewhere here on Free Republic, among the top three moments of my long life are when I led a successful rebellion to bust a private sector union in the Big Labor stronghold of Western Pennsylvania more than 30 years ago.
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