If you don’t value
individual initiative, you won’t get much of it. If you overpay employees to do
the minimum, you are ignoring the laws of economics. Labor is a commodity that
needs to pay for itself. A Dental Hygienist can make $40 per hour, but can
produce revenue of $100 per hour. Unions chose to ignore this.
Unions are paid by the
head, so they wanted as many dues paying members as they could get. They
therefore fought any technical innovations that would improve efficiency. They
also inundated member’s homes with anti-company propaganda and damaged employee
relations to justify their own existence.
Unions became the
largest special interest group our politicians had to contend with. As their
numbers dwindled, multiple liberal special interest groups joined in to play
“victim politics”. In the US, we didn’t call it Communism, but it was.
In 1848, Karl Marx
published the Communist Manifesto. He was troubled by working conditions in
England during the Industrial Revolution. He called for a “political solution”
to what he saw as a “political struggle” and recommended Communism as a cure.
Anti-Capitalist intellectuals everywhere took up the cause without considering
the “unintended consequences” of revoking private property rights.
The Industrial
Revolution in the US was a tough place for workers, because it was a dangerous
race. We were creating infrastructure with our bare hands and manufacturing
processes were in transition. Workplace accidents were common and business
managers were autocratic. It was a
perfect storm.
Labor Unions in the US
began to form in late 1800s and the US government eventually sided with the
Unions to avoid the threat of full-on Communism. The US government turned on US
industry in 1890 with the passage of the Sherman Act and finished it off in
1913 with the Inheritance Tax. This was aimed at the “Captains of Industry” who
created the Industrial Revolution in the US.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Also in 1913, Congress
created the Federal Reserve to implement a “managed economy” take-over of the
“free-market economy”. This would result in unconstitutional government
subsidies and government take-overs of entire industries. This removed price
control from consumers and created unsustainable government spending and debt.
Four Reasons For The Decline In Union Membership, by
Perry Heidecker, 4/24/13.
Simply put, American workers now see the unions as part of the problem, not part of the solution. There are a number of reasons that account for this negative perception.
1. Unions often seem irrelevant. In good times, workers don’t need unions to secure increases in wages and benefits because everybody profits from economic prosperity. In bad times, unions can’t protect their members from layoffs, wage and benefit reductions and tougher working conditions. In fact, union contracts often seem to make things worse. The high cost of union labor is often cited as a contributing factor to the demise of many companies. Whole industries have fled the United States, attracted by the lure of cheap foreign labor. Other industries struggle to remain competitive.
2. Unions have a poor public image as being bloated, inefficient and often downright corrupt. Stories about labor racketeering, mob influence and trials of union officials for embezzlement and bribery are common fare on the evening news. Employers are often able to use this aura of greed and corruption to blunt union organizing campaigns.
3. Workers are often “out of sync” with union politics. The labor movement is perceived as being a vassal the Democratic Party and a champion of liberal causes. These most recently include immigration reform and national healthcare. Vast amounts of money and manpower have devoted to support labor-approved candidates and issues. Yet many workers, particularly in the South, are deeply conservative and simply do not support these causes. They do not want their union dues going to support issues and politicians with which they disagree.
4. Most Americans now turn to government, not unions, for basic protections. Workers rely on the government for pensions, healthcare, protection against discrimination and a whole variety of other benefits that were formerly provided exclusively by unions.
Unless the labor movement finds a way to reverse its long-standing decline, unions run the danger of their membership shrinking into irrelevance.
Unless the labor movement finds a way to reverse its long-standing decline, unions run the danger of their membership shrinking into irrelevance.
The percentage of workers in the private
sector who belong to labor unions has shrunk to 6.9 percent. Labor historians
report that this is the lowest rate of union membership in America since 1910.
Despite the expenditure of vast amounts of money, effort and government
influence by the labor movement, this trend shows every prospect of continuing.
How did union membership decline so much?
There are several
citizen grievances with government unions. The first is excessive pension cost,
the next is undo influence over state legislatures, next the excessive pay of
government employees and finally the limited value of what government employees
are paid to do.
There are lots of
complaints about government of the government, by the government and for the
government in ways that state legislatures allow municipalities and government
agencies to tax, spend and borrow whatever they want for things voters don’t
need and with no voter input.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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