What’s Wrong With An Organized Labor Force?

I have worked many jobs dealing with union labor where I am not management.
I’m not a union worker, I’m not management, I’m an engineer so I see this from both sides.
I totally agree that advocating for worker health, safety, health insurance, benefits, better wages (to a point) and preventing corporations from hiring illegals to replace skilled workers is a good idea.
This works fine and is benificial to all if run properly and I salute all of the unions out there that are run properly.
Unfortunately it seems that the properly run unions are in the minority and are lumped together with the unions that run things in an unethical maner verging on criminal.
The problem is that the unethical unions make it impossible to fire problem workers that:
1. Organize rotating employee “sick outs” to slow down production to force the company to run time and a half Saturdays and double time Sundays.
2. A worker comes across something that “they don’t understand” even though it is thoroughly explained on pg.2 so they take a couple hour break to decide who to send to ask for help with this and then another couple hours to discuss who they will ask for help.
3. Workers that don’t want to work welding the tools to the cart of the people that actually have a work ethic.
Furthermore the unethical union leadership are screwing the companies directly by:
1. Rigging the seniority bid system so that the highest paid people in a plant are the janitors making just under 90k a year.
2. Creating job classifications to require seperate workers to carry the same package through different rooms in relay fashon. This forces a company to have multiple people sitting on their duff waiting for the package to get to their room so they can pass it to the next room.
That is the problem with unethical unions, they force companies to keep the problem workers and have gotten to the point in some cases of extorting unreasonably high wages for the unskilled as well as forcing them to employ far more people than are necessary.
If companies were not being totally screwed by unethical union leadership and if companies could get rid of the troublemakers that pull this kind of garbage, the companies would not have a legitimate complaint with the unions.
With these problems coming from the unethical unions, companies have to make a choice, none of which are good for the workers:
1. Close the doors and go out of buisness.
2. Keep the union and slowly go bankrupt to be bought out by another company that will make choice 3, 4, 5 or 6.
3. Move operations to a right to work state and still pay Americans a reasonable wage.
4. Move overseas and pay foreign workers damn near slave wages.
5. Move anywhere, have illegals come work for them and pay them damn near slave wages.
6. Move anywhere, have illegals come work for them and report themselves for hiring illegals and pay the 16k fine because the fine was still cheaper than paying the illegals.
My questions for you are:
1. Why won’t ethical union leaders root out the troublemakers in their membership?
2. Why won’t ethical union members get rid of the unethical leaders that are screwing the companies?
3. Can you really blame the company that has all of these legitimate problems for getting a different labor force?
When the ethical union members and leaders turn a blind eye to the unethical members and leaders it makes all unions look bad.
I personaly have witnessed every single example that I have listed except for the company turning itself in for hiring illegals, I read about that meat packing plant in the paper.

I believe that unions are justified, but they have went too far. Instead of representing the workers, too many union leaders are only serving themselves, much like people criticize the government for doing.
I used to belong to the NEA and state teachers’ organizations. Those unions are important in protecting the rights of teachers, especially from frivolous lawsuits and wrongful termination. However, to say that the NEA supports education is becoming more and more incorrect. Instead of trying to improve education, the NEA and state teachers’ unions only demand more money, without any idea on how to use it.
I never did like the fact that the NEA and my state organization supported candidates in elections. The main reason was that we never had a say in who we were supporting; that decision was made by the leadership, without a vote of the union membership.

I have been Union for 48 years and they are not perfect but without the Union’s you would get nothing today from the Big Companies.
When I started companies were growing but the executives wanted more money so they started downsizing. Then started closing plants and going overseas. The Executive’s used to make 100,000 plus now they get 1,000,000 bonus’s and were running out of Jobs.
Now they are allowing illegals in by the millions and tell us they are doing the jobs we don’t want.

The unions were needed at the time of inception but they have driven jobs off shore and now look at the automobile industry, they are broke for what ever reason but it is not because the unions aided them

I am not a union member but I am totally for the union my father was a member of a union and was proud of the fact.

Bush and McCain billion dollar contributers don’t like that kinda talk. Haven’t you heard of Homeland Security?

Never been union, but am pro-Union.

I hate unions because they are opposed to the very foundation of capitalist economics, and they are unnecessary in most industries.
If unskilled workers are capable of doing the job for less, a company should be able to hire them and pay what they are worth instead of being bullied by an extortionist mob into paying an inflated labor cost that just gets passed on to consumers anyway.
I do agree with basic principles behind labour movements – in the past, workers really were abused and forced to work in inhuman conditions and labour unions helped to eliminate those terrible conditions. However, like feminism and the NAACP, the labour unions have overstepped their bounds and now engage in practices that hurt a lot more than they help.