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From: ken@ihuxq.UUCP (ken perlow)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.flame
Subject: Re: Enforced socialism?!?!?!?
Message-ID: <857@ihuxq.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 11-Apr-84 17:05:50 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxq.857
Posted: Wed Apr 11 17:05:50 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 13-Apr-84 07:19:14 EST
References: <2691@azure.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 42

--
>> If the unions were truly part of the free market, they couldn't do
>> the damage they do now, I doubt if they could survive.  Just look
>> at the plethora of laws completely supporting their side of this "free"
>> market.  How long do you think unions could survive, if the state did
>> not provide the muscle behind their demands?

I don't know.  Ask a member of PATCO.

Actually, what unions give their members is service, plus community
outreach, worker rehabilitation, a lot of charity and disaster relief--
they do their best to keep you alive and see to your funeral when
you're dead.  Of course, so many trade unionists are only marginally
literate, even up to their top officers, that they don't counter this
silliness about only being after a fast buck.  It's too bad, as
they're being decertified in record numbers as scabs virtually knife
each other in the back to get what few jobs a "labor action" makes
available.

Another common misconception is that unions fight against progress.
Actually what they fight for is dignity--not throwing a worker away,
investing in retraining or more education.  As this tends to be
expensive in the short term, it is usually nixed by management.
Back when unions were stronger, though, they often won.  And so
hand-typesetters in the newspaper industry learned how to operate
the new linotype machines instead of being fired.

Now, we all know that there are some not nice unions.  Why one even
takes its pension funds and "lends" them to the mob.  But most are
very democratic.  Pension funds, of course, are one of those things
that wouldn't exist without unions' having fought for them.

Sure, blame the horrendous state of American industry on the unions,
even though maybe 20% of the work force is organized.  Germany is
far more unionized.  What about their economy?
-- 
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