His Point of View

I am surely going to upset some with this post.  After religion and race this topic has caused the greatest debate among those I know.  The topic you might ask?  Well if you did ask I would say “Most Trade/Labor Unions have outlived their usefulness” (and they are making my life more difficult in more ways than one).

I must say that there was a time when Labor Unions were necessary and even today in some industries they serve a useful role.  (I have differing views on certain trade guilds which operate more as a collection of independent workers who meet to self regulate and establish guidelines for the industry such as guilds for plumbers, electricians, contractors, etc.)  Labor Unions were vital when employers were unregulated by labor laws, minimum wage laws health and safety regulations, etc.

In today’s world, the existence of many labor unions give workers an excuse to perform poorly, deny accountability for certain actions, and abuse certain benefits.  I will use one of my clients for an example.  I work with mid level managers to help them solve certain IT related issues.  Upon arrival at this client I saw very quickly that many people in the department were producing substantially inferior work products, and I asked a manager why they were allowed to stay in there positions for years producing substandard work.  The answer I got was that the manager would love to get rid of several individuals, but they were union members and it would require too much paperwork, and at least 1 year of hearings and law suits to have just one person removed.  On top of that I was told that the employer had the right to not pay for the legal fees if at the end of the process the termination was denied during a hearing or court process.  This to me makes no sense.  There are employees who clearly are not motivated or educated enough to perform at an acceptable level, yet they will not be fired due to union sponsored red tape.  This leaves me to figure out how to make processes work as designed, even though employees are not willing or knowledgeable enough to make the processes work as designed, this task is close to impossible when there are no consequences of having poor performance.

I will give another example.  I used to work for a certain shipping company where I and none of the people my age were Union members, but most of the older workers were.  During times when business was heavy our manager would come down in his white shirt and roll up his sleeves and help us do work…until union members would step in and tell him that he was violating the contract.  The reason for this is that the union members thought that if work was so heavy that the managers needed to help, then they needed to hire more workers.  Well in theory that sounds good but to me, a non-union guy who was drowning in packages I say let the managers help.  It was not a situation where work was heavy every day so I felt that hiring an extra body would ultimately have hurt more than help, by way of reducing working hours for current employees.  But either way the union guys would walk away after running the manager off and not even offer to help relieve me because they had too much work to do themselves or because I was a non-union guy.   Even more frustrating was the fact that I had to pay union dues even though I was not a member and had no desire to become one…

The way I see it, in today’s world you have adequate safety and pay and the option to report any dangerous situation anonymously to regulators.  Unions no longer protect blue collars from the white collars.  If you want to keep your job you should be required to produce at the required quality and level, if you can not do that, the next person who can do the job should be given a chance.  The time when people could hide behind the Union when they knew that they were slacking off should be over.  If you want more money, get more skills or education which will allow you to seek better employment, or entrepreneurship.  Unions allow a person to stop growing.  If you plan on doing the same job for 25 years you should get over that idea, those days are gone.  If you insist on keeping the same job for the duration of your career you must face the fact that your standard of living will continue to decrease, as you must grow your worth to the company to grow your salary.  In the working world today raises and promotions must be earned by showing the company a particular need you can fill, instead of showing the company your attendance report for the last 10 years.

Basically I am saying this… We are adults, we should do what we have agreed to do(by accepting a particualr job) and suffer the consequences if you will not or cannot perform as agreed.  Management has a responsibility to be fair and make good decisions, and if they fail workers have the option to take action or quit.  Unions may still do some good, but they cause a greater harm to the general public (public/private companies & government agencies)by providing excessive protections for their members.  Every place I have worked where employees were union members people never seemed pressed to really do work, employees in these places seemed to have a sense of security that their job would always be there as long as they did not grossly violate any rules or regulations.  This type of mentality leads to wasted time and money and it can lead to poor quality, and increased procrastination.  If unions want to return to a state of usefulness they need to whip their members into shape, and help them realize that times are changing and if employees don’t change with the times the companies will be shutting doors permanently or moving  overseas.

If you have not noticed, I purposely omitted discussion of whether unions cause higher product prices, because that is a whole ‘nother can of worms, but even without bringing in product prices there is enough to have a debate over when it comes to discussing unions.   In the end, efficiency and quality affect product pricing indirectly as well.