Readers will know that I do not like the idea of present-day labor unions. They did have their day and they were instrumental in getting decent working conditions and pay for factory workers. There was a time when people would grow up and get work in the town where they were born. The idea of moving to another town or city was alien to the majority of the population. Factory owners knew this and knew that they had a captive market of employees. For every worker who quit, there were a hundred others wanting his job. In a small town, there were only one or two employers so they took full advantage of this.
In this case, unions were lifesavers. Today, not so much - the workplace has evolved, people think nothing of moving to another city for a better job and the unions have not kept up with the times.
There was an interesting article in todays Washington Examiner:
States with fewer union members are growing faster
The fastest growing states in the U.S. also tend to be ones with lower-than-average rates of union membership, according to an analysis of data released on Friday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Of the states (including the District of Columbia) with the top 10 fastest-growing populations, nine have union membership rates in the single digits. Nevada is the only state to be top 10 in population growth from July 2013 to July 2014 with a unionization rate above the nationwide rate of 11.1 percent.
Nine of the eleven least unionized states had Republican governors in 2014.
Nevada's stats are because of the casinos. The numbers make perfect sense - people see the unions for what they are - politically active dues grubbing leviathans who are no longer working for the worker but for the interests of their own bureaucracy.
Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy writ large:
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
'Nuff said...
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