Quote:
Originally Posted by bloomautomatic
1. Country wide, they may only have 7% of the workforce, but in this case they appear to be pretty much 100%. Based on the enforcement of this jobs bank program alone, I'd say they're pretty powerful.
2. The amount they're paid is up to agreements between labor and management, but when it is significantly higher than other assembly jobs that require similar aptitude, and the company is losing money, then I would say it's too high.
Here's a hypothetical. Let's say UPS workers get paid twice as much as FedEx workers for the same job. UPS carries on for years with inflated rates, allowing them to pay their workers this rate. If the economy slows down, and UPS gets to the verge of collapse, it wouldn't have to be a socialist to say their labor costs are too high. To me, paying their workers higher than market rate and expecting a government bail out sounds socialist. Apply the same model to raw materials. If they'd be voluntarily paying more than the market rate for steel to make the cars, would you argue that the gov't should give them a bailout so they can continue to pay that inflated price?
3. I think government intervention in private business should be kept to a minimum, on all sides.
And for the record, I was in SMWIA Local 12 for 11 years and I still work in a Union shop. Unions can be a good thing, but it seems like they're looking out for their own bank accounts as much as they are the workers'.
Vince
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Good points.
1. Yes, although there are several non-union auto shops in the U.S., union density is much higher in the industry than it is in general. But it seemed to me Dredly was making a more general statement on the "power" of unions in this country.
2. Fair enough, but this is where union density on a national and international scale comes into effect. If the hypothetical example is the case then the IBT simply needs to do a better job of trying to organize FedEx. Now when we're talking about (especially manufacturing) industries that have international competition for the same markets, the issue gets more complicated. Labor must globalize to meet the globalization of capital.
I'll give you an example-- the UAW has done very little to forge working relationships with foreign autoworker unions. Recently Hyundai set up a non-union factory in Alabama. The korean autoworker union is powerful and militant. If the UAW and the korean autoworkers had a better relationship they could have prevented the factory from being built without a card-check neutrality agreement. The UAW and other such American unions need to work with other unions overseas to try to better equalize labor costs, otherwise factories will keep moving to places with the cheapest labor, creating a global race to the bottom in terms of wages and working conditions. Hell, even Mexican workers have seen their jobs shipped to China in recent years-- and, ironies of ironies, after NAFTA Mexican farmers lost their jobs to US farm conglomerates using illegal Mexican labor!
Which brings me to my next point. As voters we need to oppose free-trade deals that don't have labor protections. In Mexico (like China) most unions are corrupt and run by the government and corporations and actually conspire with them to keep the wages of their own members down! And we wonder why jobs keep going there. We talk a lot about China's currency manipulation but very little of their manipulation of organized labor to keep labor costs low.
3. Yes, unions are institutions and thus are worried about their own interests including their treasuries. Now when it comes to union bureaucrats stuffing their own pockets this is definitely a bad thing, but a wealthy union can also do right by their members in terms of sustaining expensive contract campaigns, and it also allows them to organize new members into the union. And high union density in a given industry improves the benefits and wages for even non-union workers in that industry as well.