I don’t know where all of you stand on the union issue but I do have a few thoughts.

In 1911 in NYC the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory burst into flames, 148 young women ranging in age from 16 to 23 died. Some jumped from windows to the street below, others jumped down an elevator shaft to escape the flames, only one of the two elevators was working on the ten story building and they were on the top three floors. The factory was a disaster waiting to happen, and the women worked in terrible conditions.

In 1825 there was a strike for the ten-hour workday in Boston. Ten years later the children employed in the silk mills of Paterson, New Jersey, went on strike for the 11-hour workday, six day work week. In 1827, a mechanics union was formed in Philadelphia-the country’s first labor organization. Unions were developed to protect the employee from abuse and were necessary. I don’t question the need for unions at that time.

 

 

In 1989 my ex-wife was pressuring me to work for a steady company where I lived. It was a steel mill which was built in the 1940’s for the war department. Being the dutiful husband that I am, I applied, and was employed by the mill……it was the worst 8 months of my life.
Most of the 3000 employees had been there for years and no matter how hard I worked or how good of an employee I was, I could never pass the guy hired one badge number higher than mine. That guy weighed 300 plus pounds and was constantly off work for some medical reason, I could work circles around the man but when it came promotion time guess who got promoted, yep, that guy.
I never signed up for the steel workers union nor did I want to. The work was shift work and it was dirty, toxic, and disgusting, I guess like you would assume a steel mill to be. I left for a computer job that paid me half what I was making but the environment and training I received set me up for the rest of my life. The steel mill? It shutdown in the 90’s due to labor costs and cheap steel shipped form China. 2500 workers trained in one thing and one thing only out of a job, just like that.

Flash to 2012 and this story of what unions have become, and what taxpayers burdens are for these “union employees”.

Terry List, a teacher in Saginaw Township, Mich., has a depressing lesson for her students: “I would not recommend to my pupils to become a teacher in Michigan.”

What’s discouraging her? A proposed pension-reform bill in Michigan would derail her plans to retire — at age 47.

After these rapacious reforms, List would have to work another 16 years, to age 63, in order to earn her retiree health-care benefits. “I understand we have to tighten our belts,” she laments, “but we don’t have to use a tourniquet and cut off the blood supply entirely.” Under the reforms, such a tourniquet means she could still retire now and have a guaranteed income for the rest of her life, but she’d have to pay for her own health care until age 65 — like, you know, most Americans.

Unions, especially governement unions, are paid for by the taxpayer. Their gracious pensions and benefits are unsustainable. Yet here we are…and it is pathetic, unless you are a government employee.