Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Are unions still a good idea today?

Unions are a really bad idea! They are identified by the conservative business community as the primary reason for the collapse of American manufacturing.

But wait! There’s more!

Unions are the natural result of an even worse idea, such as the belief that businesses can mistreat their workers endlessly without compunction or undesirable consequences.

Because company management went too far with treating workers as just another device or machine that could be upgraded and disposed of, workers organized and rebelled against their employers.

We all know that story too well. We all know that company management piously states that if a worker doesn’t like his or her job, they are free to leave and go find another one. After all this is America, the land of the free! Of course workers retort that is not a solution because they simply end up at another manufacturing facility that treats them just as poorly. And managers know that if all mistreated workers took their advice and left they would not have a manufacturing business. And round and round it goes.

In a perfect Randian world (as associated with Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand) there would be no need for unions because everyone would treat everyone else fairly regardless of relationship or hierarchy. If a business mistreated its workers, or workers were derelict in their official duties there would be hell to pay immediately. All business inequities would justly and neatly sort themselves out for the betterment of all concerned.


Alas, that is not the world we live in nor is it the world we will ever see. Those who have the power cannot resist using it and those without power become used. That is the way of the world and neither America nor American business invented that practice.

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