Be Careful What You Wish For
By Jim Bauer
@porwest (89329)
United States
December 17, 2023 12:54pm CST
It's not the first time I have seen it happen, and you would think that any union worker would have more common sense to understand it is more likely to happen when they negotiate contracts and put up such big fights for more money.
You will probably, not absolutely, but probably put your job at risk.
Unions tend to have one huge problem. That is, before they negotiate the "deals," they rarely know what the actual books look like. So, they are literally pulling numbers and demands out of thin air with little real basis for how they get paid for.
I remember a marine company in Wisconsin back in the day. It was a union fight that went on for months and months, with strikes costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.
Finally, a contract was agreed upon. They ratified the contract. And 90 days later the company closed the plant and moved all production to Mexico leaving more than a thousand workers unemployed.
A similar thing happened with the Hostess company many years ago. In fact, the company went bankrupt and sold off all of their assets. All of the workers lost their jobs.
But hey, they got a great contract even if they destroyed their opportunity to ever benefit from it.
Enter GM, who recently announced it will be laying off 1400 workers from two plants in Michigan as they discontinue the Camaro and the Bolt. Granted, these may have been planned events. One of the factories will be retooled by 2025 to produce something else.
But meanwhile, these UAW workers are left on the unemployment line—never to see a dime of what they fought so hard for.
It seems like all of these past events should serve as teachable moments. If you try to game the system and get blood out of a stone, you will probably get way less than you bargained for in the end, and even if they think they win in the short term, in the end...
They may just get their wish. But the prize may not be quite what they were expecting.
11 people like this
11 responses
@moffittjc (121503)
• Gainesville, Florida
20 Dec
Beyond the local politics of unions, they fail to see (or don’t care) about the big picture…the global perspective of their business or industry. We simply can’t compete with countries who pay workers mere pennies for doing the same work. Why would a company keep running a factory in the US where their labor costs can be as high as a hundred dollars an hour per worker, when they can run that same factory in a third world country and pay the workers there a bowl of rice each day? And then we cry when our factories keep moving overseas.
2 people like this
@moffittjc (121503)
• Gainesville, Florida
23 Dec
@porwest I think that if their workers could prove their worth by churning out the highest quality cars in the world, or developing engines that get 200 miles to the gallon, or something innovative like that, then they deserve to get paid more. But when the product they are putting out is average at best, it's hard to justify paying them more than anyone else in the industry from around the world.
2 people like this
@porwest (89329)
• United States
28 Dec
@moffittjc Well, that and their pay has to match the books. Beyond that, the way unions structure how work can be done also slows things down and makes things less efficient which hurts profitability.
1 person likes this
@porwest (89329)
• United States
17 Dec
It' worse for these situations in that the ones who get screwed are the taxpayers. And unfortunately, in the case of these unions, they see the taxpayer as a potentially endless supply of money.
In the case of many of these union companies, their budgets and expenses are also public because they are publicly traded companies.
1 person likes this
@porwest (89329)
• United States
17 Dec
@NJChicaa Because they have to pay for the demands, and because the unions know all the government has to do is raise taxes, they don't care how it affects anyone else. They just want what they want, and they know regardless of whether they produce results or not, they will still get their money.
1 person likes this
@kaylachan (68508)
• Daytona Beach, Florida
17 Dec
Kid of suck that it happens. But, that's life I guess.
1 person likes this
@kaylachan (68508)
• Daytona Beach, Florida
18 Dec
@porwest I think they just fail to understand their actions have unintended conquenceses. The idea of a union, is almost like a hive mind. If one feels they are being treated unfairly, they all do. And, they act on emotion and impulse. Instead of being thankful for what they do have.
@JESSY3236 (19859)
• United States
13 Feb
I agree. My best friend works for Freightliner and she is part of an union too. Her mother and her father were part of unions too. Freightliner is always laying people off. She was laid off a few years ago around Christmas. But she was hired back a few months later.
1 person likes this
@LindaOHio (176669)
• United States
18 Dec
My husband's union always treated the guys well; and they were able to make a great wage. They were working for a huge, stable company though. It wasn't a small shop deal. Have a good week.
1 person likes this
@porwest (89329)
• United States
19 Dec
Well, of course the unions will work "for" the employees. The problem is when they screw the companies over and put worker's wages and jobs overall in jeopardy. Most union workers don't realize that in the end, they are stealing money and eventually that catches up with them.
1 person likes this
@2ndchances24 (8612)
• Cloverdale, Indiana
17 Dec
You are so right my friend, when BIG
gamers play the game & LOSE it's NO
laughing matter & ALL hell breaks loose.
1 person likes this
@porwest (89329)
• United States
19 Dec
What unions are essentially advocating for is theft. Do workers deserve to be paid commensurate with the work they do? Yes. Of course. But what the unions call for in terms of wages, work conditions and so on and so forth stifles the profitability of the company in most cases and go far beyond what these workers should actually be paid or receive in benefits. It also drives up costs to consumers since the price of union made products will incorporate the cost of those wages into the price of their goods and services.
Workers always do better overall when their pay is determined by natural forces rather than by artificial ones.
1 person likes this
@2ndchances24 (8612)
• Cloverdale, Indiana
19 Dec
@porwest any & all workers of factories
that work hard & do their jobs deserves
a better pay than those that don't give a
?hit, they don't care if they work or not.
@wiLLmaH (8802)
• Singapore, Singapore
18 Dec
It's disheartening to see the pattern of workers fighting for better conditions only to face the harsh reality of job losses. The lessons from these past events should indeed serve as cautionary tales.
Hopefully, these instances prompt unions to reevaluate their negotiation strategies and consider the broader implications to ensure that their hard-fought battles lead to sustainable and positive outcome.
1 person likes this
@porwest (89329)
• United States
19 Dec
Part of the problem is that, essentially, the unions are not actually working for the employees. That's what they say, but really, they are a business in and of themselves only interested in collecting the dues and creating paid positions within the union itself to line their pockets with easy money. The more they can get for the workers, the higher the dues they can collect—even if ultimately the jobs go away eventually that pay the dues.
The union mentality is entitlement more than due compensation, and it usually backfires because what they ask for and fight for simply is not aligned with reality nor is it sustainable.
1 person likes this
@Deepizzaguy (102072)
• Lake Charles, Louisiana
17 Dec
You have a good point there that when a deal between the union and management is solved, management usually wins since they have the power to close down plants and the employees are let go.
@everwonderwhy (7272)
•
19 Dec
I don't trust union workers organizations. They're just as bad as the Establishment. Thanks for the article.
@Rashnag (30592)
• Surat, India
18 Dec
Ya it happens many times that workers support unions blindly without knowing much and then bare the consequences 
@TraveOnWorld (854)
• Georgia
18 Dec
The problem is not so much what the books look like as you can massage the books to say anything.
The problem comes in the idea that collective bargaining and collective increases or benefits, is somehow a good thing. It puts forward the socialistic notion that all workers must be rewarded the same, irrespective of their individual productivity or their contribution. Sorry, I do not want to be paid the same and get the same increase or the same benefits as worker X who takes off early every day, got children to fetch at school, sits on the toilet half the day, plays on his phone the rest of the day and have every excuse to shirk his duties. The idea that such a "worker" must be "protected" from "exploitation" is ludicrous. Been there done that, got the tshirt and detested every minute of it.
What happened to the union leaders who were pushing for these contracts? They financially sorted or are they also on the unemployment line? I get there must be protection from child labour, unhygienic and unsafe working places, unpaid overtime and a host of other evils. But the financial reward of the person selling his/her body for that reward, should probably best be left to the individual who is doing the selling.
