When I was a kid I was lucky enough to get construction jobs during my summers to pay for college and law school tuition. One requirement was a union card from the laborers and hod carriers local union. The card and dues were a minor drag, a tax, on the ability to earn enough to pay for the schooling. I appreciated the union because the job paid well. There was really no apprentice program as a laborer, no school on how to shovel or wield a pick but there was “union scale” for which a share out of my paycheck for that “scale” seemed a reasonable price.
What I didn’t understand in my early years was the social and economic price exacted for the union control in the industry. Each summer I started and worked hard. Each summer I was told to “slow down, kid, ‘ya don’t wanna work us out of a job….and that’ll hurt you back when you’re my age!”
Unions promote not work productivity but work continuation. Unions promote not uniqueness or excellence, but mediocrity. Sad to say but teacher unions now control our education. Recall Orwell’s Animal Farm, “All of us are equal, some are more equal than others.” The pigs’ leader was Napoleon.
Mary Anastasia O’Grady pens an excellent opinion in the March 19th WSJ. In it she tells how big labor elected Obama and how he has started to repay the debt, Chrysler unions ahead of creditors, steel workers ahead of China our largest creditor. We see his efforts at “card check” unionization and union board membership of GM. All just down payments on the votes to come. Poor kids in DC without vouchers and without education pale in significance to Obama votes!
O’Grady contrasts Obama to Calderon in Mexico who has just ordered the federal police to take over operations of the state-owned electricity monopoly and fire 42,000 union electricians; only 8,000 are needed to do the work! She also recalls Reagan firing the air traffic controllers. Both gutsy moves from principled presidents. No doubt that Calderon has big cajones.
Bottom line here is that we have a dangerous vicious circle taking deep root at the federal level. It has grown at the state level in the public union sphere over the last decades. It will doom us to serfdom in the end. Unions elect politicians, politicians promote unions. Jobs and productivity limiting work rules abound; excellence, innovation, entrepreneurship and individuality suffer. The vicious circle feeds upon itself to ultimately disastrous ends.
So far the state and local results are untenable budget deficits on a universal basis and unfunded pension fund obligations that will drive taxpayers to indentured servitude. The national results will be much worse.
Well we now have a new Napoleon in the White House. We are just starting to suffer for it. God save us.
Tom Motherway