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My opinion: We should thank unions for making workplaces safer and for implementing weekends off and 40hr work weeks, but I think they've outlived their usefulness. In 2017, they seem to hurt the job economy more than help it. States with large union presences have slower growing economies and slower job growth.
Like pretty much everything else, too much of anything isn't good. Unions are good if they are dealing with bad employers. But what's going on these days is unions are holding employers to ransoms. The actual union workers are simply pawns in this game. The big money and benefits go right to the fat cats at the very top. Those fat cats eat steak lobster every day while the little guys who are laboring get the scraps.
What is your opinion on unions? ... In 2017, they seem to hurt the job economy more than help it.
How can unions be hurting the economy when less than 10% of the workforce belong to one? If you don't like the economy today, blame the overpaid CEO's, outsourcing, and low wages paid to non-union workers.
There's a clear trend over the years that as the middle class abandoned unions, their wages went down too. That's "slitting your own throat."
Unions were a product of labor shortages during the 20th century. If workers can band together and collectively demand higher wages, more power to them. Business owners constantly coordinate their behavior to reduce competition.
Public sector unions are their own boss through the electoral process, so they should be outlawed.
It doesn't matter what anyone really thinks now. There is a global labor glut as far as the eye can see, and collective action is dead for generations.
The 40 hour work week was implemented by Ford to attract workers due to market conditions for labor. We have agencies like OSHA now for safety. Unions are irrelevant, and just cost the worker more in the form of an additional large tax to be in a union. The union bosses make out pretty well though.
I have personal experience with unions from my younger days in factory and warehouse work, and I can tell you that working people need representation, I found it invaluable.
The Miners union and the Printing Pressmen's union were two early organizations fighting for the eight hour day. The printers went on strike for it about 1904, the miners earlier. Other unions followed this example and demanded the same from their employers. This was well before Ford's famous action, which may have been partly motivated to keep the unions at bay.
Unions also supported legislation for job safety that protects all workers today. They also historically acted to protect the environment through promoting legislation and supporting like minded politician's. They were battling against the efforts of big money robber barons who resisted all of this. The cry that it would hurt the economy turned out to be an empty threat.
If it weren't for the efforts of labor and trades unions the USA would have an ecology similar to China today, with serious pollution problems and unsafe workplaces. China is chock full of jobs, but they are not good jobs and they do not have effective unions to advocate for the workers or to promote people friendly legislation.
We in the USA owe a lot to our predecessors who fought so hard for the working people through collective bargaining and action.
Not all Unions are created equal. I am not a Union guy, but I have watched Union contractors work. I can appreciate the skill. I have also gone to sister factories that were Union. The mind set is completely different. Machine goes down and you wait for the mechanic to come out to fix it. Only the laborer sweeps the floor. Not my job mentality. Absolutely less drive, less personal ownership of line results. As I said not all unions are equal.
My son is about to finish his one year apprenticeship and become a full union member. It is in a private union connected to the construction business. The company he works for has at least a decade's worth of work already in the pipeline so his future looks quite bright and economically viable. The union affords him an economic future of more than a paycheck to paycheck existence. He and his fiance are buying a house and will be married in Oct. As with everything in life there are good and bad points but as far as I'm concerned, the good of being in a union far outweigh the bad. Strong unions go a long way to strengthening a viable middle class and insuring upward mobility to the working population.
I'm in a union. Yes, thanks to them I have good health insurance at a very reasonable cost. However, I really hate how lazy my co-workers are and how hard it is to discipline or fire the slackers.
So I would also say that "union made" is not a marker of a well made quality product. In fact, I would never buy an American made car. Past and current motor vehicles owned have been from Japanese, German, Swedish and Canadian countries.
My husband has been in a union for 30 years and he is in the trades. Unions are incredibly important for the trades. The union ensures their members have top notch training and they enforce them keeping up with it. In return they represent the workers to ensure that safety standards are adhered to and good wages are paid for the skills they are providing. There are non-unionized workers in the same trade, they learn on the job, they don't know the building codes, and the work is often shoddy. They also aren't paid well so there's no real dedication to their "craft."
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