Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Not Your Average Pinko Commie

I'm liberal in my political leanings.

I believe in the right to collective bargaining in the same way that I believe in the right to free speech, the right for a woman to choose abortion and the right of two gay people to marry.

I'm not a big fan of unions, though, which may appear counterintuitive but let me explain.

All through university, during my summer breaks, I was employed by one of the big three auto companies in one of their parts distribution warehouses in Canada.  I got paid an obscene amount of money to drive a forklift.   I cannot express how grateful I am for those dollars.  They enabled me to feed myself and make my car payment for the entire year after just 12 weeks of work.

And I worked like a dog.  I made sure that my picking or placing stats were at the top of the employee heap for a couple of reasons.  First, my father, worked for the same company, albeit, out in Vancouver and I was very much aware that I, by proxy, represented him.  The other thing was that while my university friends were shlepping it out in the restaurants or painting houses or planting trees in the far north during their summer breaks,  I understood how fortunate I was to have my auto job and I felt like I owed it to every server being left a $1.00 tip, to put in a full, honest, eight hours.

This work ethic, shared by a large percentage of the student employees, often got us into trouble with the regular workers, who felt that we made them "look bad".  That attitude left a sour taste in my mouth.  The work was not difficult.  It could be repetitive and boring but it wasn't stressful and didn't require a special skill set.  We were often admonished to "slow down", "go have a cigarette", "relax".  To give you perspective, I attended university from 1988 through 1992.  Back then, I made nearly $30 per hour driving that forklift for the summer.  THIRTY DOLLARS PER HOUR.  The regular workers made more.

I came away with the understanding that there was a lot of fat in the auto industry and that the biggest threat to the auto company's ability to compete had very little to do with Japan and far more to do with the pervasive sense of entitlement that the union had fostered in the workforce.  I'm not saying that unions don't have their place and that they weren't formed out of necessity but how many teachers, who are crappy at their jobs, are still standing in front of a classroom today?  One only has to spend a single day trying to set up a trade show booth at Javits in NYC to experience the frustrating inefficiency of that particular union.

So, today, I read about how another American Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing after there seemed to be some sort of issue with the landing gear.  This latest incident came after a series of delays and "maintenance issues" instigated by the pilots over the last couple of weeks in an orchestrated effort to hurt the airline.  There was a question as to whether or not this latest problem was real or a job action created by the pilots but the point became moot because management executives at American waved the white flag and got back to contract negotiations.  I do understand the fundamental reasoning behind trying to financial cripple a company to achieve one's bargaining goals but I don't like that the consumer is the one that gets the shaft.

Maybe I am naive, but I think that if left to it, the market might just take care of itself.  (That sounds so Republican, right?)  There should be a fair wage for a fair day's work.  If that wage doesn't attract the caliber of people that company x wants, they will have no choice but to increase wages and sweeten the benefits pot.  Personally, I think teachers, nurses, police and first responders should be paid HUGE bucks, which would, theoretically, create a much larger pool of talent from which to choose.  Employment in those fields would be competitive and once secured, I imagine it would be cherished.

Look, I know that I haven't covered all of the variables in a scenario like that.  I know that my viewpoint is pretty narrow and I do acknowledge that unions are sometimes very, very, necessary but there has to be some sort of middle ground, which seems to be a metaphor for just about everything in the US right now.   It would be nice for us to work our way to the center, which is where I think the majority of Americans reside.


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