Unions in America, Making Life Better for a Select Few

By Ron Fitzwater

The AFL-CIO reports in their summary of the much debated Employee Free Choice Act that, "the EFCA is the most important legislative proposal in 70 years because it will remove unfair barriers to union representation and collective bargaining so that workers can get their fair share and improve jobs and benefits for everyone. It will help workers achieve the American Dream by giving them the freedom to choose a union and bargain collectively. It will mean that the economy can work for everyone again."

James Sherk, writing for the Heritage Foundation's website, states, "The misnamed EFCA does more than effectively eliminate workers' rights to a secret ballot vote on joining a union. Section 3 of EFCA gives government officials the power to impose contracts on workers and firms."

I call it yet another avenue for labor to extort from business by reducing the rights of people who don't want unions and don't need unions.

One of the several jobs that I did between leaving the military and going back to school was labor dispute security. What the job entailed was guarding property owned by companies being struck by their workers' union. Let me be clear in the fact that this was not scab work. We were just there to make sure that the angry folks outside the fence had a facility to return to after the strike ended. We were needed because striking union workers tend to tear stuff up when they are on strike. I always found it nuts that they would want to destroy property they were going to need later. I have worked grocery store chain strikes, steel worker strikes and Teamster truck driver strikes, and every single time and without fail, the facilities would be hit with a barrage of homemade black-powder bombs, Molotov cocktails, gunfire, arrow fire and unlimited supplies of glass jars and bottles filled with unprintable substances.

You should see some of the pictures and video I have from that part of my working life.

All that being said, I also have to reveal that I was once a member of the Teamsters: Musician's Local 136 in Charleston, W.V. to be exact. That was another life before the military. I was forced to join because it is a union town and the clubs I played in were being threatened with picket lines if they allowed non-union musicians to perform. There was a file with a big black X on it with our names, where we played, what we got paid and all sorts of stuff. If I 'wanted to play I had to pay,' I was told by a union rep. But I didn't like it. These guys would actually check the union status of big acts that played the civic center and fine them if they didn't have union cards. Remember these are musicians, not coal miners.

Unions have jammed their dirty little fingers into everything from education to professional sports and for no other reason than to force business to pay them more than they are truly worth and build the union as a business.

Once there was a time when unions were needed, but with today's labor laws, admittedly driven by the union battles of the past, the need for unions has passed.

Today unions simply operate as legalized extortion rackets to business and serve only a select few not the "brotherhood/sisterhood" as a whole like they purport.

Don't believe me? Union teachers make in most locations under $40,000 a year, while unionized pro football players make tens of millions for 17 to 21 weeks of games. I love football, but come on, are ball players really worth that much more than the people who are helping to shape the future leaders of the country?

Today, people are mad over the AIG bailout/bonus issue saying that these people do not deserve bonuses because they have hurt the economy so bad.

Well autoworkers getting paid $75 per hour (double-time for overtime, triple-time for holidays) plus benefits to put a single part on a car on an assembly line, a task that can be done by any high school drop-out, has also driven the cost of living up and contributed to the economic mess we are now in. In fact, every product produced by union labor is more expensive than a comparable product produced by non-union labor. Who pays more? You.

The EFCA will make it significantly more difficult for business and free workers to fend off union incursion. While it will not remove the secret ballot, which many want to tout as the main problem, it does remove the requirement for one when a union organizer is on the hunt.

If an organizer gets 50 percent plus one on a unionizing petition, the company will be unionized without a vote at all. And the company being unionized will be required to honor the union. Oh yes, and the union will have a list of all the people who didn't want them there.

While our government is busy trying to get business under control in the country, they better put some attention at getting labor under control, as well, or the economy will never heal.