From Pine View Farm

Internal Contradiction 1

The U. S. Chamber of Commerce is beating the drum against unions again.

The last time I looked, no union was asking for multi-million dollar bonuses and country club memberships and crying that their rights were being violated if they didn’t get them. (Living wages and health care maybe, but not multi-million dollar bonuses.)

A snippet from the Bloomberg story (emphasis added):

Companies have added anti-union videos to training programs, required employees to sit through anti-union meetings and hired outside labor-relations consultants as a pre-emptive strike against a union organizing campaign.

“The whole culture that currently allows us to be a low-cost producer while paying top wages would probably be destroyed” by the legislation, Craig Milum, president of Milum Textile Services, a Phoenix-based linen supplier, said in an interview.

The internal contradiction: If they are treating their employees so damn good, what are they afraid of?

Full disclosure: I worked in a heavily unionized industry for many years. Unionized workers are no different from any others, except maybe for the living wage thingee and the health care.

A basic lesson of labor history is this:

    Management creates unions.
Share

1 comment

  1. Karen

    December 29, 2009 at 9:46 am

    What are they afraid of? Mass walk-outs comes to mind. I hear about it every time my daughter & son-in-law go through it. He’s walking a picket, while she’s inside (she’s management) working her butt off, double shifts.

    Besides, the plumbing union here hides the worst of the worst plumbers. Lazy, crooked, stupid, they’re all there. The plumbing union is what keeps the service companies in business. Their work is programmed to fail just as the warranty expires. Like so many other things.

    Last time a union rep came to my door, I offered to introduce her big butt self to my crazy dog. She left. Quickly.