Have Unions outlived their usefullness?

Unions have been rendered almost non-existant in the private sector and are being hobbled and emasculated in the public sector. What we have as a result is runaway corporate profits and a stagnant at best middle class and working class. I believe there is as much of a need for unions as ever but fear they are a dying concept.

How bad does it have to get until working people once again see the necessity?

BTW my son looks at the list and sees what has brough this country to the economic calamity that the experts say we are in.

My son works for a major US company. He took a promotion where he was no longer a union member.
He is now a strong Union Advocate. He may not be paying dues but his share of his medical insurance went up, his overtime pay went down and although his base pay is about 1.5 times what he was making before he is taking home less and working harder.

And my son worked til 1:30 a.m. one night last week, 11 p.m. the next night and then flew to NYC to work for three days starting on Sunday. That was a promotion too – salaried so no overtime. Yeah – unions aren’t needed. ~

In a word. Yes.

I really do believe unions are needed in some areas, but not in others. Teachers’ unions protecting bad teachers that should have been fired? A former co-worker of mine was able to keep his job, with the union’s help, even though he was caught looking at porn on a school computer. There are teachers who have burned out and stopped teaching. That kind of union protection HAS to go. It actually undermines the power of the union when they protect low-quality workers.

I sure did not appreciate being forced to pay union dues, with the other choice being that I’d be charged a non-member fee each month. That was ridiculous, until I almost lost my job as a result of workplace bullying.

So, for protection against workplace bullying and targeting? Unions are a dire necessity, but are hobbled.

I would hate to do away with unions, but I’m afraid they have gotten out of control—so what’s the alternative? I’d much prefer to see a full reform of how unions function and keep the protection they offer in a reasonable range.

Au contraire. Unions are now more important than ever.

I contiunue to believe unions are revevant as a Voice for employees’ rights, but perhaps many of the people running them have lost their usefulness.

@linguaphile: You would have been charged a fee or had to pay union dues, probably because even as a non-member, you’d share the same benefits as the union members (i.e. days off, hours, pay, etc.).

@linguaphile I think that there are few people who would disagree that there are abuses in the union system but we would be much better off addressing the infividual abuses than throwing out the whole union concept (Same thing with Social Security, Medicaire, Medicaid, Defense, Education, etc.). I agree with the reform issue but would prefer to see the reforms implemented by the union members themselves and not have the corporations or their government lapdogs decide what needs changing and how they need to operate.
@Pachyderm_In_The_Room True. Unions, like much of the rest of society, seem to have lost the ability to self-regulate. We allow and sometimes even seem to revere those who are in it for personal gain at the expense of those they are supposed to be serving.

I’ve never belonged to a union, but I appreciate the efforts and lives lost in another era to create reasonable working conditions for all.

However, I think union management has lost their bearings over the last 3–4 decades. Financial gain and power have become the objective, rather than a win-win symbiotic relationship between the company and workers.

We desperately need functional unions to re-emerge for the benefit of all workers, and I am optimistically watching for signs of a new ‘labor’ movement.

Decades ago I worked for a major newspaper and belonged to a very powerful newspaper guild. They (and several other unions) struck the paper, seeking higher wages and increased benefits. Management warned that a lengthy strike would be disasterous, but while every other striking union settled, mine wouldn’t. Three months later, the paper folded, throwing many hundreds of us workers out on the street. My union’s refusal to negotiate with Management wasn’t the only reason the paper closed, but to this day I blame it as the main reason, and to this day I’ve felt ambivalent about unions.

NONETHELESS, I still believe they have their place.

@Pachyderm_In_The_Room I don’t know the particulars of your strike, but it sounds very similar to the Interstate Bakeries/Hostess brands story.

IBC had financing commitments from IBC Investors I LLC, an affiliate of private equity firm Ripplewood Holdings, a “Bain Capital” type consortium, and when the debt became too burdensome, the unions were asked for concessions. When the unions felt they needed to hold the line, the company closed.

What was not reported widely except in the business press is that Ripplewood placed two of its industrial partners on the IBC board of directors

I have never been a member of a union. I was on the management side and had two opportunities to get irritated with them but I never lost sight of the worth of the union when working in cooperation with the company.
After only two weeks on the job I had five grievances filed against me because I could not just stand by and watch people work, I felt that I could work and supervise. Note that the grievances were not filed by the people working for me but by other members who should have been working elsewhere and not wandering by looking for problems.
The second incident was not being able to fire someone who would not do the job he was hired to do after he made steward. We tried three times including once when he was found smoking pot on the loading dock. The national group got involved to force us to hire him back (management had no balls). Even the other union workers in the factory agreed he was useless and were tired picking up the slack for him. He finally got rid of himself, with a little help from the PD, for dealing coke out of his apartment.

Let’s do a study of the answer to that question controlling for gross family income and see what society segment believes unions are unneeded or are a negative force in society.

My hypothesis is that those who earn less and work for an hourly wage and either have no employer benefits or are seeing their benefits eroding because of decisions made by management will see things quite differently than those on salary, enjoying higher incomes and better and more secure employee benefits.

My father in law owned a factory (he died mother in law still owns it) and one of his foreman asked him if they should just dump the union. Fil advised against it. He was way more than fair but always wanted the employees the feel they have a voice.

I think where unions tend to create problems is when there are multiple unions for many mission critical roles in a company. The airlines are a very good example of this. Planes can’t take off without pilots, without flight attendants, without airplane maintenance workers/mechanics, without ground crew, etc. When each of these groups is represented by a different union, any one of them can bring an airline to it’s knees and so things quickly get out of balance. If there was simply one union for all of an airline’s employees, then the negotiations would be much more balanced.

I think unions are important now more than ever. Have your son read this eye-opening article on how horrible labor currently is for some US workers and then read up on the gilded age, and what it’s like to be payed in coupons to the company store, and how you work harder and harder every day and get further and further into debt with the company you work for. That’s the “ideal” that unchecked capitalism will drift towards unless there are controls in place to maintain free market competition.

We’re never going to compete with cheap foreign labor, that’s impossible. There’s always going to be some poor bastard somewhere in the world willing to work for less than a dollar a day. American labor will never be able to compete with those wages, and if it ever got to that point, we would be truly fucked as a nation. America competes through innovation and through productivity advancements that allow 1 worker to be much more productive than people in 3rd world countries, or do skilled labor that requires education and training not available abroad.

@jca I “enjoyed” the benefits of hours, days off, pay, etc… That was their argument for charging all the teachers fees. If I had declined membership, I’d have lost protection and bargaining rights.

The “enjoyed” is in quotes because I also worked at another school where there was no union at all. I had better pay, hours, insurance, and days off than I did at the union-run school. Interesting enough, the non-unionized school also had a much better climate of collaboration and teamwork. The unionized school had 3 separate unions and the union reps were always locking horns, setting or changing boundaries and fighting over whose job was whose- which led to a very suspicious, ‘not-my-job’ and tattletale-y climate. I despised the unionS there, but recognized that I was protected from the admin (who would probably have been more amiable without union tension in place). So, I disagree that I enjoyed negotiated benefits since I had better benefits at the school without the union and because I also got to share the collective suspiciousness as well.

@rojo, I agree change should come from the unions themselves but I don’t see that happening. Some organizations get so caught up in their rhetoric and beliefs that they no longer see their impact or effect outside that rhetoric. Reform can’t occur within the unions until the unions themselves decide that they need to change their game plans. I don’t like the idea of the government getting involved or unions shutting down, but how does one go about doing something about it?

On a different note, I read that Hostess went out of business largely because of unions- the tasks had become so precisely delegated and regulated by unions that it consumed time and money.

@Dr_Lawrence You would think so but my son and his friends all fall into the category that you think would be in the pro-union camp.
In fact my son is a licensed plumber who understands although he is not union he makes as much as he does BECAUSE a union got the wages up in the past but he still thinks that they are one of the major causes of the US economic problems including “forcing” companies to send jobs oversees.
He, and they, do not fit the profile.

@linguaphile “I read that Hostess went out of business largely because of unions- the tasks had become so precisely delegated and regulated by unions that it consumed time and money.”

Hostess had 7 CEO’s in the last 10 years. After 2004 bankruptcy the union agreed to a wage and benefit cut for the workers while the CEO gave himself a 300% raise. Also sales have dropped for their products as consumers have turned to healthier options, and the leadership lacked the vision to adjust to market demands.

Not where I work. My union is currently negotiating pay increases for the next few years for us. Management want to offer us a miserly 1%, despite making millions in profits and being one of the most profitable organisations in its field. I’m glad to have the union to negotiate for us. They also work to ensure management can’t implement some very unfair work policies.

I do agree with @linguaphile that at times unions can be guilty of providing protection for members who don’t deserve it. I also feel that a number of unions have not kept pace with the changing business landscape and we need younger, more progressive minds working in the field. Still, I have had many occasions over my working life (in a number of fields) to appreciate the work unions do so I don’t feel they have outlived their usefulness. I think it’s a case of ‘you don’t know what you have until it’s gone’.

A few years ago our government banned the charging of compulsory student union fees. Sounds fair enough at first. Then over the months and years that followed, services like the support for gay students disappeared completely. Bus services that made work/life balance for students more achievable vanished. There was virtually no entertainment on our campuses. Many things that the student union had provided disappeared. It was sad and it made a good point about why those fees were so important to many diverse groups and individuals who study at university.

@gorillapaws I rechecked my sources. The blame of unions on the fall of Hostess comes mostly from conservative outlets. This is the best article I found on the topic.

Bottom line—the blame is not black and white, but multilayered.

As long as they are flexible enough to change as the nature of the business does that they are in.
Then again, they have rights in their agreement agreement that binds them to the letter and spirit of that agreement. Management also has to protect their rights as well. It is not easy on either side when they are working against the bottom line of the company.
Labor agreements are most often not written with the same considerations and struggles that business face in today’s every changing market.
I have been a member of 4 different union’s over my career and have also many times been on the management side. I am currently on the management side of a firm that is in serious need of change to their labor agreement before summer of 2014. Management feels it is a $2 Billion drain per year and the Unions are working from an agreement that was written with the principles of a Phone company monopoly. I do not fault either side. I just hope when they come to the table that it has the Company that has employed people for years as the thread that carries them through.
Bottom line, I think that unions have to be able to evolve in their thinking and practices just as the very businesses that utilize the skilled workers.

There are things wrong with unions today. Featherbedding. Refusal to recognize that their fate is inextricably tied to the fate of the business or businesses that employ them. Those things need to be fixed.

But unless our vision of America’s future is one with no remaining middle class and a socioeconomic structure more akin to banana republics where a handful of incredibly wealthy families hold all the financial wealth and use the government as a police state to ensure nothing ever challenges their position is the plutocrats; we need unions as much today as we did when they first took hold and challenged the robber barons.

From 1980 to 2007, the income of the top 1% rose 281%. The top 20% gained in income (in inflation adjusted terms) over that period. The bottom 80% lost share. The wealthiest 400 taxpayers in the US today control more financial wealth than the bottom 50% of the entire nation.

From the depth of the Great Depression in 1933 till 1980, we built the world’s first great middle class. Unions, along with progressive legislation, regulation and taxation made that happen. In 1980 with the Reagan Revolution and trickle-down economics, we turned away from everything that had worked to build the world’s richest nation—and a whole bevy of millionaires to boot. We went from policies that lifted rich and poor alike to policies that take from the poor to give to the rich.

We are now in serious danger of dismantling the middle class engine that drove our economy in the US from the start of WWII till today. The middle class has been shrinking since 1980, the ranks of the poor have been growing, and the income of CEOs and the top 1% have risen stratospherically.

Here’s an easy way to understand where how great wealth inequity has become. Imagine that the total population of the USA is 100 people. They all get together for a pizza party, and they order a 100 slice pizza. The richest get to serve themselves first. The first guy reaches in and takes 43 slices for himself. The next 4 grab 29 slices. The next 5 people pull out another 11 slices. That leaves 19 slices for the other 90 people to divvy up. Is that fair? Is it what we want for our country?

@ETpro, I saw you give the pizza example in another question. I don’t understand why someone in your make believe group doesn’t order more pizzas or make pizzas for themselves?

@bkcunningham “I don’t understand why someone in your make believe group doesn’t order more pizzas or make pizzas for themselves?”

It’s a zero sum game (since it’s percentages which have to total 100%). The way to do this is to form a union and collectively bargain for more pies from the guys with more of them.

If you don’t like the pizza analogy, perhaps this video about wealth distribution in the US might illustrate some of the same points better. It’s something everyone in the US should watch.

@Yetanotheruser, it was the New York newspaper strike of 1966. There’d been a long one three years ealier which I not only survived but profited from by being promoted after the three months we were out. That one killed three or four papers, but not the venerable Trib. The 1966 strike managed to do that. Forty-seven years later I’m still pissed. ;-)

@Pachyderm_In_The_Room That highlights one of the things that we need to fix with unions. Germany has managed to develop a much more wholesome model where unions act more like trade guilds and shop stewards actually sit on the boards of companies they work for. They focus on making sure workers improve their skills rather than protecting the incompetent and lazy. They understand that their bread and management’s is buttered with the same butter knife, and direct their energy at preserving their employer’s profitability and existence rather than extracting the last ounce of blood from the beast of burden that bears them.

@ETpro Do you know, in Germany, did they two sides have such an antagonistic attitude toward each other as we have here in the US and did they have to work through this to get where they are today?

@rojo Germany apparently had its share of aggressive, combative unionism during the late 19th and early 20th century. Hitler brutally suppressed the union movement, breaking contracts and jailing union activists, some of whom he had sent to the crematoria. How they got from there to the present, I honestly don’t know. If anyone does, please enlighten us.

Rather than looking at this as a question which asks “have unions outlived their usefullness” I would prefer to ask “do workers, both union and nonunion, have lobbyists or a voice on their side like corporations do when pushing for new legislation”. I would also ask whether unions could be replaced with an organization that will push for working people like unions currently have (despite some union shortcomings).

We don’t have rights as individuals because of laws written in stone, but because groups of people consistently fighting to either protect or fight legislation. We’ve seen many examples of this in America so we should know that without lobbying the Constitution is nothing more than a piece of paper. This is why I don’t put much emphasis on the frequent antiunion chant “but there are already laws put into place to protect workers without unions”. I suppose that if I would answer the header with a ‘yes’ than I would ask who/what would replace the unions in representing workers?

http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Your-Turn/Job-Safety-100-Years-Ago-Bosses-Had-Divine-Rights-Workers-None