Among the worst offenses against the rule of law in the past hundred years are the various special privileges granted to unions. The Norris-Laguardia and Wagner-Taft-Hartley Acts put unions in a position to impose their will on companies by force, to "close" a shop to all but union labor, and worst of all, to engage in violence for economic gain. No conceivable rationale could be offered for these things that would square with fundamental principles of justice. The Right-To-Work movements of the past couple of decades have done considerable good in reversing the pernicious effects of coercive, violent unionism, but much remains to be done.
There's no mystery why unionized industries have been losing jobs, while non-unionized ones have been gaining. Except for the government sector, this is uniformly true; even the heaviest manufacturing industries are learning to do with fewer and fewer human hands -- because it's the path of survival.
There is a great irony in the unflagging support of the Left for coercive unionism. Given the current state of American labor law, a union is a private army backed by political mechanisms. What other description would apply to an organization that has the privilege of compelling you to join or leave your employer, and enforcing its will by violence, for which it and its members are immunized from prosecution? Yet substitute the word "militia" for "union," and the Left would be, pardon the phrase, up in arms in righteous condemnation. But in our society, unions are single-stop shopping centers for large masses of votes and monetary support to political campaigns -- and the Left cannot wean itself from them.
Violence for economic gain. Forced collectivization. A status above the law. Josef Stalin would approve.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
...the unit that pulls the trailer or trailers down the road is not a truck, it is a tractor; a unit that is not complete without a trailer. [CF] then started a new company, to manufacture tractors for them.
Methinks it was the trailers, not the tractors, that CF started building. I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
Unions tend to create a wall of distrust between management and labor;
Management does this also. This sword cuts both ways.
IMO, if labor and management work in opposition to each other, then everybody loses. Sooner or later.
This leads me to a defining moment in my view on unions, the UPS strike a few years ago. Now keep in mind that these guys were making over $20/hr. At over $20/hr, these people were telling this to their customers; proclaiming it loud and long!
As as customer of FedEx and UPS I couldn't care less what they pay their employess, it is what they charge me that matters. Since FedEx ground service quality sucks, I would be happy to use UPS and their higher paid drivers - since they are able to offer rates better than FedEx anyhow. I am sure there are different factors for other companies, the one that makes no difference is what hourly rate they pay their employees.
Poor management practices generate their own opposition as labor organizes to provide a system of checks and balances. Neither corporations nor unions are inherently "good" nor "evil". They merely exist as artificial entities representing the interests of their members/shareholders. Abusive misuse of the power that accompanies this representation exists on both sides of the issue.