>> LOL, that's a keeper.
I would have thought Ted was familiar with the union activities that amount to extortion.
I grew up in a union town, where strikes happened with some frequency. When they did, the entire town's economy -- and those in surrounding areas -- collapsed. As a kid, I remember riding with my dad up to the picket lines where he would give the strikers leftover food from the restaurant as they stood by a burning barrel for heat. Night after night, every plant in the town shut down, everyone in town out of work, but the union employees were still getting subsistance. My dad's business was one of the few that survived round after round of strikes.
He thought because of giving them the leftover donuts and BBQ, I suspect. But the pickets were nothing. Tree spiking, unexplained forest fires, sabatoged equipment, you name it. It was very nasty business. These were guys whose kids I went to school with -- normal people turned criminal by the strikes.
Meanwhile, business stopped dead. Not only were there no paychecks for pickets, there were no checks for management, for stockholders, and sometimes these things droned on for month after month. Then as soon as it was resolved, the next round would start.
The pressure on management to cave was immense. The cost of shutting down 200 chip and saws, a major paper operation, a major plywood operation, carton manfuacturing and chemical plants all at once was just too much. The unions simply had too much power; you have to cave to the demands, eventually. They could outlast you (their contract paid them to be on strike).
They were terrible times for everyone. Kind of a economic crash on a smaller scale. It is where I realized just how f*cked up the union situation had gotten.
Then, in grad school a few years later, I met my wife, who had just come off 4 years of managing a union plant. My beliefs were reinforced. She HATED her employees because of the union abuse she had to tolerate. She felt like she was babysitting a plant full of children, making irrational demands and wanting them met NOW. Don't feel like working today? No Problem. You screwed up the assembly line? No problem. Didn't show up for work? No problem. It was really pathetic. That sealed the deal for me.
After that, around our household it was a great day when Reagan fired the ATCs. We thought it was the beginning of the end.
Still you had unskilled GM employees making more than some mid-management employees, and working less to do it. Soon, they were paid for not working. Holidays expanded. Work=place rules revised.
I thought it would come home to roost eventually. But thanks to Obama, unions are as strong as ever.
I hold no animosity toward any union member; many close friends are adamant union supporters. But as a group they needed to be shut down and Obama is responsible for stopping it from happening. |
