Unions are in the news lately. Seems the big annual party for the AFL-CIO is missing some of the biggest partiers this year. Yup, the two largest single unions, the SIEU (pronounced "sue", as in that's what they do) and the mob Teamsters have called it quits and started up their own little group called The Coalition To Win, or TCTW (pronounced "Tick Two" which is very fitting when you picture two blood sucking insects).

And there was much rejoicing! Yay!

Why is there much rejoicing? Because this split of organized labor should go a long way to weakening their hold over American politics and business. They are already sliding and have been for quite some time. This weakening is a natural result of the loss of union members due to the markets and industries they are involved in bleeding off workers like lepers shedding body parts.

It's true! Name a single industry that is both heavily unionized and also growing. How about well unionized and holding steady? Lightly unionized and not suffering? I guess in logical progression you would have to say that this relationship between unions and failing industries is causal in nature. All I know is that the smart money invests in areas where unions are the weakest.

So they've been going through this long slow slide as unionized industries slowly hemorrhage and now the first sign of big problems in the union organizations themselves is slapping them in the faces. The cause of the disagreement between the two labor factions? The AFL-CIO wants to continue buying politicians. The TCTW wants to concentrate on their mob ties impress* more members.

Unions were always bad but at least they used to be useful. Now they're just so much rot on the economy.

I worked for union shops twice in my life. The first time I was a Teamster. I worked in a grocery store cutting up beef. The Teamsters will pretty much organize anybody anywhere, I guess. Anyway, I was a union member and I got to pay union dues. A couple of hundred dollars a month. At my minimum wage job. The union benefits included discount tickets to a local theme park. Actually, scratch "included" and substitute "consisted of".

This particular supermarket, which I'll call Tops because that's what it is called, didn't supply uniforms. You bought your own black plastic pants and white shirt. I worked in the Butcher's Block. I went through a lot of shirts. I stopped buying new shirts and just wore the ones with massive blood stains. I was reprimanded for this and I got pissed. We didn't even get a uniform allowance! I delved into the employee handbook, which was based on "the contract", and discovered that the employer was responsible for supplying uniforms. I brought this to my union rep's attention. His reply was "Don't even bother. We've tried it before and the local won't back us up."

The union wouldn't help its members to get a contractual item enforced. A union that I was forced to pay a significant amount of money to out of every paycheck to have the privilege of working a minimum wage job in a grocery store.

The other union shop that I worked for was a polyurethane manufacturer in Buffalo. I wasn't in this union (the SIEU, as it happens - because there's all sorts of service aspects in polyurethane manufacture) as I was office staff. I spent a lot of time on the floor in a peer role with the guys as I trained them on the new PCs and procedures and I was the only smoker in the office. They constantly bitched about not getting raises. Why didn't they get raises? Because their contract didn't allow the management to reward good service and hard work with a raise. The annual review was a joke since all you had to do was the absolute bare minimum to not get fired. Working any harder than that would never be rewarded because all employees at a certain rate and seniority must be paid the same.

In my last year there the contract came up. The management team made an offer based on the last contract adjusted by actual company performance. Real numbers backed up by real statistics. The company was in a slump financially but the contract included inflationary raises and increases in medical care. The union reps encouraged the workers to strike - before they went into negotiations. A friend of mine was a steward and he resigned right then and there saying he wasn't going to be part of the bullshit and nobody was going to point fingers at him when things went south. The union demanded some outrageous increases, kept demanding them, refused moderation, refused arbitration, finally encouraged enough workers to strike.

The strike vote was very clearly down the production line. That is, the real workers and the people with seniority voted against it. Those not quite as dedicated to the concept of working voted for it. The strike lasted two weeks. This was Buffalo, working folk, no income, no strike benefits from the union (until a strike lasts 4 weeks they don't get squat), no unemployment (also 4 weeks). It ended after two weeks because everybody was out of money after they didn't get the first paycheck. The union did manage to get an additional 1/4 of a percent raise in the third year of the contract. Except for that one change the contract was the same as the first one offered by the company. The union said it was a great success.

Recap: They put their members out of work for two weeks. It is guaranteed that the company would have given a 1/4% raise in the third year of the contract if the union had bargained for it before the strike. Those employees will have to work for about 15 years after that raise is realized (total of 18 years) for that raise to recoup their two weeks of lost wages.

A great union success.

And in their pursuit of this great success they just about beggared the company. Things were tight before the strike. They were abominable afterward. There was no Christmas party that year. There almost wasn't a picnic the following spring, a 20+ year tradition at the family owned company.

I have a family member in the auto industry. He's been laid off since February and won't return to work until September. He volunteered for the layoff. You see, the union contract ensures that his employer will pay people with his seniority 95% of their salary and all benefits while they are laid off. The contract also guarantees that people with seniority get to choose first if they want to be laid off whenever there are layoffs. So, whenever there are layoffs all of the senior people take a paid vacation.

...

Wow, I just re-read this and man is it long and rambling. I can probably write whatever I want at this point because nobody's going to read through all that. In the off chance that somebody has read this far allow me to explain what pissed me off enough today for me to write all this. While listening to the news on the radio the AFL-CIO split came up and assorted talking union heads gave sound-bites. They all said the exact same thing, using different words. Here's an amalgamation of the lot of them:

"The American worker should not have to struggle to achieve the American Dream™."

Bull. Fucking. Shit.

Yes you damned well better struggle because I am so fucking not interested in carrying your worthless ass. I struggle. My family struggles. My parents struggled and I'm damned sure that my kids are going to struggle. Every person I know who is worth knowing has struggled to achieve what they have. Being American gives you the opportunity to achieve the dream, it doesn't guarantee the dream itself. That takes work, it takes dedication, it takes struggling.

The only thing you'll get without struggling is a 8-5 job with a six pack at the end of each day, and that's all you'll deserve. Then again, maybe that's what the Union Dream™ is.

* "impress" is used in the context of how the British Navy used to recruit swabbies. It's true! In its infinite wisdom the gubmint has made laws so that if a certain minority of workers want to organize, every laborer in that company is forced to join the union or lose their job.