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Unions are Killing America

Interesting note from Russell Roberts, in the Los Angeles Times [1]: (Not exactly a right-wing outlet…)

LABOR UNIONS’ importance in the workplace has fallen steadily since 1950, when roughly a third of American workers were unionized. Today, that number is well below 10% in the private sector….

But maybe unions aren’t so crucial to worker well-being. When more than 90% of the private-sector labor force isn’t unionized, why do 97% of us earn above the minimum wage? If our bargaining power is so pitiful, why don’t greedy employers exploit us and drive wages down to the legal minimum?

The simple answer is that bargaining power comes from having alternatives. Even in the absence of unions, employers have to treat workers well to attract and keep them. In a workplace as dynamic as that of the United States, where millions of jobs are destroyed and created every quarter, a company’s ability to exploit workers is greatly limited by how easy it is to find another job.

Somehow, as unions’ strength dwindled over the decades, employees’ share actually grew. And it’s a share of a dramatically larger pie, the result of the incredible economic boom of the last half a century.

… and the places where Unions are still in force? How are THEY doing? Apparently, not so well.an Let’s take the UAW, as an example… all three domestic car companies loosing money by the boatload, and 90% of the blame, resting on the Unions and their overly costly contracts. The costs involved with them..(The salary demands the Healthcare costs the retirement expenses) are simply too large for any company to fund, and particularly one under the kind of governmental constraint that the automakers are within the past 25 years.

There are those who will suggest that the problem is that the cars being designed are inferior and there’s some validity to that claim. Trouble with that assessment is, with the operating expenses they need to deal with, designs have to be scaled back to keep the price points for each model within sight of its competition.

Let’s also examine the other major player in the world of unions today; the government worker.Which would include the government run schools [2].  I posted to this point most recently back in 2004, and I’m not even going to bother going there today, other than to suggest we’re dealing wityh what amounts to PAC’s that use thugs to enforce their income methods.  BitsBlog readers are smart enough to figure that out on their own.

I’ll say it again, my freinds, Unions are killing America.

It is fortunate indeed, that they have less power, and are therefore doing it more slowly, of late.  But it still comes down to a very predictable end, assuming they have any power at all .

But at least now, we have working proofs that they don’t provide the societal benfits they claim.