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I've always been of the belief that Unions are really no longer needed. While I still believe they may have too much power and are too political, I've changed my views recently.
Lets face it. A lot of these big companies are outright jerks and unfair to workers. I had interest in possibly changing companies until I talked with a person who works for this company. He told me they will constantly fire and rehire people to avoid the employee having consistent long term time. They'll also fire someone when they get close to a certain salary and try to rehire them at a lower salary. And the cycle repeats. Most will take the job back due to, lets face it, they need the money. This is a horrible practice and I'm sure there are worse things that go on.
It's sad that one would need Union protection from such acts. A person can be great at their job, and the company wil do it all it can to prevent the employee from moving up or reaching certain goals or salaries. It seems so hard to find a good large company to work for these days where they don't try to screw over hard working employees.
I'm a conservative and am not crazy about everything unions do, but I see them as a necessary private sector solution to employee/employer relations. The problem is big business and government are in cahoots to bust and circumvent any leverage American workers or unions have.
Look what happened to the auto industry. Went from primarily UAW and $26/hr plus benefits, down to as little as $9/hr temporary and no benefits, then on to Mexico for $26/day.
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A friend of mine had been working for the same company since high school. He was coming up on 5 years, which is a company mile stone, it would have given him a very nice benefits package. They offered to fire him and rehire him at a higher salary than what his next raise would have given him. The company had been downsizing, so he assumed that if he didnt take the deal, he would just have his position eliminated and lose his job all together.
When it was all said and done, he accepted, which means while he was making more per year, he had lost all seniority. That means instead of having the benefits package of a 5 year employee, he was dumped down to "new hire " status. With the loss in paid vacation time,insurance discounts, and so on, he said he had actually lost about $4,000 in pay.
I've always been of the belief that Unions are really no longer needed.
That argument always used to amuse me because I knew once unions became near totally emasculated that all that touchy feely human resource bs would make the original need for unions abundantly clear.
collective bargaining is merely common sense. The lone ranger going against the armed forces is going to lose every time. A return to unions would be much more effective at reducing inequality than the wrongheaded and misguided efforts to increase the minimum wage.
The problem with unions is that for years they overdid it and did stupid things. Now they are paying the price.
But I firmly believe that unions are very important to the American worker, and that even non-unionized workers benefit from unions.
Now if we can just get the unions to clean up their act and become respectable.
Yup! Theres been a lot of money and effort spent to demonize them though as well. I still have issues with public unions though. Im not sold on them being good (or necessarily bad) yet. But in general I think unions are a good thing.
collective bargaining is merely common sense. The lone ranger going against the armed forces is going to lose every time. A return to unions would be much more effective at reducing inequality than the wrongheaded and misguided efforts to increase the minimum wage.
There wouldn't need to be any issue with minimum wage because collective bargaining would solve that. Unfortunately right now we have to go at it through raising the minimum wage because right wingers have fought against unions and their own interests so fiercely.
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