Unions today
Over my morning coffee at my favorite internet café, an article in the NY Times sparked my interest. An article about something in America that's long overdue change.
Labor unions.
Unions once held a very important role in the development of the American economy. During the depression era many people had two choices, take whatever crappy job was made available to you, or watch your children starve and die. Not much of a choice. Without the efforts, illegal as they may or may not have been, of Jimmy Hoffa, the USA could very well be just another Mexico - handful of extremely wealthy people, and a large populace of impoverished labor - as the big companies continued to soak up all the money, and "generously" gave a day of work to a man so his kids could eat that day.
Fast forward to modern America. Drive down any street in Las Vegas, and you'll see Help Wanted signs in store windows. In America, there are more jobs than there are people to fill them. This is a place with a great many options. My best friend is a junior executive of a medium-sized retail outfit. He can't find enough good people to fill all his positions. He is constantly recruiting, to the point of tring to steal people of quality away from other companies. Need a job, ask him.
Need a job? Simple. Go get one.
However, that's not how it works in the mind of most Americans. This is no longer the land of opportunity. It is the land of entitlement. A population of people that think that because they were born, they are owed. Owed wealth. Owed a beach house in Aruba. Owed a fabulous lifestyle.
And so it is with unions. Raises are not granted for quality of performance of a worker. They are given because of entitlement. Job security is not based on whether or not you show up for work on time and do a good job, it's based on seniority and the union contract. This lack of motivation to do a good job is the reason union based labor is so poor in quality. I eat most of my meals out, and I far prefer a non-union establishment to a union one. It's easy to tell the difference. In a non-union restaurant, the workers are competent and professional. In a union establishment, the workers are doing the customer a favor by serving them (in their minds).
Sadly, a lot of upper scale restaurants in Las Vegas, particularly those in the casinos, have service that is surpassed by people making minimum wage at McDonald's. As far as the casino staffing, it's almost always poor. And virtually all union.
This is not to say that all union employees are bad ones. There are good people who have found that their chosen job requires them to join a union, often whether or not they want to, and yet their work ethic carries them to work to do a good job. This is a rare occurance, however. Most are union, because they feel they are entitled.
The biggest arguement for the pro-union movement is that companies are greedy. Yeah? So? Why be in business if you aren't greedy? And it's a falacious statement of redemption, anyways, because to join a union so you can pocket more money, while calling someone else greedy is hypocritical. If you join a union to make more money, you are even more greedy than the company, because the company had to create the job for you. You didn't create anything for the company. You were just born, and feel you are somehow entitled to someone else's money.
Don't like the greedy company? No problem. This is America. You can start your own non-greedy company! You can evenly pay yourself and all of your employees, charge just enough to the customers so that after expenses you break even, and live on a cot in the back room of your store, because owning a home with profits from your business would be greedy. And you don't want to be greedy, now do you?
In a real-world scenaro, if your boss didn't pay you what you were worth, you would ask for a raise. If you didn't get one, you'd shop the market, and find a company that would recognize your value, and offer you what you wanted to be paid. If you shopped the market, and nobody offered you more, then.....brace for impact....
You Are Making What You Are Worth.
There are ways to improve on this. If you feel you are better at your job than everyone else, you can start your own company and prove it, and charge what you are worth. If you are that good, people will pay it.
The second way is education. If you aren't making enough money because you have reached the pinnacle of your work-value, improve your value. Gain education. Gain skills. Raise your ceiling. If working as a laborer in a warehouse doesn't pay enough to feed your fast-n-furious lifestyle, get a degree in Business Management, and run the warehouse instead of work in it. Still not enough, continue on, and get a masters in Business Administration, and run the company. This is America. Anyone can.
The American middle class likes to blame greedy companies, and greedy politicians for American jobs going overseas. Sorry, but the jobs moving overseas are not cause, they are effect. Man is man. If there are two men, and one will do the job for $20, and the other for $10, and both do an equal job, the man asking for $10 will get the job. This isn't greed. It's capitalism. It's not evil. You do it, no matter who you are. When you buy a house, when you buy a car, when you swipe your frequent-shopper card at the grocery store to save a few bucks over what they charge at the other store.
If the man charging $10 in the above example happens to live in America, he gets squeezed out of his ability to do his job by organized crime a.k.a. labor unions. But labor unions do not control the workforce in India. Or China. Or any other nation where people will put in a harder day's work for less money. Paying the worker that works harder for less money is not greedy.
It's common sense.
Nobody pays the lazy contractor more money to not finish fixing the roof before the big storm. Why should a company pay a lazy worker more money to do a lesser job? Only one reason.
Labor Unions.
Now, my own views may be tainted a bit. I've never worked for a union organization. When I have had jobs and not made enough money, I've done what I needed to earn more, without organizing a strike. I've either improved myself, or gone to somewhere else that the money was better. There's always another option in life.
And I remember when I was a teen, the Teamsters went on strike. Drivers. Bus drivers and truck drivers and meat cutters at grocery stores. The teamsters started shooting at Greyhound buses to scare customers into not riding. A bus in Arizona was hit, and a rider was shot in the neck. All because someone that thinks they are entitled to more than they are worth wanted to prove his worth by crippling the company with a strike, and when that failed because people that were willing to work stepped up and took his job he had to shoot at customers.
And here in Vegas, The Frontier Hotel had the record for the longest labor strike in US history. If memory serves, it lasted seven years. My choice of sides in that conflict came from the strikers themselves. I hadn't gone in to the hotel during the strike, but was passing across the hotel's parking lot having come from the hotel next door, and passing by. Strikers thinking I was coming out of, or going into, the hotel started yelling at me for being a scab. The best way to answer profanity is with profanity, and that's what I did. And complimented my comments with a nice friendly gesture. And then I did go into the hotel.
Wow! Food specials!!! $3.95 for a 12 oz prime rib dinner with salad, baked potato and dinner roll! GOOD prime rib! I couldn't pass up that!!! And when I was enjoying the delicious dinner, I found out something else. The service was better than any other hotel in Vegas. All because the union workers were out on the sidewalk, while people that actually cared about doing a good job and wanting to actually earn their money were in feeding customers.
I haven't eaten at the Frontier since the hotel was finally sold to pro-union owners and the strike ended.
Here endeth the rant.
Back to the original subject. A newspaper in Santa Barbara had it's employees vote to join the teamsters, and the owner rejected the organization. An article on it appeared in today's NY Times. And the entire city has assaulted her for her decision. So has the media around the country (including the NY Times).
But why? It's her company. If she wants to run a non-union company, that should be her choice. This is America, right? Aren't people allowed to do what they want in their own homes? Isn't that all the rhetoric? Freedom of choice. My business is my business, and if you want to come work in my business, you do so under my terms.
Don't want to work for me under my rules, or my standards? That's fine. This is still America. You can go somewhere else! You can go work for a union company.
A company is not subject to the will of the masses. It is not a political body. It wasn't elected. It wasn't created for the benefit of the people that were fortunate to get a job there. It was created by the owner, for the owner. The owner's motivation may be greed, or it may be for providing better quality goods or services to customers. But it certainly wasn't so they could be strong armed by spoiled children.
The Santa Barbara News-Press is not the only newspaper on Earth. If reporters wanted more pay, they could go get other jobs with other newspapers. Or magazines. Or TV news agencies, etc etc etc. Obviously, since they didn't, they couldn't. Probably because they were not worthy of a job someplace like the NY Times, and so they were stuck. Stuck with the one company willing to accept them and pay them what they are worth. If they were worth more, they'd be earning it.
Amid all the furor over owner Wendy P. McCaw's decision to not go union, and to strongly hold her ground on that decision, I applaud Ms. McCaw. I believe she has every right to run her company the way she wants to. To the people of Santa Barbara that are mad at her for running her business the way she wants, start your own newspapers and compete. Competition is allowed in America. And if the people working there do not like it, stop crying about your full diaper, and do something about getting it changed.

