For 40 years, my father worked for the Rochester Telephone Company, almost 30 years as a foreman / manager. During that time, he was never absent due to sickness. This is not because he was never sick, but because he went to work even if he was sick. He first started working there several years after his immigration from Germany, where he’d been trained in technical electronics at a trade-school.
During his time working for Rochester Tel, he numerous interesting experiences with the Unions, all of which illustrated the work of DiLorenzo on unions.
I’d like to share a few of his experiences with the unions, and some of his union “workers”. According to “union rules”, everyone had their specific job to do, and couldn’t be asked to do anything else, nor could anyone else do the job of another (as this would take away from his job security). There were recurring problems at the phone-company, which none of the union workers seemed to bother fixing. So, my father would sometimes take on these problems (normally some mechanical malfunction), and fix them. While doing this one time, some union stiff ran up to him trying to scold him for doing “someone else’ job” (namely, the union-workers job). In response, my father said, “When I see you or one of the union guys fixing this, then I won’t come down here and fix it. Otherwise, I’m going to fix it.” The union-guy didn’t have a response.
Another interesting experience occured during a 6-month strike by union employees. While they were on strike, my father and other foremen took on more work, and did the jobs formerly done by the union-guys themselves (in addition to their own). While doing this, they realized how much they’d been cheated. At the phone-company, there were various “trouble-cases” reported, and the union employees could typically fix about 8 of them per day. Because they wanted to get overtime, they’d go about “fixing” these problems in the slowest manner conceivably justified, taking numerous breaks and whatnot. My father and other foremen each could fix about 16 trouble-cases a day. Summarily, they could and did do the job better than the union employees; this was probably due to a combination of laziness and incompetence on the employees part, as well as the desire to clock overtime.
The so-called “strike” was actually a favor the company, during the time of its occurence. My father said, “things were running better than ever during that strike”. Unfortunately, when the union decided to end the strike, the company had to take back all of those lazy and incompetent bums.
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So the thesis is that it is not morally, logically, or pragmatically possible for the working class to organize to improve their working conditions?
People should be able to organize in whatever manner they wish, they just don’t have the right to force others to keep them employed.
No, it’s that when one side in a contract is allowed to dictate terms at the point of a gun, the other side gets the shaft.
The Laguardia-Norriss Act and the Wagner Act allow unions to screw over their customers, the businesses they provide labor to, without having to worry about their customers abandoning them.
Ooops, the above was a response to billwald and not Scott.
“So the thesis is that it is not morally, logically, or pragmatically possible for the working class to organize to improve their working conditions?”
Exactly how does organizing improve the working conditions that one ALREADY accepted before signing the contract?
It is perfectly possible to organize, Bill, but to organize in order to bully an employer, violating the company’s property rights, is immoral and unethical, not to mention downright rude.
Why are only human beings in labor unions considered “fallen”. I’ve seen as bad or worse on the white-collar side. Laziness and incompetence aren’t specific to members of unions. My union father would complain that the engineers that designed the dies used in the presses he maintained knew nothing about their job (and he would have to fix their mistakes).
The Unions may have some legal privileges but the problem is the human condition.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, monopolies are bad in any form. LRC now seems to be having a plead or a fix per week over some problem originating in Washington – Redmond, Washington. Linux is much more mature (with OpenOffice2.0 available), and Macs “just work”, but they prefer the abusive monopoly’s product and then whine and complain about quality. Why? If I could answer that, maybe I would have an answer to the Unions. Or why people don’t want to be liberated.
well, if labor could organize, employers could also. eh?
tz;
You correctly diagnose the primary problem with unions – they are a monopoly supplier of labor in the companies they have been forced on by the Federal government. No one forces anyone to use Microsoft versus Linux or Apple, yet. If the employer were free to bargain with a union or not, some unions would continue, others would disappear.
Them poor ol’ bosses need all the help theys kin git!
If anything, union laws protect businesses not unions, because they protect businesses from really destructive strikes like sympathy strikes and cross-industry strikes. Subject businesses to the real free market of class-wide strikes, and they’ll pony up to the bargaining table much quicker, methinks.
- Josh
Pegasus,
Wow, that’s quite remarkable. Somehow, you think union laws help businesses in general? (I will concede that, like in many other things, big businesses are benefited vis-a-vis small-businesses, as they can better bear the expense; thus, big business’ may lobby for it).
I think it’s a stretch to say there would be cross-industry strikes in a truly free market. Of course, this is just my speculation, as it is economically possible; it’s just that there’s incentives against it.
To others,
I’m not saying all union workers are lazy, or that no white-collars are lazy. I’m simply pointing out a significant propensity of unions and union-laws to promote this kind of stupidity. Actually, I was just relating the experience of my father’s with unions. That is the truth of his experience with them, and over his 40 years at Rochester Tel, that’s his impression of unions. This much is a fact, not my analysis.
Back in the late ’70′s and early 80′s, there were people I knew that worked at the steel mill in Fairfield, AL. They got paid for sleeping on the job (and there were similar stories at Pullman Standard). Well, those were difficult times, with the bad effects of wage and price controls, roaring inflation (and I do not mean the CPI). US Steel built a new plant there only if the union agreed to new rules. They accepted, and the tales of getting paid to sleep on the job quickly stopped. The union accepted because they knew that it was in their interests to do so. Having some jobs is better than having no jobs.
Since we’re relating anecdotes, let me tell mine.
My father was a civil engineering contractor in Berkeley, California, in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s. His was the smallest company in that field in town. When the time came round for the local construction workers union contracts to expire, the union boss (“local president”) would come to my father’s office and dictate the terms of the new contract. He made it clear he’d shut down my father business on strike, and my father’s business alone, unless he signed the new agreement in the hands of the union boss.
With the new signed contract in hand, the union boss would then proceed to the next largest civil engineering firm in the union local district, and make the same threat. With *both* contracts in hand, he’d proceed to the third largest. And so forth.
No strikes, hardly ever, during those years. Just one smooth extortion operation.
An amusing sideline to all this is that my father would get the union local’s monthly newspaper sent to his office. I used to read through some of them myself. On every page of the newspaper was at least photo of the union boss, and rarely anybody else in addition. (Of course part of the construction workers’ union dues financed the paper, which largely amounted to a promotion for the union’s leadership.) I wonder now if my father and the other construction company heads got the complimentary paper as part of the union boss’s intimidation artillery.
David:
I agree with your comment that “…big businesses are benefited … [by unions] as they can better bear the expense; thus, big business’ may lobby for it”
However, it is a massive understatement to say it is merely “a stretch to say there would be cross-industry strikes in a truly free market.” Austrian analysis of human action shows that even five companies cannot succeed in maintaining a voluntarily cartel to the detriment of consumers for long because someone either in the cartel, or outside of it, will eventually undercut the others and destroy the whole thing.
To imagine that individuals on a large scale would or could voluntarily agree to cartelize labor services, across industries no less, across the nation is unbelievable. It is clear that government coercion is required to enforce cartels, be they unions for labor services or other services provided on the market.
To Josh, there are only two classes today: one is the ruled and the other is the parasitic ruling class and those favored by them. In a free market, there are no classes. There would be those who voluntarily work for pay by an entrepreneur, and the entrepreneur. And anyone would be free to come and go to either category at his pleasure according to the constraints of consumer preference alone.
The problem with your response, Paul, is that what you’re saying couldn’t happen was exactly what happened: solidarity, cross-industry strikes, sympathy strikes, etc. Free-market strikes don’t have to make it impossible to find workers, just prohibitively expensive. That’s what happened, and the union laws were written to tame unions and to bring a few politically-malleable unions into the corporate state fold.
- Josh
Josh: Do you mind referring me to the literature that chronicles these events. Of course, i could be wrong, but i am skeptical that history shows instances of massive labour unrest and organization in the midst of largely unhampered markets including the lack of government/coercion backed unions.
But i am also interested in understanding what history you are thinking of that leads you to the conclusion that it does.
Josh,
I’d also like some references on massive industry-wide sympathy strikes occuring, absent any form of union protectionism or State-coercion.
–Dave H.
It’s a terrible idea, by the way, to go to work when you’re sick with a contagious disease … or to expect (or permit!) workers to do so. Coming to work sick exposes the rest of the workplace population to that disease. It is, in effect, a form of assault upon those others who are needlessly put at physical risk.
This risk is aggravated by the increasingly elderly work force, who are more susceptible to contagious diseases; and by the fact that many OTC remedies for common diseases (such as colds and flu) have side effects of drowsiness or the like. People on some of these drugs are cautioned not to drive or operate heavy machinery ….
So there is absolutely nothing praiseworthy about a person who never takes a sick day because they show up to work even when they’re sick. It’s not a show of devotion or a strong work ethic: it’s a show of reckless disregard for the self-ownership of others.
Unions can destroy worker motivation because it is so hard to lose your job as a union member. A friend of mine was an engineer for a big auto maker. One incident he told me was of a guy going on his lunch break and getting a DUI. Instead of returning to his job from lunch he was sitting in jail. The company, like any other, fired him. The union got him his job back.
Someone answer this:
If you own your home, most would agree you can let anyone in or bar anyone for any reason, including racist, sexist, or any other “ist,” from entering. Then why cant a buisness owner do the same?
It’s not the Union or the Company its the people who make it or break it. A Union is simply the only legal vehicle out there for employees to have an employment contract. No one ever questions the CEO’s and executives in a company about the terms and conditions of THEIR employment contracts.
Executive’s with employment contracts are those same human beings that gave us Enron and Worldcom but no one is questioning the labor attorney’s that negotiated those contracts OR the companies that allowed those executives to violate their employment contracts. Executives employment contracts include terms for the same things that union contract do.
The National Labor Relations Act dictates that working class must organize as a group rather than individuals. That’s really the only difference.
Generally, when you find a company forced to reinstate an employee who has committed an act of negligence it is because the company didn’t follow the steps laid out in the contract – not because the union has some magic wand for miscreants! If the union didn’t follow the proper steps to protect someone you can be the company wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of that too! The biggest difference with unionized workers is that there is a legal and binding contractual agreement that lays out the rules. All other workers are just subject to the whim of the employer and no one ever rights about all the workers who get screwed when there IS NO contract.
For all the huffing, puffing and emotion related to union vs non-union the bottom line is “Do you want a contract with the boss or not”. I tell people that if they receive nothing else out of a contract negotiation at least they have a legal document telling them what the rules are. That alone is invaluable when you look at all of the times an employee is terminated simply because the new supervisor doesn’t like them.
Anything else is completely dependant upon the human beings running the company and running the union.
Jennie,
No matter how times you care to repeat: “No one ever questions the CEO’s and executives in a company about the terms and conditions of THEIR employment contracts.”, it is simply not true.
See: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?d=t&s=UNH
and: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/07/10/8380799/index.htm
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Home+Depot+CEO+troubles
Also, with this: “The biggest difference with unionized workers is that there is a legal and binding contractual agreement that lays out the rules.”, one does not need to be a “member” of a Union in order to secure a labor contract. I’m sure many others will attest to the same.
And, this: “All other workers are just subject to the whim of the employer and no one ever writes about all the workers who get screwed when there IS NO contract.” is equally False.
Try: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=wrongful+termination+of+at-will+employees
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