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Re: Union Pacific sinks to a new low
Author: Mike Swanson
Date: 06-03-2010 - 21:45
You're comparing apples and oranges, my friend. There is a big difference between government employees who are mostly white-collar and rarely have to work more than 40 hours a week and blue-collar employees of a Class 1 railroad who are often miles away from home working out in the middle of nowhere and are lucky if they only have to work 40 hours in a given week. It's equally pointless to compare family-owned and operated businesses with a few dozen (at the most) employees with a Fortune 500 corporation whose board of directors typically place the needs of their workers at the bottom of their priority list. (That's not a criticism, BTW; there's no real need for a board of directors to concern itself with that issue when they have a human resources department to deal with it. Of course, that doesn't mean that said HR dept. will give two hoots about the guys on the shop floor, or that said guys are gonna like the results...)
I agree that some unions (and their members) have indeed "grown bigger than their britches" and either need to change their ways or simply go away, but there are still plenty of situations where having union representation is still necessary. It's easy to talk about direct barganing with the company, but what happens when that company's not willing to really bargain with individuals, much less with a workforce that hasn't really tried to coordinate its negotiating efforts at all? It's ridiculously easy for white-collar professional types who've never set foot in an industrial environment to @#$%& and moan about "parasitic" and "worthless" labor unions; you won't hear that from a blue-collar worker who risks life and limb every workday and would be getting paid peanuts (and have next to nothing for benefits) if it wasn't for the unions. I don't like how some unions operate, and I agree that some of them have indeed hurt some American industries (such as the automotive and steel industries, although it's fair to say that management - or lack of it - is equally to blame for that), but there's still a need for labor unions, like it or not.
I agree that some unions (and their members) have indeed "grown bigger than their britches" and either need to change their ways or simply go away, but there are still plenty of situations where having union representation is still necessary. It's easy to talk about direct barganing with the company, but what happens when that company's not willing to really bargain with individuals, much less with a workforce that hasn't really tried to coordinate its negotiating efforts at all? It's ridiculously easy for white-collar professional types who've never set foot in an industrial environment to @#$%& and moan about "parasitic" and "worthless" labor unions; you won't hear that from a blue-collar worker who risks life and limb every workday and would be getting paid peanuts (and have next to nothing for benefits) if it wasn't for the unions. I don't like how some unions operate, and I agree that some of them have indeed hurt some American industries (such as the automotive and steel industries, although it's fair to say that management - or lack of it - is equally to blame for that), but there's still a need for labor unions, like it or not.
