What is WRONG with people now days thinking Unions are "bad" and wanting to "do away" with them?

whats bad for people is the secret organizations like skull and bones.. those people should be banned from politics..

taking any oath .. to anyone.. other than the constitution.. and us citizens.. should make the person INELIGIBLE for govt service.

they should have only one allegiance.. serving the american people..

unions are not bad.. they keep america wealthy.. having all the money in a few hands is bad.. spreading the wealth.. making a middle class of taxpayers is what makes america rich..

not 1 or 2 people owning everything.. and paying basically nothing in taxes.

this country wouldnt have ever seen the wealth it has seen.. (predominantly before bush and regan) if it werent for unions..

Unions had a place in history when there were no labor laws, and laborers could be exploited in factory towns where the owner of the factory owned all the houses and stores. Those days are long gone.

Now, there are labor laws to protect workers. Laws governing wages, hours, health and safety, etc.

Unions are no longer the "good guys". My wife was FORCED to join a union in her last job. They took money from her pay (dues) without her consent. She got NOTHING in return. Somebody out there is making a fortune from these dues, but it isn't the workers.

Unions destroy our competitiveness with the rest of the world. Just look at Detroit. The Big Three are going bankrupt because of the unions, while Toyota workers are doing great on 1/3 less pay.

If your question was legitimate, and not just a rant, that is the best answer I can give you.

People who have been corrupted by a consumerist mentality are always cynical about other people who claim to have values besides self-interest. Anybody who claims to have values is decried as perpetuating a noble lie and given a ridiculous title like "union thug". There are still plenty of things for unions to do to help the most marginalised workers in society. Since free market capitalism achieved unconditional approval it has been decided that the working poor is an acceptable social phenomenon because markets decided these wages and these people don't deserve any more than the market affords them. However these people do deserve better and unions can help them negotiate a living wage with their employers. Just because a person doesn't aspire to become a professional doesn't mean they don't deserve a living wage. In an affluent society anybody who works should be able to rest assured they can afford enough food to feed a family, have access to medical care, have access to education and eventually own a modest house or apartment. Society can afford this for people who work and claiming the working poor are too lazy and stupid to have these things simply demonstrates how morally bankrupt some people are.

I guess the flip answer would be: start your own manufacturing facility if you think the owners are overpaid. What? You don't have the capital to invest? You don't want to take the risk? I suggest you start your own company and then limit your own compensation.

The problem with unions is they have outlived their usefulness in most instances. Unions grew and flourished in a less enlightened time when some companies sacrificed worker safety for a dollar. In the ensuing years the Government has stepped in passing minimum wage laws, safety standards, mandatory overtime wages, age laws to protect children, and several other laws geared towards ensuring fairness in the workplace. These used to be union issues.

That leaves unions to negotiate benefits that have grown to outrageous lengths. Employers are forced to pay millions of dollars to workers who are not producing anything (laid off, retired) because of unions. The employer must pass these costs on to the consumer. Eventually we can no longer afford the products and turn to foreign or "non-union" goods and services. (Leave Michigan and go check out the big steel mills in Pittsburgh and Ohio. Oh, that's right, those industries are gone. Thank you Steel Workers' Union!)

We owe a debt of thanks to unions of the past but today's unions should not try to collect that debt in triplicate.

Don't get me wrong. I have been and will soon become again a union member. Unions have done much for our country, but most of that is in a bygone era.

Today, they turn $20/hour honest factory jobs into $70/hour gravy trains.

Today they take union dues and funnel them into radical left wing groups and anti-family, anti-faith programs.

Today, they take union dues and use them to support hard-left candidates for office.

Today, they force an unnatural division of labor, punish interdepartmental cooperation and make it nearly impossible to get rid of poison-pill slackers who do nothing but spread their bad attitude to good workers.

Today, they focus on tearing down targeted companies, not on securing rights for the workers in those companies.

Right-to-work laws are the only way around this. Even attempts to have the politically-used portion of union dues contributed to a charity often meets (predictably) with huge amounts of flack from unions and the politicians they have helped into office.

By the way, the unions have done little really to increase overall wages in our country. Most factories still pay around $7-10/hour for their main workforce and $20-30/hour for highly-skilled technical workers. That is the way it has been for a long time.

When I worked for a university on the west (left) coast, I made less than $7 per hour as an entry-level worker, and a man who had been working there in the building trades for almost 30 years was making $22/hour. That was a union shop.

Spare me the hype and hoopla.

Been there, done that, drank the coffee, moved on.

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SA Writer --

I wish I could give you 4 thumbs up.

You said it so well.

A lot of the answers here are so strong and to-the-point.

well i work for a small mechanical company and we get salted by the unions all the time. maybe they help some people with their jobs but they really can screw up others. take for instance the fact that my boss told a union worker that we will never join a union and that they will never own a unionized company. seems okay right? its a free country we can say whatever we want. well they slapped a ten thousand dollar fine on us just for saying that. now tell me is that fair? is it fair they just walk into our building and try to convince the workers (especially the ones that don't speak english and don't know the laws) that they can get them better pay and then can't deliver on their promises. just like everything else in this country unions are greedy, they want to have every company join them and they harass the ones who won't even though they don't want to or need to. i know unions are needed because some corporations can be corrupt and those workers need help, but their are plenty of us that have good bosses who take care of their workers and we don't need the unions, and i certainly don't need them targeting me and trying to get money out of us for every little thing we say. it works both ways but i see the unions at fault here.

help the ones who need it and leave the rest of us alone!

A union saved me from being fired from a government job. I was working with a black female, who was just a co-worker but has been employed for a number of years, and she has been calling me and another lady,"white trash". When I went to the bosses, they did nothing. Nobody would do anything! They treated me bad to try to make me quit. They made her employee of the month that same week. I was furious. I went to the Union and things are better now. If I would not have had the opportunity to have a union at my job place, I would not have made it through.

There are few absolutes in life. Unions may or may not be one of them. Collective bargaining of labor has been beneficial in many situations of labor management differences. Some cases have been more adversarial than others.

Unions like government and management need to be maintained and monitored to maximize effective communication of labor and management.

Corrupt or incestuous relationships between labor and management are a conflict of interests what defeats the goal of "organized labor".

When and where Management has an unfair advantage over the compensation of Labor's share of profit of production, Unions have can be very effective in representation of labor to resolve disputes.

The challenge is to hold Union leadership accountable for representation of Labor before the personal, self, or special interests. The complex nature of the modern marketplace creates opportunities for million and billion dollar agreements to taint interests of Labor leadership and Management.

Rank and file Labor must be vigilant and aggressive keeping abreast of market expansion and growth. Better educated and highly specialized workers are better educated to monitor representation of Labor Management agreements.

Over $3,000 of every Union made car you buy goes to pay for worker benefits.

That is why they can't be competitive and their companies are bankrupt.

Now they are giving them all tax credits to stay in business. I am being taxed to support Unions.

Unions were originally started for better working conditions. Now the labor departments have laws on the books for this kind of stuff. They have served their purpose and now just loot the taxpayer and consumer.

Its not that unions are bad, its that unions have gone too far. For decades unions have demanded more than what's fair on the market and now many major companies that have huge labor unions are facing a crisis. The companies cannot compete in a global market if their labor costs are significantly higher than they are elsewhere.

Labor unions need to remember that if their demands put their employer out of business, they too will be unemployed.