In Defense Of Unions

[I have a couple friends I've known for years.  Both are great guys, I love 'em both and see them regularly.  We talk about all sorts of stuff, across the spectrum.  And sometimes our little chats provide me with blog material.  My friends don't always agree with me, but luckily they have a good sense of humor and read my shit anyway.]
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Recently I found myself discussing organized labor with a couple friends.  I've never been a member of any employee union and neither have they.  I support unions.  They do not.

I support unions for all the positive things organized labor and collective bargaining have brought to the advanced nations of the world -- reduced worker exploitation, improved wages and wage protection, workplace safety, employee benefits, workers compensation insurance, unemployment insurance, etc.

My friends acknowledge these things, but are still opposed to unions on general principles which they find rather difficult to express -- pretty much it's the automatic assumption that unions are always "bad" and management is always "good," that unions do nothing but add anti-competitive costs to employers.  At best, they said, public-sector unions might be OK, but private-sector unions were no good.  I didn't ask why they drew this dubious distinction.  I'll bet autoworkers, steelworkers, communications workers, miners, railroad workers, longshoremen, textile workers, etc. would love to hear the explanation.

Perhaps my buddies are fans of union-busting Scott Walker, who just signed a "Right To Work" law in Wisconsin.  Right-to-work weakens private-sector unions and is a dishonest euphemism for "right to work for less." 
http://bustergammons.blogspot.com/2012/12/right-is-wrong.html

Walker and others claim that unless they have right-to-work laws, they'll be unable to attract new business, and current business will leave their state for a right-to-work state.  By that logic, (a.) All businesses should already be clustered in whatever the first state was to pass right-to-work, and/or (b.) Since it's such a great idea, soon every state will be right-to-work with no competitive advantage for any state.

Perhaps they don't realize that American organized labor has less influence today than at any point in the last 70 years.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 11.2% of U.S. employees were union members in 2014.  The rate was 20.1% in 1983, and 28.3% in 1954.  Of all public-sector workers, 35.7% are in unions.  In the private sector, it's just 6.6%.  If you're anti-union, where's the problem?  What's your bitch, exactly?  That unions still exist at all?  That membership isn't zero?  That may sound good to a wanker like Walker, but it would be a bad idea for all of us.
http://ideas.time.com/2013/01/29/viewpoint-why-the-decline-of-unions-is-your-problem-too/

When unions were at their peak, our economy was robust, income variation/inequality was far less severe than today, and the mythical "American Dream" was within reach for a much larger portion of the population than today. 

Back in the 1970's, I knew a man many years my senior who worked at the steel mill as a shift worker, a laborer.  He'd worked there for decades and would eventually retire from there.  He was, forgive me, an uneducated bumpkin, but his career at the mill afforded him the opportunity to buy a home in a suburban subdivision, own two cars, have medical and dental insurance, enjoy paid vacations, pay for his child to attend parochial school and college, and retire with a good pension and a wife who never worked a day in her life.  Yet until the day he died, he complained bitterly about the steelworkers union of which he was a member -- never had a good word to say, convinced his union dues were nothing but legalized theft.

Some people just can't recognize a good thing even while they're personally benefiting from it.  So I guess it's understandable that those who've never been part of a union (and that's most of us) find it so easy to piss all over organized labor -- it's unlikely you'll pee on anyone you know.

It's easy to believe that lazy union workers are getting away with murder -- doing less and getting more than others doing the same work, and adding huge costs for all the rest of us hard-working, honest Americans.  Anti-union ideologues encourage this "unfairness" angle every day.

Maybe my buddies think that way.  To Dr. Buster, it sounds like a clear case of union envy.  My prescription is that they form unions at their own workplaces and get a piece of the action.  And if they really hold the strong belief that no one should get more than another for a given task, that equal pay and benefits should attach to equal work, then maybe my pals are -- aha! -- secret Communists!

Just kidding!  Dosvedanya, comrades.  And look for the union label.