Hey, Jim – I couldn’t check any of the boxes you offered.
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IMHO, Unions serve working people well at times, but are often steered from the top-down and fail to reflect the concerns of their own membership.
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Society without unions was/is a disaster for working people. Unions helped create liveable conditions and the middle class. However, as one of our fellow bloggers quotes on her/his sign-off, “absolute power, corrupts absolutely”.
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The D party needs to maintain a healthy distance from all special interests.
I wanna vote Gompers is dead, bad for REAL working people AND Democrats are addicted! How to vote, how to vote…
jayboothsays
I fully support the existence of unions but anything gets stale when the system hasn’t been shaken up in a while. I think most of the muckety mucks at the big unions and their lawyers are interested in self-preservation first. They don’t necessarily ‘betray’ the workers but I don’t think the workers are getting their money’s worth for sure.
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Look at civil service for police depts.. the regulations are 2 inches thick and refer to a court case every other page, all for a glorified hiring procedure where some board in boston hears appeals from rejected applicants. Our police union lawyer, naturally, thought it was a brilliant idea to adopt it. We beat it on town meeting floor (after he gave a speech in favor at $200/hr or so to the policemen), but if we had lost and eventually got into a multi-year lawsuit because of a disagreement about who got hired? That money would’ve had to come out of somebody’s salary.
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Below my office at my day job there’s a place that’s basically “day camp for special people”. The workers are mostly african and haitian immigrants.. their pay hasn’t been going up so much recently because the state spending on Sped hasn’t gone up. So the SEIU comes in and convinces everyone that if they unionize, then they’ll get raises. So they unionized, the pot of money available for salaries is the same and now union dues are coming out of it. Where are these raises gonna come from? At least the SEIU is getting the dues, maybe they can get someone else a raise with that money. Even assuming the SEIU managed to change the funding at the state level because of a lousy 50 workers’ low-grade dues, is that how we should make policy?
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I think unions are political entities and a lot of mixed incentives come into play. They should exist, for sure, but I don’t mind seeing them take a black eye once in a while if they deserve it.
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jimcsays
… those new SEIU members are already more powerful than they were before they joined the union. More money will come.
Hey, Jim – I couldn’t check any of the boxes you offered.
<
p>
IMHO, Unions serve working people well at times, but are often steered from the top-down and fail to reflect the concerns of their own membership.
<
p>
Society without unions was/is a disaster for working people. Unions helped create liveable conditions and the middle class. However, as one of our fellow bloggers quotes on her/his sign-off, “absolute power, corrupts absolutely”.
<
p>
The D party needs to maintain a healthy distance from all special interests.
I wanna vote Gompers is dead, bad for REAL working people AND Democrats are addicted! How to vote, how to vote…
I fully support the existence of unions but anything gets stale when the system hasn’t been shaken up in a while. I think most of the muckety mucks at the big unions and their lawyers are interested in self-preservation first. They don’t necessarily ‘betray’ the workers but I don’t think the workers are getting their money’s worth for sure.
<
p>
Look at civil service for police depts.. the regulations are 2 inches thick and refer to a court case every other page, all for a glorified hiring procedure where some board in boston hears appeals from rejected applicants. Our police union lawyer, naturally, thought it was a brilliant idea to adopt it. We beat it on town meeting floor (after he gave a speech in favor at $200/hr or so to the policemen), but if we had lost and eventually got into a multi-year lawsuit because of a disagreement about who got hired? That money would’ve had to come out of somebody’s salary.
<
p>
Below my office at my day job there’s a place that’s basically “day camp for special people”. The workers are mostly african and haitian immigrants.. their pay hasn’t been going up so much recently because the state spending on Sped hasn’t gone up. So the SEIU comes in and convinces everyone that if they unionize, then they’ll get raises. So they unionized, the pot of money available for salaries is the same and now union dues are coming out of it. Where are these raises gonna come from? At least the SEIU is getting the dues, maybe they can get someone else a raise with that money. Even assuming the SEIU managed to change the funding at the state level because of a lousy 50 workers’ low-grade dues, is that how we should make policy?
<
p>
I think unions are political entities and a lot of mixed incentives come into play. They should exist, for sure, but I don’t mind seeing them take a black eye once in a while if they deserve it.
<
p>
… those new SEIU members are already more powerful than they were before they joined the union. More money will come.