Unions

© MMXI V.1.0.2
by Morley Evans

"Maybe 10% of teachers are shitty, but 90% are good." Well?

The teachers' union protects them all good or bad. Protecting members and getting more for them is the primary purpose of unions. Unions are not established to improve the products the members make, or the efficiency of the processes by which they make them. Improvements work against the interests of members by lowering what they are paid. Efficiency punishes members while inefficiency rewards members.

"Eight weeks paid vacation every year and a fully indexed pension with retirement at 55."

Unions are based on the idea that "management" is bad and "the workforce" is good. Seniority brings benefits. It is strickly about power. In such a system it would be a miracle if only 10% were shitty, if this "labour relations model" has been used for very long.

Neither "management" nor "the workforce" can have power. The consumer must have supreme power which can only exist if the consumer can buy something else from someone else.

Not many years ago, union leaders were crowing that the United States had the highest paid industrial workers in the world. Guess what? All those American jobs are now being done in China by Chinese workers who do comparable — or better — work for much less.

Work is being done by people in such places as Malaysia, Mexico, Brazil, Bangladesh, and India. Africans will be next. The people at the bottom rise while those at the top have to find ways to serve others too, or they fall. There is no room for coercion: "Let's get the government to pass a law that gives us a monopoly and forces everyone to buy from us. Then we'll be rich." Sorry, no.

American workers today are buying Chinese-made products because they have low prices and high quality. Let's not forget Japan. The companies for whom the "highest paid industrial workers" once worked are out of business or restructuring.

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