Labor Unions Admit They Are Killing American Jobs

By Thomas Brewton on Jun 14, 06


The president of the United Auto Workers union has acknowledged the stark truth: industrial unions are killing American manufacturing jobs. Unions' salvation, he says, must come from ukases promulgated by the commissars of a new socialistic, Democratic administration.

In a June 13 article by Jefrey McCracken, the Wall Street Journal reports: ?United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger, acknowledging that his union confronts the toughest challenges in its 71-year history, told delegates to the UAW?s leadership convention that solutions to problems such as rising health-care costs or the rash of auto suppliers filing bankruptcy-law protection must come largely through the political process.?


This takes them back to their origin as favored children of the socialistic New Deal.


One must admit that members of industrial unions have made out rather well, able to afford nice homes, automobiles, vacations, and college educations for their children.


There is, however, a less attractive side to industrial unionism.


With union labor costs about double those of non-union Japanese and other foreign auto manufacturing plants in the United States, Big Three American automakers are financially bleeding to death. This outcome was inherent in the origin of industrial unions in the violence of revolutionary socialism.


In addition to higher wages and benefits, industrial unions impose work rules that reduce worker productivity and add directly to the labor costs of production. These costs are added to the prices of manufactured products and ultimately are funded by the non-union members of society. When an industry like autos is hit with import competition of equal quality, at lower prices, it must cut its profits and ultimately lay off workers.


There is therefore a one-to-one relationship between industrial union militancy and destruction of American manufacturing jobs.


Industrial unions are unlike crafts unions, which descended from medieval crafts guilds whose members had skilled trades that were acquired through long apprenticeships. Members of mass industrial unions such as the United Auto Workers are mostly unskilled workers from all kinds of jobs within an entire industry, the proletariat of Marxian ideology.


Industrial unions? origins have in nearly all cases involved violent property destruction and deaths as they strove to supplant capitalism and place business management in the hands of the workers.


Such were the 1869 Knights of Labor, organized shortly after the Civil War, when railroads and other large, interstate business corporations came into being. Its membership dwindled after its identification with the 1886 Chicago Haymarket Square riot between police and unionists that resulted in several deaths when bombs were thrown into the crowd. A similar history of violence and murder surrounds the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which was formed in 1905.


The Marxist theoretician of industrial unionism in the United States in the 1890s was American Socialist Party leader Daniel De Leon, who, in common with European syndicalists, advocated destruction of the capitalist system and seizure of private industry by industrial unions.


Before the 1933 advent of Franklin Roosevelt?s New Deal, industrial unions were not as large or influential in the labor movement as the older crafts unions. Roosevelt came to the presidency from the governorship of New York. Socialist labor?s great champion in the New Deal was New York Senator Robert F. Wagner, who was born in Germany, the home of Europe?s most powerful socialist party, and immigrated to New York City, the epicenter of American socialism.


In Senator Wagner?s case, one has the sense that he was a genuinely worshipful adherent of the religion of socialism. In President Roosevelt?s case, it seems more likely that he simply made the shrewd calculation that industrial unions could provide lots of votes, if the Democrats enabled membership growth.


The result was the 1935 Wagner Labor Relations Act, which gave industrial unions a favored, elitist position protected by the Federal government. Before the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, industrial unions were allowed to get away with almost any sort of action against employers, but the latter were usually hauled immediately before the National Labor Relations Board and fined for any opposition to union action.


In the bleak depths of the 1930s Depression, with the support of the New Deal?s Labor Relations Board, industrial unions were able to force large manufacturers to raise their wages, exerting downward pressure on the wages of the vast majority of citizens, who were non-union workers.


Adding insult to injury, unions? government-imposed higher wages were an inflationary force that raised the living costs of all those non-union workers.


In short, industrial unions are free-loaders who had the backing of Feds armed with legal black-jacks to extort unearned privileges at public expense.


Now that economic reality has at last overtaken them, unions can only run back to mommy crying for more special treatment.


To elect liberal-socialists who will deliver new undeserved preferences, however, industrial unions will have to employ a variation on the Mafia?s ?protection? racket. They will have to continue their illegal practice of using union dues, over objections of non-socialist union members, to support the most extreme-left-wing Democratic Party candidates.

Very good article.

As my father (a life long Teamster member) has said for years, "The unions had a place and time and it passed over 40 years ago. Now all they do is run companies out of business." He was telling me that when I was just a little tike.

And they have even done away with secret ballots...or are trying to. (Did it go through?)

Guess it will be a "tow the line or else" kind of thing for everyone.

quote:

Originally posted by Wiener:
As my father (a life long Teamster member) has said for years, "The unions had a place and time and it passed over 40 years ago. Now all they do is run companies out of business." He was telling me that when I was just a little tike.

you arelike the unions

Cereal, when are you going to start contributing to the various discussions on this board?

Add him to the ignore list support.

quote:

Originally posted by g-gal:
And they have even done away with secret ballots...or are trying to. (Did it go through?)

Guess it will be a "tow the line or else" kind of thing for everyone.

I don't know if that was agreed to or not but it's a very odd proposition for the Labor Unions to virtually eliminate the worker from the very freedom that was once a key protection of the Labor Unions.

Every worker in the US should be UNION. It insures job protection, decent wages, and good working conditions. I am so sick and tired of my husband working for years and years, paying taxes, to support non-working bums. Health care is high, yes, but why? Because WE are paying for it for both ourselves, and those who WILL NOT WORK. Why should they? Their bills are paid by us! They can get Liheap, we pay for our fuel. What about you all?

April, you haven't seen anything yet. Just wait until Obama fires up his check writing machine. Hold on to your hat.

Ah yes, everyone should be UNION.

Like the union that fought to keep the job of an school employee who was found with $11,000 of school property in his house.

Like the group that voted to go union and worked for a year to get a contract that was not 1/2 as good as I had ready for them when they voted to go union.

Yep, we should have all been union, pay the union bosses and the democratic party.

quote:

Originally posted by Coloradoredcap:
Ah yes, everyone should be UNION.

Like the union that fought to keep the job of an school employee who was found with $11,000 of school property in his house.

Like the group that voted to go union and worked for a year to get a contract that was not 1/2 as good as I had ready for them when they voted to go union.

Yep, we should have all been union, pay the union bosses and the democratic party.

Yes, redcap, some people do wrong, there are some in my husbands company who use it. BUT, as I said, it does insure an honest day's pay for an honest day's wage. What do you all have against this? I am a nurse, and honestly, I kind of did not like them becoming union, because I would not be able to strike, and not take care of my patients, I would probably scab. However, they DO insure, as I said, honest wages, good working conditions, health care. Why are so many people jealous of unions? Because they can't be in one. redcap, I have always liked you, and seldom disagree with you, but on this one, you are wrong. Oh, and I am a registered Republican, so shoot me now. And, how about those CEO's? They make millions a year, of course they do not want unions, they could make how many millions more, by paying workers minimum wages. Who does the work? The CEO's?

quote:

Originally posted by April23:
Every worker in the US should be UNION. It insures job protection, decent wages, and good working conditions. I am so sick and tired of my husband working for years and years, paying taxes, to support non-working bums. Health care is high, yes, but why? Because WE are paying for it for both ourselves, and those who WILL NOT WORK. Why should they? Their bills are paid by us! They can get Liheap, we pay for our fuel. What about you all?

You're obviously a big Karl Marx fan.

Having any job in America, be it fast food or manufacturing, is a privilege not a right. With your entitled mentality the whole United States would have turned into one massive and very depressed Rust Belt about 50 years ago.

Besides that, Unions are criminal organizations just like street gangs who specialize in the extortion of helpless business owners. If you're a person of poor character you might choose to see it all differently.

quote:

Originally posted by April23:

Nice comeback. You would have been better off not responding at all so you could at least make yourself look half-intelligent.