Liberal Forum

*GHETTOBLASTER » 18 Dec 2024, 10:04 am » wrote: ↑

18 Dec 2024, 10:04 am

I have ALWAYS stated that Public Sector Unions have a history of helping to bankrupt the governments they work for.
I don't live where private small businesses are forced to hire "overpaid" union labor, then as a result go out of business...so I've never seen that happen.

I grew up watching how a union completely wrecked the industry my father was in back in the '60's.  One by one, the businesses that were forced to allow the union into their company refused to take the threats and demands from the union any longer.  They shut the doors and abandoned the factories, moving the companies down south where unions were frowned upon, putting hundreds of workers out of a job overnight.  I know of at least one that never let their intention to move be known, and when their 150 workers showed up on Monday morning, the gate was chained and locked closed and a sign posted that the company had moved to So. Carolina and had terminated all their employees.

With that history in mind, I faced a similar problem in my own business, when a union rep came to my office demanding that I let him recruit my workers and I refused.  I told him to get out, and anything he had to say to my employees he could do after they left the job and were off my property, as I was already giving my employees all the benefits, wages, sick and vacation days that the union in other factories provided, without them needing to pay any union dues.  The union rep threatened to put a picket line around my factory, and I told him to go right ahead, as long as he did it off my property and didn't try to stop me or my workers from coming and going.  With that he left, and I never heard from a union again.

In my opinion, I think unions had a place and were needed in this country about a century ago.  I've read The Jungle and The Communist Manifesto and understood the need for them at that time.  Now, however, they no longer serve a useful purpose and have become nothing more than another corrupt arm of the Democrat party where almost all of those union dues are funneled to, and that's why fewer and fewer employers allow them.

There are now 27 states with "right to work" laws that give workers the option to join the union or not, and the Supreme Court in 2018 (with persuasion from Trump?, I don't know) voted 5-4 to strike down mandatory union fee deductions from the public sector.

See Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees if you want to see the ruling.