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From: suhre@trwrb.UUCP (Maurice E. Suhre)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Unions, Min Wage, etc revisited
Message-ID: <762@trwrb.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Apr-84 17:36:22 EST
Article-I.D.: trwrb.762
Posted: Fri Apr 20 17:36:22 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 23-Apr-84 07:06:39 EST
Organization: TRW EDS, Redondo Beach, CA
Lines: 58

It seems to me that the unions have a couple of basic precepts
that I don't like.  One is advancement by seniority rather than
merit, and "work rules" as to who can pick up what and who can't
as well as limits on output.

It's probably necessary in our democracy to allow the unions the
right to strike and *demand* higher wages whether they are putting
out more or not, or whether there is a long line of people waiting for
their jobs.  What shouldn't be allowed is all this protection from
foreign imports.  This comes very close to making the industries
"regulated".

Particularly distressing is the ability of the unions to protect
their members from disciplinary action as a result of drug abuse.
Granted their assembly line jobs are awfully boring.  But drug
abuse could be a significant factor in the perceived decline
in "American Workmanship".  It is no coincidence that American
Workmanship qualifies as an oxymoron.  :-) and :-(

With nothing at all to hold down wages, they just get escalated and
the consumer pays and pays and pays.....  The airlines have demonstrated
the strategy that worked in the past.  Simply, I get a lot by taking
just a little from everybody.  The airlines fairly readily acquiesced
to union demands.  They passed the resulting wage increases as costs
on to the FAA which set fares accordingly.  A good time was had by all
except (you guessed it) John Q. Public.  Deregulation blew all that
apart with much p***ing and moaning from those affected.  However,
management, sanity, and the dampening effect of differential equations
has tended to move this area toward a steady state.  

Another ploy seems to be the minimum wage law.  By pressuring Congress
to raise the minimum wage, then the unions can say something like
"Surely our highly trained people are worth more than the minimum wage"
(presumably quite a bit) and thereby claim their entitlement to
higher wages.  Ratchet, ratchet, ratchet; up, up, up we go.  Rats,
rats, rats.  Milton Friedman pointed out in his TV series a year to
two ago that the poor people who can't get a job because their labor
isn't worth what the minimum wage dictates aren't the ones in the 
hallowed halls of Congress when the debates (rubber stamp?) are
going on.  There is nothing there but 3 piece suits, wall to wall.

Finally, it seems to me that anytime the law of supply and demand
is interfered with, all sorts of screwy things happen.  The latest
b*** s**t about equal pay for equivalent work is surely going to
distort the labor demand in the marketplace.  Should the politicians
(using their best judgement and wisdom (about how to get re-elected))
determine what the ratio of secretaries and nurses labor should be,
or should that be left to the invisible hand of the marketplace?
How about telephone linemen (linespersons) and taxi drivers?
There won't be any end to the difficulties.  In short, these
are items that can't be compared.

Apologies for the length.  I got carried away, but my signature is
short.

Maurice

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