Oct 12, 2019, 5:20 PM
The original purpose of unions was to protect the underclasses. The communists worked thru the labor unions. They used unions to drive class warfare. Unions were the largest contributors to the democratic party. Unions drove the democratic party into socialism and communism under marxism like identity politics under postmodernism. The remaining purpose of unions is to attempt to provide labor with above-middle class earnings not sustainable in the world economy. Unions are what drove business offshore (I was involved in that discussion back then). Trump is trying to drive business back on shore. Taxes WERE the the primary reason preventing re-shoring. Trump fixed that. Now unions are the primary reason preventing re-shoring manufacturing. The market and political problem with unions is collective bargaining law, not unions themselves (safety, work distribution). The primary problem with unions today is pensions which cannot ever be paid (and won’t be), not wages. Mandatory fees are the primary complaint by people opposed to the left. Unions are not resisting immigration, which is what is keeping wage down. Unions were advantageous during the brief postwar period where it allowed labor to capture a grater share of windfall profits – that no longer exist. Unions were necessary at least in the private sector to cause legal change in health, safety, and work load, but it was insurance companies and liability law that provided that change not unions. It is not clear what value they serve today in the private sector other than to limit competition for labor and raise wages and possibly lengthen careers preventing constant turnover by age discrimination. The general argument has been for years that any valuable function provided by unions (pensions) must eventually be provided by the state or it will disappear. The only reason collective bargaining still exists is that it’s politically impossible to get it past the government union competition, not the private sector. So unions are responsible for the overpayment of government costs, salaries, benefits, and pensions despite the unproductively of government, and preventing customer service, and preventing and rotation of government workers not providing government service. There is a reason the region around Washington is wealthy.