Unionized labor can serve as a very useful counterbalance to the power of corporations. That might just be worth something, even something intangible, that we shouldn't want to give up, because corporations are not our kind benefactors, no matter how warm and fuzzy their TV commercials try to make them seem.My feelings about unions are similarly mixed. Once upon a time unions existed to provide not only for collective bargaining over labor prices, but also to ensure a safe and healthy workplace environment. Now many of the roles formerly provided by unions have been assumed by the government under the mantle of OSHA and other regulatory bodies.
The trouble is, we're kind of limited in out ability to watchdog corporations. We can either do it through private organizations, like unions, or we can do it publicly, through government.
Because of this unions have gotten fat and lazy. Well ok, fatter and lazier. Several years ago, a Motiva refinery in Delaware City had a catastrophic failure of its sulfuric acid containment. It was a union plant. Many workers were injured and at least one was dissolved away into his constituent carbon-based molecules. This could have been prevented by either the plant owners being responsible or any union member or foreman dailing up the state to report the internally know safety problems. Neither happened.
Increasingly their role of unions has been to argue for more and more benefits for their members which would be fine if they took into account what their corporations could afford to pay. But they don't. Take this account of where unions would like to expand for example. They want to unionize Fedex, despite their knowledge that "many union shipping companies have gone under." They want to unionize the Japanese assembly plants in the US, because the union automotive plants are in decline. They want to unionize computer manufacturing after HP and IBM had to restructure in the face of revenue losses.
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