The Almighty Unions

[Coito ergo sum]

The problem isn't the existence of unions, its the loss of balance they achieved. $30-50 an hour plus benefits is a lot to pay for unskilled labor. The UAW pushed, and got good things for its members, but then they pushed too far and now look where they are.

Yup. In an age when a kilo of Gouda cheese costs $50, imagine some jerk thinking an hour of his labour outta be worth 30 bucks! Outrageous. And what could be better value for money, than paying Bill Clinton $100,000 to give a one hour speech.

I suppose Bill Clinton ought to be able to charge what he wants for his time. If he doesn't want to give a speech for less than $100,000, then so be it. Moreover, people paying him $100,000 to give a speech aren't going to do so if they don't think it's worth it. Generally, admission is charged to those events, and the events are used to raise funds. Is it not their decision to make, whether it's worth it to pay Bill that money?

Moreover, what an hour of labor is worth depends on the work and each person's opinion. A kilo of gouda cheese, to me, is not worth $50, and I'd never pay it. Moreover, I'd not pay $50 for an hour of a person's labor in mowing my lawn. Not worth it to me.

I don't begrudge anyone getting paid whatever. If something costs more than I am willing to pay or can afford, then I guess I don't pay for it. Moreover, labor cost is a variable cost of production of a good or service. So, the price of Gouda cheese is dependent in part on the fixed+variable costs, and then supply/demand. If the price as set by the supply/demand relationship goes below the fixed-variable costs, then the product will not be produced unless subsidized. If Gouda costs $50 a kilo now, and then you double the labor costs, what do you think will happen to the price? If the price can't go up because of supply/demand, then what happens to the producers? Those less able to survive go out of business. The larger "Big Cheese" folks survive and control more and more of the supply, allowing them more control over the price. They will reduce supply until it supports a price at which there can be a marginal profit over fixed and variable costs - in other words - an unintended consequence of legislating higher wage rates for Gouda Cheese workers may well be to kill the small cheese makers, empower Big Cheese, put many cheese workers out of work, and price much of the cheese customer base out of the Gouda market forcing them to buy cheaper cheeses.

[Warren Dew]

Without unions, things would be very unbalanced indeed. The power of capital, and its understandable desire to drive wages and conditions as low as possible, means that individual workers have little chance to gain a fair share if they act alone.

This must be why software engineers, who don't have unions, earn only minimum wage, rather than as much or more than unionized workers.

Oh wait, they make about the same as unionized auto workers! Guess you're mistaken.

Well, there is the factor of whether you have skills which are in demand, I agree. I didn't mean to imply the the degree of unionisation was the sole determinant of wage outcomes; other factors clearly operate.

What I am saying, however, that unions in general are vital to social justice in an industrial state, since they are often the sole means that workers have to protect them from the rapacious side of large scale capitalism.

Your two paragraphs contradict each other. If unions were the "sole means" workers had to protect themselves, and capitalism was "rapacious", then software engineers would be making minimum wage.

The fact that having skills that are in demand can drive wages up demonstrates that there's another means for workers to protect themselves: learning the skills that are needed in the economy.

It also demonstrates that corporations are not rapacious by nature: they are more than willing to bid up wages for valuable employees, and to provide better working conditions when that improves those employees' productivity. That is why places like Microsoft provide software engineers with private offices rather than putting them in cubicles - the productivity gains more than offset the costs.

In a modern economy, unions are only useful to offset second order effects of market power due to differences in the sizes of the negotiating unit. Skilled workers can still make good money, as demonstrated by wages in nonunionized auto plants in the U.S. south, which are comparable to those of unionized workers in Detroit; the unionized workers just get a few more benefits because the UAW is bigger than the auto companies, while the auto companies are bigger than the individual workers in the south.

The decline of Detroit also demonstrates the flip side of that equation: it's just as bad for the economy when the unions are bigger and have more negotiating power than the companies, as when the companies are large compared to individual workers. Things work better in cases like Boeing, where the unions are about the same size as the companies in terms of the number of employees concerned.

Unions may have been a bit more useful at the beginning of the 20th century, when technological changes associated with industrialization introduced workplace risks that were not well understood. They also benefited unionized workers trying to prevent themselves from being displaced by less skilled workers when assembly line methods were introduced, but from a societal standpoint that benefit was offset by damage to those less skilled workers, who were denied jobs.

[Coito ergo sum]

Without unions, things would be very unbalanced indeed. The power of capital, and its understandable desire to drive wages and conditions as low as possible, means that individual workers have little chance to gain a fair share if they act alone.

This must be why software engineers, who don't have unions, earn only minimum wage, rather than as much or more than unionized workers.

Oh wait, they make about the same as unionized auto workers! Guess you're mistaken.

Well, there is the factor of whether you have skills which are in demand, I agree. I didn't mean to imply the the degree of unionisation was the sole determinant of wage outcomes; other factors clearly operate.

What I am saying, however, that unions in general are vital to social justice in an industrial state, since they are often the sole means that workers have to protect them from the rapacious side of large scale capitalism.

Your two paragraphs contradict each other. If unions were the "sole means" workers had to protect themselves, and capitalism was "rapacious", then software engineers would be making minimum wage.

The fact that having skills that are in demand can drive wages up demonstrates that there's another means for workers to protect themselves: learning the skills that are needed in the economy.

Moreover, other means do exist. We have minimum wage and overtime laws that are applicable to nonunionized workers, as well as leave laws protecting people who take leave for family and medical reasons, to engage in jury duty, to care for a sick relative, to have a baby, to serve in the uniformed services, and the like. We have laws that protect people from adverse action for filing workers compensation claims and for engaging in other protected activities. We have laws protecting people from racial, sexual and other discrimination, and there are mechanisms including filing charges (at no cost to the employee) before the EEOC and equivalent state agencies and filing civil suits in court (which can often be handled on a contingency fee basis such that not much out of pocket money is spent by the employee in trying to vindicate their rights.

There are other means, that is.

It also demonstrates that corporations are not rapacious by nature: they are more than willing to bid up wages for valuable employees, and to provide better working conditions when that improves those employees' productivity. That is why places like Microsoft provide software engineers with private offices rather than putting them in cubicles - the productivity gains more than offset the costs.

I don't think it's rapaciousness. If someone comes to my house and offers to mow my lawn if I pay him $25, then I can either accept or reject. If I am only willing to spend $10 to have someone mow my lawn, or I would rather do it myself, then I will offer him $10. That's not being "rapacious" that's me paying what I'm willing to pay. I can't imagine it being immoral for me to do so, anymore than it would be immoral for that guy to offer to mow my lawn for $1000. I would not feel he was being "rapacious" in doing so - if his time is worth that much to him, then so be it.

A manager hiring an employee is the same. The manager has a need of a worker. He will pay as little as he can to fill the need. Why would he pay more than that?

It's like the scene in the movie Scarface when Omar is offering a job to Tony and Manolo shortly after they arrived from Cuba. They are offered $500 to do some sort of drug transaction, and Tony is offended. He says that the going rate is $1000 a night - "who do you think we are, baggage handlers?" Is what he angrily says. He is told that they must work their way up and get a better pay later. Tony responds, "And, that Rebenga hit? What was that? Nothing?" Omar responds - "don't you think we could have gotten someone else to do that job? Cheaper too! Fifty bucks!" Tony looks at him squarely and asks, "Then why didn't you, man?"

It's really that simple - people pay as little as they can for stuff. And, an employer is no more "rapacious" for paying an employee $10 an hour rather than $11 an hour, than a customer is "rapacious" for not offering to pay more for ground beef at the supermarket, or negotiating for a lower price at a garage sale.

[Seth]

Without unions, things would be very unbalanced indeed. The power of capital, and its understandable desire to drive wages and conditions as low as possible, means that individual workers have little chance to gain a fair share if they act alone.

This must be why software engineers, who don't have unions, earn only minimum wage, rather than as much or more than unionized workers.

Oh wait, they make about the same as unionized auto workers! Guess you're mistaken.

Well, there is the factor of whether you have skills which are in demand, I agree. I didn't mean to imply the the degree of unionisation was the sole determinant of wage outcomes; other factors clearly operate.

What I am saying, however, that unions in general are vital to social justice in an industrial state, since they are often the sole means that workers have to protect them from the rapacious side of large scale capitalism.

Your two paragraphs contradict each other. If unions were the "sole means" workers had to protect themselves, and capitalism was "rapacious", then software engineers would be making minimum wage.

The key words in Jim C's statement are "social justice." This is a Progressive code-word for forcible redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. It's based on the premise that a society is not just when economic inequality between the poorest and the wealthiest exists. This Progressive/Socialist concept does not care to examine the causes of income inequality, rather it presumes that the amount of wealth in an economy is a fixed number, and that no person can have more wealth unless other persons have less wealth. It's a zero-sum fallacy that is propounded as a part of the general Marxist/Socialist plan to foment class warfare by pointing to inequities and suggesting that the cause of the inequity is the "rapacious side of large scale capitalism," when in fact capitalism itself is not generally responsible for the inequities.

For the most part, economic inequity in a capitalist society is a function of human nature and may be exacerbated by pre-existing class structures that use the force of law to deny certain classes or groups opportunity to advance themselves economically. This system of legally-enforced class discrimination, which includes forms such as feudalism and hereditary aristocracy and monarchy, was what Marx and the other socialists thought they were facing when the notions they propounded came to the fore. Marxism was a solution to a genuine problem of the time. Not a good solution, but one that he felt was the only way to break the aristocracy and its class repression. Russia faced the same problem under the Tsars, and Marx's solution seemed the most expedient way to redistribute the wealth of the monarchs and landed gentry to the bulk of the people, given the fact that military repression of the lower classes was a commonplace method of preserving the power structure.

But the problem with socialism today is that it's an ideology in search of an enemy. Except in rare cases, hereditary aristocracy and monarchy do not have the power to legally or economically suppress the working classes, and so Marxism turns its attention to capitalistic economic inequality instead, because the lure of power is as strong for the Marxist elite as it is for a monarch.

But capitalism, sans legalized class repression such as that seen even today in India, with its caste system that legally prohibits certain classes from economic advancement by prohibiting them from engaging in certain occupations, creates economic inequality in an entirely different way and for entirely different reasons.

In a free market capitalist society, there are no legal barriers to the individual, as a member of some class or other, stepping out of that class and improving his economic condition through hard work and innovation. In fact, capitalism welcomes new ideas and hard work, and for every good, marketable idea with profit potential there is investment capital seeking a place to invest so it can earn a return on that investment. What is required to achieve economic mobility is a marketable idea and the personal drive to bring it to market. When someone does this, they prosper under capitalism, and so does society. History is replete with examples of individuals who have created a better mousetrap and prospered, from Thomas Edison to Henry Ford to Bill Gates. No one was repressed or enslaved to their service by a monarch. And while it is true that having capital makes it much easier to generate more capital, that does not mean that it is fundamentally unfair or unjust that some people have capital and others don't.

That's a function of complicated social, economic and personal factors that are primarily the responsibility of the individual to resolve.

The Progressive/Socialist term "social justice" means little more than "They have wealth, and I don't, and that's unjust." Because it's a deliberately obscure and imprecise term, it's nothing more than propaganda. It's an attempt to breed social unrest by convincing the poor that their plight is not their fault, but instead its the fault of the wealthy for having "all the wealth," as if wealth were a finite thing. Most important is the propagandistic argument that the poor are not poor because of their natural limitations or unwillingness to either work hard or accept risk, but rather they are only poor because the rich have stolen all the wealth are are hoarding it under their mattresses, and are thereby denying everyone else any economic or social justice.

This class-based propaganda is classic Marxist rhetoric. It sounds good to the underprivileged, but it deliberately refuses to examine why it is that the wealthy have wealth, how they acquired it, and what they ACTUALLY do with it. And that's where the "social justice" propaganda fails. When the facts are delivered, the social justice argument, along with Marxism, fall apart because they are concocted from a tissue of deliberate, carefully calculated lies that pander to the ignorance of the "disadvantaged" as part of a cynical ploy on the part of the Marxist elite to take power and control over the entire economy, and replace capitalist economic inequality with Marxist economic destruction and death.

And it is labor unions that are the primary advocates of Marxist revolutionary overthrow of the United States. Michael Lerner, a top official at SEIU, is currently engaged in a treasonous conspiracy with other union leaders and likely President Obama to foment another financial crisis in the banking industry by fomenting a "mortgage strike." He announced this plan not long ago, and it's already underway. The only reason anyone knows about it is thanks to Glenn Beck and his research team, who uncovered the conspiracy to commit economic terrorism and revealed it on his program two days ago. Already several Congresspersons are calling for a federal investigation, and with any luck, Lerner and his co-conspirators, which likely include other union leaders like Richard Trumka and other leftist icons like William Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn and Frances Fox Piven, will be arrested and charged.

While labor unions had a legitimate place in the early years of the Industrial Revolution, they are now beyond their usefulness when it comes to worker safety and rights, and they have become nothing more than wage negotiation instruments, and worst of all, the union bosses (not the membership) have stepped outside even that legitimate role and have become Marxist/Socialist/Progressive political machines that no longer represent the interests of the workers, but who are instead advocating and working for fundamental socialist transformation of the United States (and other nations).

There is nothing inherently wrong with workers unionizing for collective bargaining IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR. The dynamic between a private business owner and his employees is such that collective bargaining is beneficial to employees, but not so powerful, when not given inordinate power and influence by government, that it can harm business. The real problem is public sector unionization, which even arch-Progressive FDR flatly stated was not something that could ever be permitted.

But labor unions, at least at the top, are no longer interested in creating safe working conditions for employees and negotiating fair wage and benefit structures, they are about radical revolutionary Marxist reformation of society as a whole, and that cannot be permitted. And that's why the leadership of the major labor unions in the US who are now conspiring to overthrow the government of the United States by force using economic terrorism need to be arrested and charged with treason, among other federal offenses. And the President's collusion and complicity with the labor unions in this "fundamental transformation" is why he needs to be impeached, removed from office, arrested for treason, tried and sentenced.

[PsychoSerenity]

Inequality is often fair, such as when someone who works 50 hours gets paid more than someone who works only 40. It's also fair that someone who gets better results on the job and is a better performer would be compensated more.

I disagree with your concept of fairness here. Plenty of people spend time on unpaid activities or 'not working', doing things that are immensely beneficial to society eg caring, charity - and yet many 'jobs' that people might be doing are damaging to society, harmful to the environment etc

And when it comes to someone who is lucky enough to find themselves being paid for a job they're good at, why should that mean they deserve more than someone less fortunate?

I invite you to join the discussion of John Rawls theories in this thread. I'm not going to argue about it because I don't have the time, but I'd be interested to here your views of the arguments covered in the lecture.

[Seth]

Inequality is often fair, such as when someone who works 50 hours gets paid more than someone who works only 40. It's also fair that someone who gets better results on the job and is a better performer would be compensated more.

I disagree with your concept of fairness here. Plenty of people spend time on unpaid activities or 'not working', doing things that are immensely beneficial to society eg caring, charity - and yet many 'jobs' that people might be doing are damaging to society, harmful to the environment etc

So? What does personal charity or involvement in volunteer activities have to do with anything? The point is that if I work hard at my job digging ditches, and I can dig 50 feet of ditch in a day, and you are a lazy slacker who only digs 20 feet of ditch in a day, why should you receive the same compensation as I do? And if we receive equal compensation for digging a ditch, irrespective of how much ditch we dig in a day, why would I bother to dig 50 feet of ditch when I can get paid the same amount for digging only 20 feet of ditch, or perhaps 10 feet of ditch. If "social justice" is the metric for what one gets paid, pretty soon we're in a race to the bottom to see who can dig the least amount of ditch, or do the least amount of work, without getting fired. When socialism takes over, as in Cuba, where employment is a right, we quickly end up with grocery stores with 15 "employees" standing idly about smoking cigarettes and ignoring the few customers who enter to peruse the non-existent goods on the shelves. This is the natural course of events in a socialist society precisely because employment and compensation are seen as a right, and not as something one earns through the sweat of one's brow.

And when it comes to someone who is lucky enough to find themselves being paid for a job they're good at, why should that mean they deserve more than someone less fortunate?

Er, because they are good at their job and they produce wealth by working hard at it. Why should someone "less fortunate" by which I take it to mean "less qualified, skilled or willing to work hard so as to be of greater value to the employer," get paid as much as someone who has invested their own time and effort in becoming skilled and proficient at their job who works hard and produces more wealth for the employer?

I invite you to join the discussion of John Rawls theories in this thread. I'm not going to argue about it because I don't have the time, but I'd be interested to here your views of the arguments covered in the lecture.

I'll be over there once I've absorbed the arguments.

[Warren Dew]

The key words in Jim C's statement are "social justice." This is a Progressive code-word for forcible redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. It's based on the premise that a society is not just when economic inequality between the poorest and the wealthiest exists.

Well, except for the fact that labor unions don't redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor; they redistribute wealth from stockholders, who are largely retirees living on limited income, and poor nonunionized employees, to affluent unionized employees. If anything, they are redistibuting wealth from the poorer to the richer.

[Warren Dew]

And when it comes to someone who is lucky enough to find themselves being paid for a job they're good at, why should that mean they deserve more than someone less fortunate?

The point is, it's often hard work, not luck.

I invite you to join the discussion of John Rawls theories in this thread. I'm not going to argue about it because I don't have the time, but I'd be interested to here your views of the arguments covered in the lecture.

Rawls' theory rests on the assumption that people are infinitely risk averse - that given a choice between two societies, without knowing their position in the societies, they will always choose the society where the least well off person is better off, for fear of being that least well off person, no matter how much worse off that makes everyone else.

Rawls' assumption, of course, means that no one would ever buy a $1 lottery ticket even if their chances of winning $1,000,000 were 99%, because they'd be so afraid of that 1% chance of losing their $1. In fact, almost everyone would buy such a ticket. Rawls only manages to duck this issue by avoiding any quantitative analysis when he asserts this faulty assumption.

It's only by ducking this issue that Rawls manages to justify a society where the harder working people are basically treated as slaves to maximize the utility of the indigent.

[Seth]

The key words in Jim C's statement are "social justice." This is a Progressive code-word for forcible redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. It's based on the premise that a society is not just when economic inequality between the poorest and the wealthiest exists.

Well, except for the fact that labor unions don't redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor; they redistribute wealth from stockholders, who are largely retirees living on limited income, and poor nonunionized employees, to affluent unionized employees. If anything, they are redistibuting wealth from the poorer to the richer.

How very true. But then again the Marxist elite never were really interested in proletarian equality, they are interested, like any tyrant is, in gaining power and privilege for themselves by using the stupidity of the lumpen proletariat to their advantage. You don't see Castro living in a hovel in the slums of Havana, now do you?

[JimC]

Coito Ergo Sum wrote:

Moreover, other means do exist. We have minimum wage and overtime laws that are applicable to nonunionized workers, as well as leave laws protecting people who take leave for family and medical reasons, to engage in jury duty, to care for a sick relative, to have a baby, to serve in the uniformed services, and the like. We have laws that protect people from adverse action for filing workers compensation claims and for engaging in other protected activities. We have laws protecting people from racial, sexual and other discrimination, and there are mechanisms including filing charges (at no cost to the employee) before the EEOC and equivalent state agencies and filing civil suits in court (which can often be handled on a contingency fee basis such that not much out of pocket money is spent by the employee in trying to vindicate their rights.

In most industrialised countries, certainly in Australia, those basic rights (certainly the ones involving the workplace) were established, inch by inch, by tenacious union action over many years, usually in the face of vehement opposition by the big money end of town. The fact that those rights are applied to non-union folk now does not change the history. Of course, others were involved in this process of protecting workers, but unions were at the heart of it.

I'm union, always have been, always will be. Simple as that.

I suspect that this attitude is much more common in Oz than in the US, where there seems to be a great deal of demonization of unions...

[Coito ergo sum]

Inequality is often fair, such as when someone who works 50 hours gets paid more than someone who works only 40. It's also fair that someone who gets better results on the job and is a better performer would be compensated more.

I disagree with your concept of fairness here. Plenty of people spend time on unpaid activities or 'not working', doing things that are immensely beneficial to society eg caring, charity - and yet many 'jobs' that people might be doing are damaging to society, harmful to the environment etc

That may be true, but doesn't change the fact that if two people are doing the same job, and one person performs better at that job, fundamental fairness would have the better performer compensated more (all else being equal).

Moreover, the fact that something is "of value to society" is not an objectively knowable thing. It's like morality or goodness - what you might think is of value, I might think is worthless. That's why the system has generally been that when I'm dealing with my money, I can spend it on what I think it is of value, and when dealing with your money you can spend it on what you think is good or valuable. So, when I am an employer, and I assess Ted's performance better than Bill's performance, isn't it fair that I pay Bill more than Ted?

And when it comes to someone who is lucky enough to find themselves being paid for a job they're good at, why should that mean they deserve more than someone less fortunate?

That's all just a matter of opinion. A job pays what it pays, whether one or the other "deserves" something isn't even really an understandable question. Does someone who "needs" money more than someone else "deserve" to be paid more? I don't think so, at least not necessarily so. Example: If I am very disciplined and frugal, and work from age 18 to 28 hard, and spend little, go on few vacations, don't drink, don't smoke, and invest wisely. Another guy on the same job for the same time period from age 18 to 28, spends his money like water, takes expensive vacations, drinks and smokes, and invests in risky vehicles and is in serious debt. We both have equal performance records on the job, though. Does he deserve more money? Or, do I? Or, do we deserve the same? What if my performance on the job is demonstrably better? Does that change anything?

I invite you to join the discussion of John Rawls theories in this thread. I'm not going to argue about it because I don't have the time, but I'd be interested to here your views of the arguments covered in the lecture.

O.k.

[Ayaan]

Coito Ergo Sum wrote:

Moreover, other means do exist. We have minimum wage and overtime laws that are applicable to nonunionized workers, as well as leave laws protecting people who take leave for family and medical reasons, to engage in jury duty, to care for a sick relative, to have a baby, to serve in the uniformed services, and the like. We have laws that protect people from adverse action for filing workers compensation claims and for engaging in other protected activities. We have laws protecting people from racial, sexual and other discrimination, and there are mechanisms including filing charges (at no cost to the employee) before the EEOC and equivalent state agencies and filing civil suits in court (which can often be handled on a contingency fee basis such that not much out of pocket money is spent by the employee in trying to vindicate their rights.

In most industrialised countries, certainly in Australia, those basic rights (certainly the ones involving the workplace) were established, inch by inch, by tenacious union action over many years, usually in the face of vehement opposition by the big money end of town. The fact that those rights are applied to non-union folk now does not change the history. Of course, others were involved in this process of protecting workers, but unions were at the heart of it.

I'm union, always have been, always will be. Simple as that.

I suspect that this attitude is much more common in Oz than in the US, where there seems to be a great deal of demonization of unions...

Three words for those of you who think unions are evil entities: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

[Coito ergo sum]

Coito Ergo Sum wrote:

Moreover, other means do exist. We have minimum wage and overtime laws that are applicable to nonunionized workers, as well as leave laws protecting people who take leave for family and medical reasons, to engage in jury duty, to care for a sick relative, to have a baby, to serve in the uniformed services, and the like. We have laws that protect people from adverse action for filing workers compensation claims and for engaging in other protected activities. We have laws protecting people from racial, sexual and other discrimination, and there are mechanisms including filing charges (at no cost to the employee) before the EEOC and equivalent state agencies and filing civil suits in court (which can often be handled on a contingency fee basis such that not much out of pocket money is spent by the employee in trying to vindicate their rights.

In most industrialised countries, certainly in Australia, those basic rights (certainly the ones involving the workplace) were established, inch by inch, by tenacious union action over many years, usually in the face of vehement opposition by the big money end of town. The fact that those rights are applied to non-union folk now does not change the history. Of course, others were involved in this process of protecting workers, but unions were at the heart of it.

I'm union, always have been, always will be. Simple as that.

I suspect that this attitude is much more common in Oz than in the US, where there seems to be a great deal of demonization of unions...

I wouldn't call it "demonization" of unions. But, I do find that unions tend to want to grab all the credit and all the virtue in the debate. Union folk tend to the self-righteous and to grab for the high ground of the debate - and there are plenty of union folks in the US who demonize nonunion folk, suggesting that opposition to anything a union supports or wants is tantamount to a crime, and certainly immoral. Heck, people just need to agree with Franklin Roosevelt's view that public sector unions ought not be able to strike against the public interest, and we're told we might as well want children to labor 16 hours a day in factories for tuppence a day. If that's not "demonization" then what is?

And, I'll direct you to the example I gave above, where I happened to stumble into the crosshairs of pissed off union workers on strike. Damn! They tried to star nail my tires so I'd get a flat. I kept the nails as a souvenir.

I don't blame unions for the ills of the world, and I 100% support their existence and the right to collectively bargain under the law. I do not, however, think that means I have to support every demand and ever bit of fist-shaking I see on the part of union folks. There is a sense of entitlement there that I find distasteful - like in my example where it was assumed that I, a third party to the dispute, had to support the strikers. What if my father was the manager of the store? What if I had stock in the company? What if I just didn't feel the matter important to me? The assumption the union folks had that I had to comply with their demands and support them, or there would be CRIMINAL reprisals was disconcerting to me. And, look at some of the goings-on regarding the teachers in Wisconsin - lying to their employer and taking "sick" days to engage in protest activities...

[Coito ergo sum]

Coito Ergo Sum wrote:

Moreover, other means do exist. We have minimum wage and overtime laws that are applicable to nonunionized workers, as well as leave laws protecting people who take leave for family and medical reasons, to engage in jury duty, to care for a sick relative, to have a baby, to serve in the uniformed services, and the like. We have laws that protect people from adverse action for filing workers compensation claims and for engaging in other protected activities. We have laws protecting people from racial, sexual and other discrimination, and there are mechanisms including filing charges (at no cost to the employee) before the EEOC and equivalent state agencies and filing civil suits in court (which can often be handled on a contingency fee basis such that not much out of pocket money is spent by the employee in trying to vindicate their rights.

In most industrialised countries, certainly in Australia, those basic rights (certainly the ones involving the workplace) were established, inch by inch, by tenacious union action over many years, usually in the face of vehement opposition by the big money end of town. The fact that those rights are applied to non-union folk now does not change the history. Of course, others were involved in this process of protecting workers, but unions were at the heart of it.

I'm union, always have been, always will be. Simple as that.

I suspect that this attitude is much more common in Oz than in the US, where there seems to be a great deal of demonization of unions...

Three words for those of you who think unions are evil entities: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

Has anyone actually called them "evil?"

[Ayaan]

Just taking a bit of dramatic license.