[AT] Union Labor

[Louis R Godena]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "George Willer" <gwill at toast.net>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2005 3:51 PM
Subject: Re: [AT] Union Labor


> It's at least Danny and I who have noticed the lop sided loyalty of many 
> workers.  They seem to think their employers owe them more loyalty than 
> they owe their employer.  Hogwash!!!  The most vocal ones are the least 
> likely to understand it's a two way street.  Some even seem (wrongly) to 
> think their union produces something for them that is not there already. 
> Their company owes them exactly nothing beyond their current pay check, 
> which settles their account... unless they somehow think they owe the 
> company more than their skill and time.


Well, the union provides a united front to bargain for better wages and 
benefits, including a safer workplace and rudimentary health and pension 
benefits.   This is actually a social good, as the taxpayers end up 
subsidizing corporate free-loaders like WalMart whose employees are so 
poorly compensated they sooner or later end up on the dole for their health 
care and pensions.   Without unions, the extremes of wealth and penury in 
America would be even more pronounced.

Yes, many unions are corrupt; they are nothing more than a mirror of modern 
American society as a whole.  What can one do?   Destroy the corruption and 
you will destroy the system.   Corruption holds the system together.  Not 
articulated goals.   Not shared values.   But a corruption that pervades 
virtually every relationship in modern America, and which "holds" the 
country "together" rather like rotted vines holding together a rotted house.

Now you can scream and holler and wave the flag all you want, but that is 
the essential, salient feature of our modern society.   It will last until a 
new economic dispensation (the source, finally, of *all* values) is 
sufficiently in place to produce new values that hopefully will mirror the 
best that is in each of us, both as a nation and as part of a larger world 
community.

Louis Godena (getting back to tractors, hopefully)