Union workers I know on a close personal level (Teamsters, USWA, UAW) are becoming more cynical with every new political step taken by the union top dogs. These people, all old school Democrats, have always been troubled by Big Labor corruption (the Teamster refers to his union card as his “Graft Card”) but their tolerance is fast wearing thin over the ultra-leftist politics of the union bosses who are in league with Obama.

Perhaps, in a bizarre and upside-down way, we have Obama to thank for this sharp new division in labor’s ranks.

I have had both in my family. Members who were in a cult, and members who were pro-union.

There was a lot of similarity. My old Uncle who was religious and very conservative in his personal life, would vote for the most far out radical lefty because the union told him to. He would vote and campaign for people who were pro abortion, pro welfare, and all the other things he disliked. And he hated Republicans with a passion, no matter how much they actually agreed with his own beliefs.

But whatever you say about the current generations, they are simply not as susceptible to that level of brainwashing, Today, people are much more cynical.

That is part of the reason I never agreed with calling the WW2 generation the “greatest” generation. They did some necessary and heroic things, but they were easily lead by the elites, they were bandwagon jumpers, they elected socialists, and they did a lousy job raising their kids which is why we got the goddamn hippy generation.

when I was little, because my dad was management during a factory stike where all the office workers kept the factory going. When I was little I wasn’t afraid of the monster under the bed, I was afraid of being shot through the gap in the curtains at night. I wasn’t really supposed to know about the threats, but somehow must have heard something. So, no love for unions by me. That factory was eventually shut down and all production moved to another non-union factory.

The other fact here is that so many small manufacturers have been pushed out of business throughout the Midwest particularly, partly by unions and partly by competition from China. Now they have a big target on their back again with Cap and Trade. The big guys are exempt, the little guys will have to pay. Because Democrats are so caring.

Announcing ‘Operation Scrap Obamacare’

Obamacare is nothing but a scam to empower labor unions, ACORN and the likes, in addition to being UNCONSTITUTIONAL!

For a long time now, most labor unions are just criminals that exploit the very people they claim to help. We must not let Obamacare further nourish the criminal elements inherent in most of the labor unions. Obamacare must be stopped!

Let us blast congress, both Dems and Republicans, throw in the media too, with the lists in the 2 files here:-

http://www.scribd.com/doc/19468659/Mass-Email-List-for-Congress-Sept2009

http://www.scribd.com/doc/19468535/Mass-Email-List-for-Media-Sept52009

Operation:
1. copy and paste the email list to the TO box.
2. type in the header box: Scrap Obamacare Now! Americans don’t want it!’
(no need to write anything in the email body.)
3. Click ‘SEND’
That is it.
It only takes a second! Do it daily from each email account. Try it. It will do wonder!

Hint:
1. save the lists to your own files for quick and easy access.
2. can mass email to many recipients at once – e.g. once to Republicans, once to all Dems, once to all media.
3. It will let you know if it is too long, then just split the list in 2.

On your marks, get set, GOOOOOOOOO !

Thank you for participating and enlisting everyone you know or on your mailing list to participate.

Great post, bs.

I was a supervisor of federal government workers for much of the last 20+ years. Some are stellar and would be sought after by any organization. Others, not so much. Government workers are far more unionized than their private industry counterparts, which accounts in no small measure for government’s current cred on effectiveness. Hey, *someone* has to protect them from working hard and efficiently, right? If not unions, then who?

Here’s some good news from the free market perspective that relates to what you said as well as my comments:

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics 1/28/09 (BLS, at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm):

In 2008, union members accounted for 12.4 percent of employed wage and salary workers, up from 12.1 percent a year earlier, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of workers belonging to a union rose by 428,000 to 16.1 million. In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent, and there were 17.7 million union workers.”

That is, over a period of 25 years, with a rising American population, union membership *dropped* by over a million and by almost 8 percentage points, even with the little blip upwards being reported here. That’s why they need card check so badly – their only chance of reversing this trend is intimidation.

The BLS further reports:

“Some highlights from the 2008 data are:

“–Government workers were nearly five times more likely to belong to a union than were private sector employees. [Anyone think this is entirely unrelated to the 'public option?' Fla Mom]

“–Workers in education, training, and library occupations had the highest unionization rate at 38.7 percent. [i.e., the NEA--Fla Mom]

“–Black workers were more likely to be union members than were white, Asian, or Hispanic workers.

“–Among states, New York had the highest union membership rate (24.9 percent) and North Carolina had the lowest rate (3.5 percent).

“Membership by Industry and Occupation:

“The union membership rate for public sector workers (36.8 percent) was substantially higher than the rate for private industry workers (7.6 percent).”

From the American Federation of Government Workers (AFGE) on 1/25/08 at http://www.afge.org/Index.cfm?Page=PressReleases&PressReleaseID=819, “Private sector union membership grew by 133,000 and density grew to 7.5 percent in 2007, the first time private sector density grew since 1979.”

So, single-digits for private industry, with essentially no increased membership for the last 30 years, and percent of workers in unions only breaks into double digits because of government workers.

From the same AFGE press release, and related to the ‘public option,’ “The largest increase in union membership was in health services, where unions added 142,000 members, a 0.9 percent increase in density from 2006 to 7.9 percent.” Another reason that the ‘public option’ is so important to some.

Back to the BLS:

“Within the public sector, local government workers had the highest union membership rate, 42.2 percent. This group includes many workers in several heavily unionized occupations, such as teachers, police officers, and fire fighters.”

It’s interesting that the police union supported and represented Sgt Crowley in his run-in with Henry Louis Gates and that it was the firefighters’ union that voted to take New Haven to court to fight the decision against the white and Hispanic firefighters who scored well on the advancement test; why are these unions on the opposite side of these issues than would be expected based on the actions of most other unions? I know a union’s job is to represent its members to management, but there was no hesitation or confusion on the part of the police union because of the races of those involved. And in my experience at the federal level, having a union insist on maintaining *higher* standards? Ha!

Last, from Australia on 4/15/08 (http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/union-memberships-great-leap-backwards/2008/04/14/1208025090872.html), the long-term trend is similar, even though the U.S. just saw a blip upwards:

“Union membership has plunged in the past 12 months despite the central role that organised labour played in defeating the Howard government at last year’s election…. The [Australian Bureau of Statistics] found that membership fell by 5 per cent, or 89,000, in the year to last August, meaning just 19 per cent of the workforce – or 1.7 million workers – were signed up to unions. It accelerates a trend in which membership has halved since 1990. The decline has divided the nation’s labour leadership and some union chiefs – whose organisations have defied the trend and grown in the past year – are advocating a more militant approach to mobilising workers.”

They’re thinking of a new twist on the phrase, ‘If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em:’ ‘If they won’t join you, beat ‘em.’

Fla Mom

to start doing some polling about a National Right to Work Act.

When I was much younger, I worked union and was a union representative and officer. Like that old saw about how if you’re not a radical when you’re twenty, you have no heart, if you’re still one when you’re forty, you have no brain, I grew out of it. I represented the employer for over twenty years sometimes in very adversarial situations. I’ve been threatened all sorts of ways, had a dime dropped to my wife, my boss, a reporter a zillion times. Had a newly elected Democrat administration openly announce that they’d promised AFSCME to fire me in partial exchange for AFSCME’s support. Knew full well that my job was on the auction block at any gubernatorial election.

Over time, I became just as dangerous as they were and nowhere in nature do predators much hunt each other; it is a good way to get hurt. By the time I was in charge of my State’s labor relations program, the game was pretty much the old school yard dynamic of one being scared and the other glad of it. Instead of the all out war that many predicted, I became the first and thus far only since bargaining began in ’72 head of labor relations to keep them all quietly under contract and largely out of politics for an entire gubernatorial term. Since I retired from the State, I’ve worked both sides but mostly for the unions. I have to pause to thank the Palin and now Parnell Administrations for keeping up a steady supply of stupid which makes me a good bit of money.

Basically, unions are only as strong as employers allow them to be. If they’re not afraid of you, they run over you and trying to “be nice,” that Republican disease, causes them to not fear you, so they start to bedevil you. If you’re going to be successful as an employer, you have to learn to think like a Lefty and I, frankly, would not tolerate ANYTHING from them; if they did something to the employer that I didn’t like, I did something to them that they didn’t like. I’ve fired shop stewards and activists, taken every grievance to arbitration because I knew I could afford it and they couldn’t, cut off their dues; the litany is long and some of my union friends would be happy to recite it. Others developed at least a grudging respect for me and I for them and we managed to work together quite well and I enjoy working for them when they’re right. If they come to me with a case or a cause and I agree with them, I take the work. If I think they’re wrong, I tell them so and don’t take the work. That said, I’d never work for AFSCME because they’re not really a union, they’re a socialist political party, and they’d never ask me to work for them, even if they really needed me, because I’m a Republican.

There was a time when terrible atrocities and injustices against black folks were the norm in America, and the NAACP fought for decades to change that. They were successful and most of what they had pushed for is now enforced law, so now they are reduced to scraping the bottom of the barrell and trump up rediculous issues in order to justify their own existence.

By the same token, the things labor unions fought for many years ago are now codified in law and enforced vigorously, so now they have to fight for unreasonable things in order to justify their existence.

In short, labor unions, much like the NAACP, have simply outlived their usefulness.