It's not something I've ever studied, but here are my idle thoughts about the subject.

1) Unions certainly were very important during the early 1900's and such. As already talked about in this thread, worker conditions were absolutely horrible at many locations. I'm not sure how things were in the latter part of the century. Farmers at various times were basically held captive by the railroads - did unions factor into that situation any? China is the place unions are most needed right now, it seems - their just starting industrial revolution and urbanization seems to be producing many of the horrible labor situations that the USA had seen.

2) Some anecdotes about working in a manufacturing company that has a union presence, from and engineer friend of mine. a) Factory work gets slowed down during the week so that Saturday at overtime rates is required. b) Non-union employees (engineers, management, etc.) that work faster get told to not work so hard and make others look bad. c) Those that don't comply get no cooperation from the floor. d) During a strike, my friend was chastised for driving a fancy care like an S2000, while there's plenty amount of high dollar 4x4 crew cab heavy duty pickup trucks and the like owned by the union workers.

3) A recent personal experience - the Christmas Eve sick-out by US Air baggage handlers. Jeez, what a horrible, horrible experience personally. And I don't see how it helped them out any - did they expect US Air to say "Gee, we're going bankrupt and need to cut costs, so let's not give pay cuts to the folks who cost us a lot of money with a sick-out and significantly pissed off and inconvenienced customers and other US Air workers, even though that means we'll just go out of business sooner and we'll have to lay off everybody?" It's fun to toy with the thought of suing the union for compensation for our frustration and lost time. We didn't get to our destination until 1am Christmas morning. We were luck in that we didn't check our bags - otherwise we would have been without luggage the entire holiday trip.

4) My personal opinion is that managers can screw over workers just as well as union members can screw over non-union workers. They're all susceptible to the same greed, callousness and corruption temptations. Unfortunately I cannot think of a way to solve the issue.

 

There are still unions around, and some of them are very, very powerful. Our occupations have changed, and the union titles have changed, but they're still there.

My father was a member of the Amagamated Clothing Workers Union and I took the apprenticeship. Today I belong to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Still a union, except that its all dressed up to look like a "professional organization". So is the ABA, ADA, Bar Association and all of the other professional organizations. They don't strike, but they lobby and fight for the benefit of their members. If you are an engineer, an architect, or any other professional the chances are you belong.

There is still a place for unions for working people today. Working people still need a voice to help fight the abuses of the marketplace such as the forced "off the clock" overtime that has occured at Wal-Mart. Working people need unions to help provide health insurance, pension benefits and education and job training.

That said, unions must never be allowed the abuses of the past. The pendulum swings, but the balance must be maintained. If that happens the unions will, once again, become as abusive and restrictive as they have been in the past.

One of the great failures of the union was a result of their shortsightedness. Had they not insisted on only looking at the here and now they might've been able to see what was going on and what they were doing. They might've noticed the need to unionize off shore workers, they might've noticed that their policies were pushing away the very businesses that employed their members. They might've noticed that the corruption that they let creep in was every bit as bad as the management that they fought in the 1930s. Unfortunately, they didn't learn these lessons until it was too late. Sort of reminds you to the Big Three Automakers, doesn't it?

 

It's clear that the teachers unions are the reason that it's so hard to enact any 'merit pay' provisions.

 

Unions were born in violence from both sides.

Think unions aren't relevant today? Where has much of the work previously done in the US gone? Countries where the companies can pay the workers slave wages and wage violence on any person or group that attempts to better the plight of the workers.

Why, Joe Boss would have kept the work here if we'd have been willing to owe our soul to the company store. I celebrate the courageous people that stood up back in the days when it could have meant your life.

 

Jerry,

This comment is not aimed at you, but your post maded me chuckle about this.

I find it so very interesting that we lionize teachers but we hate the teachers union. Who exactly do you think belongs to the teachers union?

You can't have it both ways.

 

?? As one of my daughters is a teacher I'm wondering if she join a Cult?