This is a touchy subject that must be addressed on several levels. First off, I have 13 years as a former Teamster. I am a pro-union MEMBER supporter, however, I am anti-union LEADERSHIP. Today the unions have become totalitarian, greed-driven, political monsters. The actual union members, however, are the backbone of the American work force and do not necessarily have the same mindset as their union leaders. Far too often, they must agree with them or face retribution.
Taking a look back into history, one will discover that without the unions, we would still be in a scenario where people work 18 hours a day and earn only $2.00 in wages at the end of a week. Yes, you might want to thank a union member for the wages you are earning today. However, the unions are failing their own members in many ways and at different levels.
In our current environment, many of the unions are working with corporations in eliminating the senior members and bringing in lower wage labor. In many cases, the unions have replaced union members with undocumented workers who was then required to become union. The only thing that could possibly make sense is that they are getting kick backs from the increased corporate profits. They are possibly pocketing more by not paying out the pensions from the previous members. And of course all the while, still collecting monthly dues from both.
I have even seen where unions actually represented both sides. There was a time when I worked for a government contractor and the union represented the government employee’s, then the contractor became union and then they were working both sides. The government wanted to outsource many positions and the union was fighting to keep those government jobs, yet they started representing the contractors own employees and were trying to get them more government jobs. How does this work? Collecting dues from both sides and serving neither.
Why is the head of the AFLCIO in direct contact with the Presidents office daily and visits the White House 2-3 times a week? There is some apparent political meandering and potential wrong doing happening here. Unions leaders need to scale back their political agenda and go back to focusing on their members. Instead of working with a President who wants to bring the American workers inline with that of immigrant workers, they should be fighting to bring the immigrant workers wages in line with that of the American worker. We need to acknowledge that there is a problem with the unions and set to fix it. American workers are a lot better-off with their help then without.