The thing about Unions

I for one have never liked unions; sure they were great trendsetters when working conditions were terrible and it was the first steps for the blue collar worker to gain a reasonable salary, be provided adequate benefits and had provisions for some level of safety on the job. However, now they are bloated egocentric dinosaurs of a past age that are single handedly bringing down the economy. Harsh? I don't think so. NOBODY has pensions anymore except: policeman, fireman, other city jobs, and union members. Why? because it bankrupts everyone; health care is absurdly expensive and people are living longer, so those deals of the past just don't work. Not to say that's the solution the health care issue is the larger issue here. For example my great aunt worked at GM, she was union, and received I think it was 75-80% pension for the rest of her life after 15 years? That was over 50 years. Not a bad deal for her. The costs GM must pay out for one vehicle are ridiculous; its no wonder they lose so much money.

And now we reach the crux of it yesterday, the big three ready to make concessions and cut costs to qualify for the government influx of cash; guess why it failed? UAW refused pay cuts. That's really a great idea, protect benefits and salary of your members so the companies they work for fail and ALL of you lose. I heard a quote this morning on the radio from a satisfied union member "I'm a single mother of three, I can't afford a pay cut." Oh but you can afford to lose your job completely when the company shuts its doors. That makes total sense. Having worked with some union workers I feel I can also with some degree of certainty say that it is a culture that promotes laziness; its the entitlement. Whenever I asked a union guy to do something outside his normal routine(as is common in an engineering environment when troubleshooting a question) I got a lot of excuses and no results. Basically if it ain't in my contract I ain't gonna do it. Great stuff.

Workers are protected by many organisations these days from safety to workers rights. Its time to move on, we hear all this talk about making the US competitive in the auto industry again. One of the first things that's going to have to change then are the unions.