What do Unions do for us?
I am decidedly anti-union. Yes, I have a bias, so any of you pro-union people can dismiss everything I am about to say. I’ve never had a good experience with unions. This goes all the way back to when I was 17 years old in Lake Tahoe. Back in 1980, I worked at the Sahara Tahoe (now the Horizon) as a busboy. I made $4.00 an hour plus tips. My tips were generally in the vicinity of $30 a night. So I made $60 a day at the age of 17. I also had health benefits and they provided three meals a day on top of it. Waiters and waitresses could make $100 a night in tips very easily.
Enter the Food and Beverage Union…I have now forgotten all the details of how they were brought in. Most of the people who worked there were transients or students who came there to get a job while they were on summer break from college or in the winter time, skiers looking to fund their season of skiing. This being 1980, the drug of choice was cocaine and I assure you that a good 80% of my co-workers were able to support their coke habits with their wages and tips.
Somehow the Union was able to convince all of these young slackers that the Sahara Tahoe was abusing them. Many of the food and beverage workers decided to strike. I decided to cross the picket line. Again, I was 17 years old and I was pretty happy with my employment arrangement. Why would I strike? Any pay increase was offset by the union dues, I got three free meals and I had health benefits. I was subjected to verbal abuse on a daily basis as a drove into the parking lot by a bunch of people who were once my friends. I drove a beautiful candy-apple red Jeep CJ5 with a 304cu/cm V8 engine. I loved that Jeep. One morning when I was going to school, I came out to discover that all four of my tires were slashed by my union ex-friends.
How could an establishment be good that caused this kind of strife where there was once none? I didn’t care if the other workers chose to join a union. That’s their business. But what right did they have to force me to join the union? The Sahara offered me a job, I accepted the terms. I could either renegotiate my terms or I could go across the street and get a job at Harrah’s or Harvey’s or Caesar’s. I didn’t need some organization doing for me what I could do myself.
My wife works in the movie industry. And fortunately, her business seems to excel when the unions turn up the rhetoric and go on strike. Last year we had the writers and directors go on strike. The thing is, when one group goes on strike it puts the entire industry out of work. SAG (Screen Actor’s Guild) has been threatening to strike now for a couple of months. And they are doing this in the face of a pretty nasty economy. The really insipid thing is that they are only threatening to strike. Since there is a threat of a strike, none of the producers want to go into production only to have the plug pulled. So Hollywood has been at a standstill for a few months now. That means that all of the painters, drivers, gaffers, camera people, electricians, construction workers, accountants, etc….. are also not working. The studios are having layoffs because SAG wants to force compensation issues in a brutal economy. It would seem to me that some of the top earners could take some voluntary cuts in pay to help their more impoverished thespian colleagues. How many $20million leading men and women could take $2million on their next feature and help their bit actors make a little more?
My wife has a company that provides outsourcing services to the entertainment industry. Her customers are generally low budget features and cable shows. She had a low budget production going in Louisiana, which is a right-to-work state. They had SAG waivers as a low budget feature. So here you have a movie production employing people in this nasty economy and here comes IATSE ( the alliance of the film and television worker unions) who basically threatens the workers that they have to join or they will not be allowed to work in the industry again. Remember, Louisiana is a right-to-work state, so they couldn’t shutdown the production outright, but the threat was enough. Making these low budget features into union productions raised the budget to the point that they lost their SAG waivers. The producer couldn’t afford the IATSE wages to start with, let alone the SAG requirements. The production shut down. Now all those people are out of work. Wow! Thanks IATSE for your contribution to the economy!!!!
The United Mine Workers endorsed Obama for president, in spite of his hawkish stand toward the coal mining industry (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24758461/) .
The United Auto Workers endorsed Obama for president (http://www.uaw.org/news/newsarticle.cfm?ArtId=488) in spite of his hawkish stand toward manufacturers of traditional gasoline powered vehicles. In other words, the American auto industry.
Why would a Union support a president who has plans to put 100,000 of its workers out of a job? (the coal industry). How is the Union looking out for their best interests?
I would love for someone to show me how unions are providing any benefit other than providing the organizers/administration of the unions with a paycheck. They may have had an important role in our past, but today, their role is to kill American industry and the economy. |
