Rich's Views

Once upon a time, unions were needed in this country and served a useful and needed function. However, like fairy tales that you grow out of, unions are no longer needed in America.

I have only worked at one place that was unionized, and the union did absolutely nothing for me or anybody that I knew who worked there. My mother worked for a company at an airport that was unionized, when the contracts with that company and the airport were up for renewal the cost of keeping a unionized company was over twice what other competing companies were bidding. Needless to say, my mother lost her job and the union did nothing for her or the other hundreds of people who also lost their jobs.

Please don’t get me wrong, unions played a large part in the country becoming great, but, in recent history they are what are wrong with this country.

Several years ago in Indianapolis, IN a union for the mechanics of a large airline threatened to go on strike, demanding higher pay, better benefits, and more time off. As it was, the company was losing over $1,000,000.00 a day due to having planes that could not fly, route changes, and hanger fees, due to a mechanics “slow down” that was supposed to drive home their demands. The airline told the union that they were barely able to stay competitive and that in order to give the mechanics what the union was demanding that it would effectively run the company out of business. The union would not budge and voted to go on strike until their demands were met. Once the strike was official, the airline had no choice but to close the hub and layoff hundreds of workers. The union did support the mechanics by giving them each two weeks of pay that amounted to 50% of their normal pay.

Now America is in a recession that may deepen into a depression and this is due in no small amount to unions. Unions are so feared by companies that even the mention of them can close a store, manufacturing facilities. I worked for a company that services
the trucking industry. This company has annual revenue of over eight billion dollars, yes, billion, a year. The plant that I worked at was non-union and we were told on several occasions that if a union was invited into our location, the company would not hesitate to close the doors and move to another city or state. Why on earth would a company be so afraid of a union? While the location that I worked at was non-union, the company did have several dozen union shops that were doing the almost exactly the same things we did, those locations received on average 30% higher pay but was only producing 60% of our daily output. Oh, I can’t forget to mention that we had about 15-20% fewer employees at our location, if you take out the call center that only our location had, then the numbers get even more out of proportion.

Since the company that I worked for was directly related to the over all auto industry we were kept up to date with all the latest information on the big three auto makers in America. One item that was repeated over and over was how much money the unions were making and how much less expensive the average automobile would coast if there were no unions. How about $2000 - $3000.00 per automobile, sounds crazy right? Unfortunately it is fact. Now we have one of the biggest companies that ever existed in America about to go out of business or at the very least become a shadow of it’s former self, of course I’m talking about General Motors.

How many people have to lose their jobs before we as a country say enough is enough, and stop supporting unions? We no longer need unions as we once did. What we need now, is for unions to transform themselves into entities that not only look out for and support the employee, but also look out for the company. We cannot forget that unions are a business as well, but a business that cannot change with the times is doomed to fail. One of the definitions of insanity is: something utterly foolish or unreasonable. Isn’t it insanity that we allow a company to force another company to increase wages, benefits, which affect us, all, and if allowed to continue unchecked will destroy the other company?

You and I both pay the price for unions, and it is time that we stop paying a price that will eventually lead all of us to the door steps of insanity.

Rich the Insanity Guy