I must admit that I have never worked for a company that was unionized.\u00a0 However, over the years I have had some experience with unions.\u00a0 I have seen some unions that make sense, some that simply killed productivity, and some that are just downright evil.<\/p>\n
My former Father-in-Law, Ben, was a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, IBEW.\u00a0 \u00a0Ben was from Denmark and was an electronics technician over there.\u00a0 He loved working on electronics, especially broadcast transmitters.\u00a0 When he came to the states he found that he couldn’t make a decent living working in the broadcast industry.\u00a0 Ben followed his brothers who had come to America before him and became a electrician.\u00a0 In Denmark a broadcast engineer made more than an electrician but not in the states.\u00a0 Here, even though it takes considerably more education to learn electronics, an electrician makes more money.\u00a0 Probably because electricians are union and electronic techs are typically not.<\/p>\n
The IBEW would be what I would classify as a good union.\u00a0 I can see where unions make sense for the construction trades.\u00a0 Ben would work on a project for one to three years, mostly building condos on Miami Beach.\u00a0 Ben got his training from the union, coming up through the ranks as an apprentice electrician and working his way up to journeyman electrician.\u00a0 Ben also got his unemployment, medical, and retirement benefits from the union, which in the construction trade worked very well.\u00a0 If he had been an employee of each construction company or general contractor he had worked for his medical and retirement plan would have changed every couple of years.\u00a0 But, built into the contracts with the Union was the cost of the medical and retirement for the electricians. \u00a0Ben also paid into the union in the form of dues, so he was like most of us, paying at least a portion of his benefits.\u00a0 This way Ben had continuity with his benefits throughout his career.\u00a0 When a project closed, he returned to the union and was assigned to another project.\u00a0 In my opinion, the union provided a benefit to both the employer and the employee.<\/p>\n
Many unions in the private sector aren’t that good.\u00a0 I worked in field service for several years.\u00a0 CPI, the company I worked for, sold data acquisition hardware that would be integrated with application software, a computer, instrumentation, and delivered to a third party customer as a turnkey automation system.\u00a0 Part of my job in service was to go to a customer site and assist with a system start-up.\u00a0 I would be on sight at the end customer’s facility with the system integrator, the customer, sometimes the computer supplier.\u00a0 We would work together to get the system working and ready for acceptance by the end customer.<\/p>\n
Unions can kill productivity.\u00a0 When on sight our little team was motivated to get the system up and running so that we could go home and our companies could get paid.\u00a0 However, when the end user company was a union shop, things often moved very slowly during start-up.\u00a0 For instance, usually any power connections made to the system would require the company’s union electricians to do the connection.\u00a0 I can’t tell you how many hours of my life I have wasted waiting on the union guys to show up and do their job.\u00a0 Many times we would wait 30 minutes or an hour for them to come to the computer room, look at the task, then leave to go get tools.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0So we would wait for another 30 minutes to an hour.\u00a0 The electrician would finally arrive, do a 10 minute job and leave.\u00a0 Two hours killed for a 10 minute job.<\/p>\n
I remember having completed a system test at a Rohm & Hass Plexiglas manufacturing facility in Illinois.\u00a0 We had one minor problem.\u00a0 The teletype machine that was the system console (Yeah, that shows how many years ago that was!) had a minor problem on carriage return.\u00a0 It was a simple adjustment of a damper on the type head.\u00a0 We were not allowed to adjust the teletype because it had, at that point, been transferred to the possession of Rohm & Haas.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0A union mechanic had to be called.\u00a0 We waited, and waited, and waited.\u00a0 Finally the mechanic shows up.\u00a0 He didn’t know jack s–t about a teletype machine.\u00a0 I had to give him instruction on how to remove the cover, and adjust the damper.\u00a0 As hard as he tried he couldn’t get it work correctly.\u00a0 I snatched the screwdriver out of his hand and in 10 seconds had it working perfectly.\u00a0 What did the mechanic do?\u00a0 He filed a grievance with the union because I did his job.<\/p>\n
With union employees working for a private company, there is at least some actual negotiations to determine pay and benefits.\u00a0 There are free market forces at work.\u00a0 If the unions demand too much in compensation and make the company non-competitive in the market then the union members will suffer when the company tanks.\u00a0\u00a0 But public employees unions are all together different.<\/p>\n
Public employee unions get their salary and benefits<\/span> from the taxpayer. (that would be ME and YOU)\u00a0 Their benefits usually include very good health care plans and big pensions.\u00a0 I have heard stories of New York City employees retiring at 90 percent of their salaries with full medical benefits.\u00a0 Many of the retirees double dip, get another job and still collect their full pension.<\/p>\n The unions collect dues from their members.\u00a0 The union bosses take the dues and use the money for political contributions to candidates that will treat the unions favorably. The elected officials, because they are beholden to the unions for the campaign contributions, use their influence to make sure that union employees get high pay, good benefits, and excellent pensions.\u00a0 These benefits and pensions are weighing down many state and local governments with unfunded liabilities that the simply have not chance of paying for without massive tax increases.\u00a0 The full burden rests on the taxpayers shoulders!\u00a0 There is no protection as there is with the free market, governments do have competition and they don’t chapter 11!<\/p>\n According to the US Debt Clock, Federal pensions now total almost $202 Billion.\u00a0 California has a $90 Billion pension debt and Ohio is facing $64 Billion in unfunded pension liability.\u00a0 These figures are just simply out of control.\u00a0 The politicians have promised and promised but they have no way to pay for these union employees pensions and health care other than “robbing” the tax payers!<\/p>\n Sometimes these big number start to lose their effect.\u00a0 Bringing it down to the family level, the “Red Mass Group” reports:<\/p>\n “A typical homeowner in Worcester (MA) may have to come up with as much as $50,000 over the next 30 years to support city obligations for city worker retirement health care benefits, while the burden on Boston homeowners over the same period could be $100,000, according to a study highlighting growing unfunded liabilities from municipal retirement benefits.”<\/p>\n That amounts to $1,667 each year from each household in Worcester to go toward retired public employee health benefits.\u00a0 That doesn’t even include the pension payments!<\/p>\n According to the Department of Labor most union members today work for a local, state, or the federal government. Almost 40% of government workers are unionized.\u00a0 If you are running for office you are going to have the government employee’s vote to have a chance at being elected.\u00a0 So, as a candidate you are going to promise them what they want.\u00a0 Once elected you are going to give them what you promised in order to stay in office.\u00a0 If that isn’t illegal it should be!<\/p>\n With the economic turn down the local, state, and federal governments don’t have the revenue they had three years ago.\u00a0 They are not able to pay the salary and benefits for the workers because the money simply isn’t there.\u00a0 The public employee unions are clamoring for their benefits and they don’t really care who has to pay the bill.\u00a0 They just want their “Stuff.”\u00a0 The states just don’t have any choice, in order to balance their budgets they have to cut back on employee benefits, pensions, and salaries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I must admit that I have never worked for a company that was unionized.\u00a0 However, over the years I have had some experience with unions.\u00a0 I have seen some unions that make sense, some that simply killed productivity, and some that are just downright evil. 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