Labor Union Reform

My career in US manufacturing to make unions unnecessary had its genesis in 1953 in my angry reaction to a headline in the St. Louis Globe Democrat. I was 10 years old.

A Steamfitter Union President had been assassinated in a car bombing. I asked my uncles who was to blame. Their reply in unison was “Mafia”. My response was “We’re doing this all wrong”. I had just finished reading “American Communist Goals” written in 1920 and knew that the US was under attack by subversion.

I asked my uncles lots of questions about who in our manufacturing companies could confront and end the union corruption in our companies. I concluded it was the Personnel Director.

Later at age 14, my Freshman Homeroom Teacher at CBC asked the class if any of us knew what occupation we wanted to pursue. Two of us knew. I said Personnel Director in manufacturing companies.

US Labor Unions have been credited with driving US manufacturing out of the US. This was true in the case of the US automobile companies, but in smaller companies, we could usually contract out manufacturing during a strike and keep operating, or move the plant 50 miles away. But Labor Unions don’t get all the credit for decimating the US economy. A lot of blame goes to Congress for letting US Corporate Taxes remain at 35%, while all other countries cut theirs and allowing unnecessary regulations and the war on carbon. Finally Congress passed NAFTA assuring that US manufacturing would be off-shored.

US Labor Unions began with the Communist Manifesto in 1848 and were controlled by the Communist Party after 1918. The US Mafia took them over in the 1950s and gave them back to the Communists in the 1970s.

Perhaps now, actual union members will begin to reform union policy from obstruction to success.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader