Labor Unions

You know who I'm talking about. Those people that stand around outside, holding signs, not working, and demanding money. No, not hoboes. That's right, union workers!

As far as I'm concerned, all that they do is just "gum up the works". Don't get me wrong, they were a good idea in the beginning getting those damned kids out of the factories and lobbying congress for labor reforms. The thing is, all of that productive stuff that they used to do has long since been forgotten by the unions, or as I will refer to them: "whiny sons of bitches". Every thing that you hear about those whiny sons of bitches are striking, embezzling, or making life generally more expensive.

The original function of these organizations was to insure members against unemployment, ill health, old age and funeral expenses, to employ collective bargaining to secure appropriate wages and working conditions, and to lobby political interests for reform. When is actually the last time that any of that actually happened? Originally they were the ones that helped to bring about a national minimum wage and the eight hour work day.

Now what we have to put up with is several organized groups of people that claim responsibility for vary narrow fields of expertise. You will have one union to bring the equipment to the site, another to unload it, another to install it, another to wire it, another to calibrate it, and yet another to paint it. Keep in mind that sometimes you have all of these people tripping all over each other at a job site and what will end up happening is that the work goes slower. Luckily, this is only the situation in a closed shop state. In these states, the whiny sons of bitches lobbied to ensure that any job being done in the state has to hire union labor directly from the hiring hall. And what do you get for this luxury? You get to hire people that have some training (albeit, it doesn't necessarily make them skilled, per se), get to pay exorbitant amounts of money for these people, and have to bow to the every whim of the union. That's what the labor unions of today have afforded us. Now, there are other situations, too. There are the union shop states that say you can hire people outside of the union, but they have to join the union before a certain time, and there are agency shops where the non-union workers have to pay the union for negotiating their contracts.

Luckily, there are also the open shops or "rght to work" states in which the other forms have been viewed as discrimination and hence the non-union workers do not have to affiliate with the union at all, but do benefit from their actions.

Right now in the Denver metro area, there is a strike going on. The local Amalgamated Transit Union has decided to strike, making good on a threat that they have been making every spring for years. What happened is that the bus drivers for the public transportation system in Denver have decided that the livelihoods of the people in Denver that rely on this transportation to get to their jobs, between towns or to the games is less important than their immediate interests. Right now, less than half of the buses and none of the light rail trains are running. How do the union workers gain from this? Well, they might get a few more cents an hour. Right now, the whiny sons of bitches are not working (hence, not making any money), they will get strike pay, but that amounts to only $150 per week and they only get that if the strike goes into its third week (transit strikes typically last two), and they get to piss all of the people that depend on the buses and light rail to get around. "Well, what choice do they have?", you might be saying to yourself. Well, they could have taken the transit authority's offer (which is actually what the union was suggesting) and then try and negotiate something better down the line.

To wrap it all up, labor unions are creating high costs of living and an inconvenience for the rest of us. They are basically a large organization of skilled workers that have the disposition of a 3-year-old child. When they don't get what they want, they stamp their feet, they whine, and they drag their feet and refuse to go to their room. Yeah, sure, America was founded on the ideals of standing up for what you believe in (no divorces and killing Indians) but this doesn't apply to being so headstrong that you are willing to inconvenience thousands for a few extra dollars in your paycheck at the end of the week. Seriously, hoboes have a better work ethic. They take what they can get and if they don't like the pay, the move onto greener pastures.

Basically, Labor Unions are destroying America.


Next time: Hippies