by: Charles Santini
I just watched a labor union destroy my town. They didn’t
break windows over scab workers or anything like that. They did however, dig in
so hard and so ferociously on policies that would have made their employer,
well soon to be former employer, uncompetitive in the industry. The irony of
the situation is, that had a new manufacturing plant opened here, offering the
wages and terms submitted to the union in these latest rounds of negotiations,
they would have been welcomed with open arms. Not only is the current union not
opening its arms, they are lopping them off to spite the rest of their body. The
final negotiation deadline has now come and gone. The jobs and company will
soon go with it, along with my city; all in the name of holding on to a labor
structure, which once served a purpose, but is now the personification of
stubbornness and greed.
I am not some distant bystander. I used to be in a union,
two in fact, and I hated every second of it. One was so pointless and
powerless, the fact that they collected union dues from me was borderline
robbery. The second, was so powerful and over-reaching I constantly found
myself in awe of the incompetence it encouraged from the employee base. I
watched several fireable offenses (if theft from a co-worker is not one, then I
don’t know what is) get swept under the rug as consequences from the
administration received pushback from the union. The elected officials within
the group protected their friends and the ones with the most seniority, and
anyone who disagreed with that or a newer hire was left to fend for themselves.
I gave two unions a chance. Two let me down, and another one is about to fail
the 100,000 people who live in my city.
The manufacturing facility here once employed over 10,000
workers at its peak. That number is now down closer to 3,000. I am not
proposing that the 70% drop is completely attributable to the union presence.
Unfavorable state tax regulations as well as international competition
contributed to a lot of it as jobs moved to India, while some stayed domestic
and moved to Texas, which has more business friendly taxation. My blame of the
unions comes in to how they responded to those challenges.
Running a business is not simple, but the philosophy behind
it is. Find a product people want for a price they are willing to pay. If you
are failing, adapt or die. If you cannot adapt in business, you are left with
nothing. The philosophy for the union who remained here to represent the
already depleted workforce, who have no idea how to run a business, read more
along the lines of, dig in, ask for more, and don’t negotiate. Who was left to
work at the plant after jobs began to leave? It certainly wasn’t the 20 or 30
somethings, looking to support a family. The union didn’t protect them. It
wasn’t the most productive employees who wanted to see the plant succeed and
worked the hardest. It was the union leaders and the people with the most time accumulated
who made the most money. That is the only group of people a union protects and
will ever protect.
Those who back unions and support unions only seem to look
at it from one side, higher wages and better benefits; a short sighted and
self-serving purpose. What they fail to grasp is how an economy, or a single
business for that matter, functions. Let’s take a look at a theoretical
scenario using the local facility here. Once work moved partially to India and
Texas, as it did, let’s say the company was left with enough contracted
business to justify one million dollars in labor expenses. (An absurdly low
number, but easy to work with.) It would be the view of the union to protect
only the top ten workers, if they made $100,000, putting a significant strain
on the possible output of the facility. This is in contrast to supporting and
protecting a hundred jobs paying $10,000 per year, effectively increasing the
output and efficiency of the facility.
The numbers in this scenario are exaggerated, but the
conclusions and the real world results are not. The manufacturing facility in
my town will leave. It may have left at some point anyway, but it would have
been a slower process giving displaced workers and the region time to adapt.
The writing has been on the wall here for years, and the local union leaders
are apparently the only ones who haven’t seen it. Now the process has simply
been accelerated. They will leave in one foul swoop. I’m certain of it. One of
the terms that unions like the throw out there in their press releases is ‘good
faith’. Well, that’s a door that swings both ways. In business, if you don’t
adapt, you die. There appears to be several funerals on the horizon.
