On Mon, Sep 25, 2006 at 02:51:40PM -0700, Lan Barnes wrote: > I don't know why everyone lionizes those "good manufacturing jobs" so > much. Before the unions extorted a fair share of the productive wealth > out of the manufacturing companies, those jobs were the shits ... or do > we have such a lousy collective sense of history that we've forgotten > the muckrakers like Upton Sinclair, investigative journalists like > Ida Tarbell, the Pullman strike, or armed Pinkerton men whacking > pregnant strikers in the belly with ax handles? > > Those were the worst jobs in the world before the unions[0], and will be > again if current political trends are allowed to continue. > > [0] Curiously, Henry Ford, by no means a person considered a friend of > unions or a soft touch, actually paid a good wage to his workers on > principle ... the principle that he wanted his work force to be able to > afford being his customers as well. But the history of his descendants > in that interesting family-owned company has ample examples of how they > lacked their granddaddy's perception.
Unions were a natural response to the problems the workers faced... yes, they worked long hours under atrocious conditions for lousy pay. Why? Because labor was in much greater supply than there was a demand for it. Fair? No. So the unions. After they really got started, and then after WWII, we had a burgeoning economy... there was an ever-growing pie. It was easy to just pay the union price... why not? But now the pendulum has swung the other way. Unions have become an obstacle to success, as we see with the airlines and auto manufacturers. Ford, GM, airlines... they aren't "greedy bastards holding onto billions and billions of dollars, unwilling to share"... the market has changed, and the products they sell and the price they get for those products has changed. Competition abounds. But the unions haven't changed... they still demand high-five-figure salaries for line workers, massive benefit programs, full medical, their people can never be laid off or fired without Saint Peter and the Lord Jesus Christ appearing in person. The work that union employees do today can be done much, much more cheaply, and so it shall... either the unions will be broken, or the non-unionized companies will eat their used-to-be competitors for lunch. Again, certainly not "fair". Especially if you're the union worker who's about to lose his job and retirement. But the world isn't fair. Every attempt to make it so is doomed to failure, one way or another. The unions would be in much better places today if they had been more reasonable and less grasping in years gone past. Win big, lose big. -- *********************************************************************** * John Oliver http://www.john-oliver.net/ * * * *********************************************************************** -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
