Your Thoughts on Unions

Once upon a time, about a hundred years ago. Workers were forced to work 14 hrs a day for little wage and few hours off. Then they formed unions and did work strikes to limit it to 40 hr work weeks. They demanded more pay and got vacations, but the unions made big promises they could never keep. They started representing the people they said they represented much less, and started representing themselves much more. They brokered unfair backroom deals, they brokered promises that were unfairly kept. They lied to the people they were suppose to be representing. Meanwhile they kept drawing more and more money from those people who were working hard to keep them in power.
So they made millions.
Then they lied to the workers.
So they could make even more millions.
They forgot whom they truly represented.

Today we pay the consequences for believing in their lies.

Did you hear about the Chrystler fiasco of 2004 involving United Health Care insurance?

Chrystler said they couldn't afford to keep the worker's benefits, they negotiated with the union to cut back on those benefits.

The union went to United HealthCare and said, "hey buddy, give us this cheap plan that covers only the basics, and can we have 2 million pamphlets about your premium caddilac healthcare coverage plan?"

The union then passed out the premium caddilac plan to ALL Chrystler employees including people working for dealerships and said. "Hey Guys, LOOK! We negotiated this awesome deal with United Health Care, this is your new healthcare plan."

Everyone said to the union. "Wow! This is awesome, Thanks so much, you guys are the best!"

6 months went by.

'Hey, how come this back surgery I had isn't covered by my companies insurance?'

'It just isn't covered anywhere in your plan.'

'What are you talking about?!! It was a 40,000 surgery and it was in covered in the booklet!!!'

'I'm sorry maybe your looking at the wrong booklet? Did you check your benefits package before you had the surgery?'

'Benefits Package? What benefits package? --off mic, did we get a benefits package?--'

'No, I never got one, I got this little book here it says up to $40,000 deductible on my back surgery.'

'I'm sorry Sir, that's not the benefits package, I can have one sent to you, it should arrive within 2 weeks by mail.'

And on it went for eight months.

There were claims from people who got everything from expensive back plate surgery to instances of children being deathly sick and not having any coverage because of the basic plan the union signed onto.

Why was it done? That part has nagged me for the longest time. The Why. Going back, I realized that soon after that, a health care plan was pushed through congress with unanimous public support, covering only children whose parents couldn't pay for health insurance. It's was sponsored by all powerful Ms. Nancy Pelousi and Harry Reid. That was why. They needed a public outcry for help to get another social program bill passed into law. The unions were right there in the middle of it making certain it happened.

In the end there was a settlement between Chrystler, the workers in the union, and United Health Care. Everyone directly involved was told to shut up about it by court order.

However, I being a friendly listening bystander who heard several different angles from different people about this thing going down, am under no such obligation.

Unions are the cause of America falling behind other countries such as China in productivity and exports.

I come from a family where all of the males on both sides were union carpenters.

And as a kid I saw a place for unions.

My family would have never had health insurance growing up without unions. my dad constantly changed companies that he worked for because that is the nature of the construction industry. But since he was union for every job his pay and benefits were fixed. These types of "craftmanship" unions make a lot of sense to me.

But places were people work for one company forever and never have to jump around make little sense.

Shouldn't an individual be able to negotiate his or her own salary and benefits?