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There are good things and bad things about unions but painting them all as somehow bad is a bit extreme. Of course, there are Japanese auto unions as there will
by sown 18y ago
There are good things and bad things about unions but painting them all as somehow bad is a bit extreme. Of course, there are Japanese auto unions as there will be in China.
As the son of a man who was a APWU union man who worked himself to the bone for the family, my own personal experience can attest that the only thing that kept management's abusive treatment of their workers, like my dad, in check, was the union. While balance is a issue of most things, just blaming unions carte-blanche and saying we don't need them is...harsh.
- mattmaroon 18y agoWhat abusive treatment? The market doesnt value people who work at car factories very highly because their job is so easy that anyone even slightly more intelligent than a chimpanzee can do it. The supply of able workers is pretty near 100% of the population. The reason programmers don't unionize is because they are trained in a trade that not just anyone can do. They don't need to worry about being "exploited". Regardless of whether we need them or not, unions are why American car companies have no shot. They're saddled with ridiculous wages and pensions. They shouldn't, according to market economics, have to pay any more than Wal Mart for their labor, but they are forced to, and as such they'll never be able to compete in a global economy against those who aren't. Any good things that come from a union in the short term (such as higher paychecks and pensions) are more than destroyed by the harm caused when they run entire industries out of the country. There's a reason they call my neck of the nation the rust belt. It's price fixing pure and simple, and it's always bad for the economy in the end.