Once again we are being treated to another propaganda campaign on behalf of organized labor, spinning television commercials about the wonderfully named "Employee Free Choice Act". The prospects are good for this foolhardy measure with Democrats eager to please their union supporters even if the net effect is to strangle what's left of the American economy. Senator Tom Harken plans to introduce the measure in Congress next week.
Frequently, the naming of bill is enough to give you a feel about what it's really about. During the Bush years we had the Patriot Act, another wonderfully named bill that authorized plenty of things of dubious Constitutionality. Vote against it, you must not be a patriot. Vote against the Employee Free Choice Act you are against Employees being free.
I worked for 16 years in a UAW organized defense plant as an engineer I had close working relations with the union for much of my early adult life. This place now sits idle awaiting the wrecking ball. All the union jobs have been moved, outsourced and lost. One of the biggest millstone around the company and our attempts to win government contracts was always the UAW.
Instead of being free, being a less than senior worker in a union shop is a fact another form of bondage, limiting an employees prospects for advancement and betterment and leaving him the sole recourse of toughing it out until he has sufficient seniority to be untouchable. Younger workers in a union shop cannot do much to better their condition since pay and other perks are based solely on seniority, which always benefit the older union die hards. When the layoffs come, these younger employees are first fired.
When I compare a union workplace with bondage, I meant no hyperbole. Intellectual vigor and energy are discouraged and sloth and waste are both encouraged and rewarded. Doing things faster, better or cheaper result in less time and a half or double time overtime. With union rules requiring that OT be available equally to all the union workers, everyone is responsible for sloth and working slow to guarantee additional income for all union members. This descended down to prototype, demo work and things that were meant to win new work to keep the existing employees employed or to hire new people. This was not a concern for the union, whose leaders were all long serving and thought themselves untouchable. Younger or less senior people are considered expendable.
The most sad experience I have witnessed working alongside the UAW happened in the engineering prototype lab. This was a small lab, not intended for production purposes, but it still had a fairly large stockroom where parts were stored and kitted out for assembly as parts came in. A porter from another plant heard of the job opening, applied for the spot and was accepted. He was a black man, not very learned and had been with the company for a mere 15 years. This stock room had in fact a small computer terminal in it and our enterprising new stock clerk got the idea that he wanted to learn to use one. He came out with the idea of making a database of all the items in the stockroom that he could manage inventory from the computer. At first, all went along well. He was learning about software. He was prompt, could be readily found (unlike the earlier guy who was always on break) was cheerful and helpful to all.
In most work environments this would be rewarded. Here it counts for naught. Another porter who had more seniority heard about the job position and was able to "bump" this guy from the job and send him back to hauling boxes. This new guy saw the position as an ideal place to sleep during the day. He also had the disadvantage of not being able to read, and so after prodding he would present a box to an engineer on the floor and have him read it to him.
Even a senior union guy could run afoul of the union mentality i.e. work slow get more overtime pay, don't work hard or innovate. We had another old union worker, Sydney who was an old WWII navy man and he believed in working. Despite poor eyesight he worked on detailed wire wrapped panels doing work five times as fast with no errors. Catcalls, garbage thrown at him while he was staring through his thick glasses were the reward. Notably at lunch he came upstairs for the engineering supervisor's card game leaving his union co-workers downstairs.
Since engineers were essentially forbidden to handle any tools, any work had to be done by a union guy. Most of them were determined to work as slow as possible and make mistakes to force more paid overtime work. This was taken to an absurd level. Once they attempted to have calculators deemed to be test equipment so an engineer would need coverage to use one! There was a similar attempted with CRT terminals. In the end we could not get stuff out the door and compete with companies down in Texas, Georgia and other places - far from the union label. We lost contracts, our BAFFOS were not good enough. Eventually, the work was outsourced to PA and then Florida to non-union sites. Later it went to contract houses or even India. Now its a vacant site, a dream. The union has been shut down.
Currently, the UAW has forced the company to agree to desist from forever reopening any form of manufacturing plant within 100 miles of the site, without reactivating the union. This means that **my former company** will never open any manufacturing facility in the state of NJ, for all eternity.
With all the competition from workers in China and India and other places that are eager to work and determined to improve their condition, are unions the solution to our problems or the final nail in our coffin?
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