RateItAll: The Opinion Network

Over the years I belonged to two different unions--one was a craft union and the other was an industrial union. Unions helped build America, and that is a fact of life.

I even went to union meetings, and I look back rather fondly on them now. Can you believe that Hubert Humphrey was once a leading light in organized labor? I have to chuckle at some of the stuff that went on at those meetings, but they were part of the times and places. Some of the speeches made were really a hoot!

The decline of the old style unions is a bad sign for America. It is a sign that the heart is being cut out of this country! The de-industrialization of America is one of the direct causes of the decline of organized labor. I can't speak of the new breed of service employee unions since I don't have any experience with them.

Quite frankly, with the wages being paid to service employees, if they are organized, the unions aren't doing them much good. The decline and exploitation of the American blue collar worker is a shame and disgrace and will do much harm to this country in the future. In some respects I am glad that I am as old as I am so I won't have to face as much of the future as most of the rest of you on this site.

I don't care if you are a liberal or a conservative or a libertarian or a vegetarian. The de-industrialization of America, with its symptoms of the declining labor movement is bad, bad for our country.

I belong to one. Unions benefit everyone when they are first being formed; unions hurt everyone when they've been around too long. But isn't it the same with all institutions? The work of organizing, the debate that takes place in a union meeting, and so forth, can make you feel that you have a say in making your own world. Yes, it can also feel deadening, but that's the way anything that runs on a more-or-less democratic proceduralism works. Yet I think that there may be a need for reform in the matter of unions' relationships to state governments. Most undue political influence seems to occur at the state level: in California, the prison-guard union practically writes the state budget; in Massachusetts, you can't employ a flagman who isn't a fully trained, unionized police officer (and entitled to the wage thereof), and in Boston specifically, union restrictions kept the movie industry out of the city until quite recently. But for all the abuses at the state level, there is a tremendous vacuum at the national level. One of the only survivors of the original Bush Cabinet, Elaine Chao, doesn't really believe in unions. I doubt that Bush has ever sat down with a union leader. It's sad to see all that good work not get recognized at the national level.

For the most part exept for public/Goverment employees/Workers

This is one of my most ambivalent political issues. Unions have helped physical laborers attain a more equitable compensation for their often life-shortening work and given employees an advocate against managerial abuses. However, there inefficiencies are a drain on a true free market system and they have had a history of corruption. There are going to be those who take advantage of workers on the management side to benefit the company, but there are also going to be those who would make a living by profiteering off the dues paid by union members, like so many sycophants.

They aren't perfect, have a strong organized crime element, and are often in cahoots with management anyway. Granted. But unions vary greatly by place and by the type of job one has in terms of strength. Unions helped a lot of immigrants, ethnics, veterans, and working class people better their lives in the past, many of my relatives are blue collar types and belong to them, and for all of their faults there was a time when 5 year old kids worked in tunnels, when people got screwed out of their money, and when the fat cats held ALL, or virtually all, of the power, and we are heading back to the old ways in the latter two things. I say reform the unions, but don't weaken them , which is something that Reagan was very good at BTW. I come from Massachusetts originally, and in cities like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, unions are respected and the old nightmarish conditions aren't forgotten. In Indianapolis, where I live now, a lot of people are afraid of unions because frankly management is far more powerful, they spread outlandish rumors about unions which have some basis in fact, but are simply exaggerations and half-truths: and you have little to no recourse if you've got a problem, it's an "at will" state, which is total B.S. in my view. People act like the union is the boogeyman, with all sorts of ludicrous claims about them, and frankly I find that disturbing.

The right to bargain collectively is pretty basic. It's just you and a monster otherwise.

What's never mentioned about Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters is that, while he was in cahoots with organized crime elements (Tony Pro, Russell Bufalino, et al), he also managed to better the living standards of the people he represented. Also never mentioned is that organized labor resorted to the organized crime element because management was there first, hiring organized crime muscle to keep workers in line. It's an element of American history that most people are completely unaware of. When did we reach a stage where people trying to earn a living were the enemy?

Though is pains me to say it, labor unions are dinosaurs destined for the tar pits, and the reasons are obvious. First, while they look good on paper, their actual practices parallel the sloth and waste of your typical government (just another layer of bureaucratic garbage in an overflowing landfill). They've spent countless hours thumping the protectionist lectern while the rest of the developed world busied itself with replicating past successes elsewhere in an effort to spread capitalism (which segues nicely into reason number two). In an expected paradox, unions are victims of their own prosperity; businesses can't keep increasing wages along past percentages without either a cut in raw materials costs (unlikely), or price hikes for finished products, as the only buyers of said products would be mid-tier union members! So, what's a company to do? Buy time by setting up the same shop in developing countries where you can cut labor costs by nearly 80%. Much to the chagrin of big business, this may only work for the next 50 years, as lifestyles change, wages increase, and labor unions become more prevalent. After that, things will probably evolve into an international game of ping-pong, where strikes, layoffs, and corporate reorganizings overseas will bring jobs back to these shores, and vice versa. Around 2070, the world's gonna look a WHOLE lot different than it does now.

I can't believe the sh#t I'm reading. Yes, Labor Unions have corruption and problems, but the decline of (1) wages, (2) ability of people that can afford health care, and (3) rights of workers has dropped drastically in the last 20 years in relation to the 20 Year decline in Organized labor. I'll be the first one to tell an ex-union member to stop complaining and go to college- but the anti-union viciousness I read is symptomatic of the compete lack of interest of the American media and political system of giving one rat's ass about the American worker. Where did Americans learn to not give a sh#t? Everywhere. The companies that have made fiscal and philosophical mistakes don't get half the bad press that those terrible labor unions absorb from insulated middle-and-upper-class softies.

One reason labor unions are useless: Pepsi

There was a time when labor unions served a purpose- now they're just organized crime syndicates that bilk the tax payers for inflated expenses that retard the growth of the economy and enrich the administrators and union bosses. Union membership is shrinking in the private sector primarily because our economy as produced sustained growth save for two quarters for over 2 decades. Where union membership as entrenched itself deeply is in education- where the expenses keep rising and the establishment keeps failing.