Unions and Companies

[VooGov]

http://www.mankatofreepress.com/letters/local_story_088184118.html

Just when I thought that everyone is on the same team and we have become a better community together through these tough times I read the letter by Paul Marquardt titled “Employee Free Choice Act lets workers have say” discussing the role of unions in the workplace and the ability for workers to organize.  The word that concerns me here is choice.  Usually when the word “choice” finds its way into union literature it means “the makes the choice for the worker”.

I found the letter interesting right up to the point of “Minnesota workers are struggling to makes ends meet. Paychecks are shrinking and health care costs are skyrocketing while CEOs earn millions of dollars in bonuses” Is he talking about locally in Mankato and the residents of this city or in general terms?
It’s these same talking points all of the time. 

Please Mr. Marquardt I invite you to write a positive letter that shows how your negotiations, your vision and initiatives brought increased sales to an organization to help ensure that the workers have jobs.  How your accomplishments improved relations with customers to ensure that they kept coming back to bring in sales to keep the employees employed.  Keeping those employees employed would seem to me that your focus would be on customers and sales.  Not more and more benefits for the workers when company sales are down and competition is tough.

There are different roles in companies that provide different compensation packages.  CEO’s have the full responsibility of the company on their shoulders and spend the majority of their time away from family and that is their “choice”.  Like corrupt or unethical CEO’s I am sure there are some Union Leaders that aren’t the most ethical.  I am not sure where along the lines unions started seeing employment as an entitlement.  No one is entitled to a job in this country.  You have the “choice” to go get a job and climb the ladders or to do nothing.  Employees have the freedom to go from employer to employer and find the best “offer” from the company for the values and talents that they can bring to an organization.
 
Mr. Marquardt I understand that the existence of your job is dependent on finding the absolute worst things about companies and take every advantage of “bad news” and exploit it for your own self interest but this article is a perfect example of what is wrong in our “corporate world”.  If an employee doesn’t agree with the terms of his employment, the working conditions, the benefits, he or she has the “choice” to leave that employer and find one that does. 

The employees don’t need to organize and “change” the organization.

[PGW]

Letters like these are the sort of thing that always baffles me.  Premier among them is that the employees choice and will negates the employers.  Second, is the vague epithets and gross generalizations about people who take responsibility for companies - CEOs (aka Executives) and so on.  The politics of envy is very unlikely to produce the kind of employee/employer relationships that will build communities and strong enterprises.

While I can appreciate the rhetoric (I have been a member of three different unions over the years) I feel I can say without exception that most union administrations are more fittingly characterized as greedy and despotic than most corporations.  There are very few exceptions.  If unions could have stayed as a bargaining agent providing a single voice to speak with corporate leadership they would be a prized institution. Now they resemble little more than orchestrated extortion and the anvil on which the sword of socialism gets worked out.