by Hal Eaton » Thu Mar 03, 2011 10:57 am
I cannot profess to know-all, see-all, or be-all with regard to labor unions, but here's my $.02 worth:
{My dad was a labor union organizer approximately 100 years ago. I was a union member while working for the Wilson meat-packing co. in 1943 (I joined because my fellow workers urged me to, else "no one would help me" . . .) I worked twice for the Railroad Terminal Co, (Kansas City, MO) but resisted pressure to join the union. I worked for GM in management positions (Personnel and Maintenance) and had to deal daily with union representatives. I worked for a deliberately non-union company, organized by former GM executives who had experienced the excesses of labor unions. And, finally, I remember the sermon topic on a Unitarian church sign in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1952, which read, "Why Rhode Island sholuld be a Closed Shop State." Ethics rears its ugly head . . .}
I listen to the news commentators, belaboring us all with references to the rights of workers to collective bargaining.
I am well aware that the clarion call of "Power to the Workers" is a seductive appeal, but the resulting action must be called extortion.
Laborers organize. Then their first action is to demand a greater share of the results of their efforts in the form of better pay, more vacation, shorter hours, and beneficial retirement emoluments. In earlier times, such desires were admittedly both necessary and venial, due to the attitudes and actions of the "robber-barons."
Today the pressure on "management" takes the form of extortion: if our demands or not met, we will "strike," thus depriving the company of its profit-making venture. Organized police will not maintain security; firemen will not put out fires; teachers will not teach; automobiles will not be built . . .
When such demands are met, often the final result is bankruptcy -- of businesses, cities, counties, states, or even Uncle Sam.
Even the vagaries of language are used in the psychological process of defining the parameters of the dispute: Those who try to work during the event of a strike are called "scabs." (Yuck!)
One more thought: The Democratic legislators who have left Wisconsin are practicing collective bargaining, much to the disdain of Republicans.
As always, "Power tends to currupt. Absolute power currupts absolutely."
It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry. -- Thomas Paine