Unions
The Czar of Muscovy has an excellent analysis of contemporary labor unions and their impact on society. Minimum wage and all that...
From
The Ancient & Noble Order of the Gormogons:
All About Unions and Minimum Wage
There are basically three different types of labor unions. There are trade unions, who are the oldest, consisting of your electricians, masons, plumbers, carpenters, and so on. These men and women serve a serious function, and the union provides them training in the best construction techniques, safety, project management, and a whole host of other things that make it pretty easy to tell when a building was built by union trades, and when a building was built by a bunch of twits who taught themselves how to bang nails with a hammer.
The second type of union, which we rail on all the time, is the public sector union. These are your teachers, police, fire, DMV workers, pencil pushers, and break takers who will sue the everloving spook out of you if you ask them to work to 5:01 on a weekday. They might agree to work one weekend a decade if you agree to double their pension. They are, of course, an unskilled bunch of cretins who are an instant and irreversible financial drain on any local, municipal, county, or state government they touch.
The third type, which we do not talk about too much, is the industrial union: this is a grab bag of service sector employees (janitors, farm workers, nuclear power plant workers, nurses, grocery baggers) as well as organized labor unions, which include everything from teamsters, steelworkers, drivers, postal employees, and on and on.
A bit more:
Imagine a world where a union simply says �We had our day. We did our thing. People don�t see the need for us, so we decided to close up the whole thing and go home. Enjoy the higher wages, former members: you don�t owe us any more dues.� Yeah, us neither.
So unions need to drive up membership. And what better way to do it than to convince undereducated younger fools that they deserve higher pay? You know, for just showing up.
A bit more:
The unions will tell you that your boss dreads replacing you. In fact, you can call his bluff at any time because replacing you with a robot will cost him millions of dollars he doesn�t have. Automate your job? What a farce: you know he�ll cough up the do-re-mi.
No, kids: robots are so1970s. It�s almost 2014. For $5,000, he can replace you and all your peers by hiring a coder one time to replace you with an app. Once customers realize they can order cheese and substitute onion rings for fries by tapping on a smartphone icon, you�re smoke. History. If you support a $15/hour living wage, you probably cannot do basic math�so let us help you here. $5,000 is about what you would make during summer vacation at $15 per hour. That�s not much, right? Your protest said as much. Think he�s bluffing now?
So true -- these people are leveraging themselves into a world of hurt. Unions are dinosaurs. They did have their function but their time has passed.
'Puter also
had this to say a few days ago:
Detroit's Pensioners Screwed Themselves (And So Are All Other Public Pensioners)
Detroit�s public sector unions are squealing like stuck Irish pigs about their pensions being treated as just another unsecured obligation of a bankrupt employer. �Puter wrote about bankruptcy judge Steven W. Rhodes� decision here yesterday.
�Puter�s written extensively on public sector pension obligations and bankruptcy law. �Puter�s always believed public pension benefits are properly treated as unsecured claims in bankruptcy, regardless of any contrary state law. And that�s exactly what Judge Rhodes held as a matter of law. While it�s satisfying to see his longstanding position vindicated, �Puter�d rather focus on the incoherence in the unions� new claims.
Faced with the likelihood union members� pensions will be crammed down in Detroit�s bankruptcy, unions immediately switched tactics, claiming union pensioners are blameless victims of heartless politicians. Unions are telling anyone who will listen that public workers are hardworking middle class men and women who through no fault of their own have been wrongfully stripped of their meager retirement savings.
Much more at each site. Worth reading.
Posted by DaveH at December 7, 2013 10:02 AM