> By the way, this comment here reads very differently from and much more reasonably than your
Yes, it does. I have no love for unions as they stand today. Tis comes both from personal experience at several levels. I was in a union for a few years and saw the innards of the beast first hand. I saw that the rules they put into place allowed lazy, incompetent and almost useless people earn a wage they did not deserve by any possible measure. I saw management poweless when dealing with such employees, wanting to fire them to hire a worthy replacement and not being able to.
Later in life as I launched into entrepreneurship I dealt with the other side of unions. I got to see just how efficiency, productivity and profit-sapping their rules are. I got to see the dehumanizing and almost surreal culture it develops. Example:
Javitz Convention Center, New York. Asked a union guy to hand me a cord so I could, in turn, hand it to the union electrician working on my booth. The guy refused, "not in my union contract" and walked off. The union electrician told me the I could not handle the powe cord. You know, an extension you buy at Home Depot for $30, nothing special. He had to get down from his ladder to get the extension. He also went out of his way to do it as slowly as he could.
I also saw an entire union crew drop everything amd leave this guy hanging and in fear for his exhibit when he dared to plug a cord into the electrical system in his booth. He was a newbie to unionized US trade shiow crews. They were teaching him a lesson, showing him who the alpha dog was. I had a talk with the poor fellow and shared some of my insight. Several hours later they returned, he apologized and they went to work.
I have never experienced anything even remotely similar to this in Europe in over ten years of doing business with their unions in various countries. If anything they've always gone out of their way to help and get the job done quickly and efficiently. In other words, by American standards you would not have guessed that these European workers were unionized.
So, yes, I do think that our unions, as currently realized and run have been damaging our businesses, towns, cities, schools and the entire country for decades. That does not mean I am proposing they be dissolved or that they have no place in our society, not at all.
Part of the problem is that by European standards, unions in the US have been treated as pariahs for a century or more, and been fought relentlessly, whereas in Europe, parties supported by unions have been in power for lengthy periods in lots of countries.
US unions won tremendous concessions early on, at horrible costs to their members (a lot of blood was shed) - they were instrumental in laying the ground work for the 8 hour working day (and most of the world celebrate May Day in their honour, and in commemoration of the Haymarket Massacre), but unlike Europe where the workers movement continue to grow in influence and eventually effectively won a place at the table supported by governments friendly to their causes that forced business to learn to work with unions in a completely different way, the antagonism just kept escalating in the US.
If you treat people like shit long enough, they'll do their best to live up to the image you portray of them.
Yes, it does. I have no love for unions as they stand today. Tis comes both from personal experience at several levels. I was in a union for a few years and saw the innards of the beast first hand. I saw that the rules they put into place allowed lazy, incompetent and almost useless people earn a wage they did not deserve by any possible measure. I saw management poweless when dealing with such employees, wanting to fire them to hire a worthy replacement and not being able to.
Later in life as I launched into entrepreneurship I dealt with the other side of unions. I got to see just how efficiency, productivity and profit-sapping their rules are. I got to see the dehumanizing and almost surreal culture it develops. Example:
Javitz Convention Center, New York. Asked a union guy to hand me a cord so I could, in turn, hand it to the union electrician working on my booth. The guy refused, "not in my union contract" and walked off. The union electrician told me the I could not handle the powe cord. You know, an extension you buy at Home Depot for $30, nothing special. He had to get down from his ladder to get the extension. He also went out of his way to do it as slowly as he could.
I also saw an entire union crew drop everything amd leave this guy hanging and in fear for his exhibit when he dared to plug a cord into the electrical system in his booth. He was a newbie to unionized US trade shiow crews. They were teaching him a lesson, showing him who the alpha dog was. I had a talk with the poor fellow and shared some of my insight. Several hours later they returned, he apologized and they went to work.
I have never experienced anything even remotely similar to this in Europe in over ten years of doing business with their unions in various countries. If anything they've always gone out of their way to help and get the job done quickly and efficiently. In other words, by American standards you would not have guessed that these European workers were unionized.
So, yes, I do think that our unions, as currently realized and run have been damaging our businesses, towns, cities, schools and the entire country for decades. That does not mean I am proposing they be dissolved or that they have no place in our society, not at all.