This is a movie poster of a funny flick from the 70's in which a group of union members hatch a scheme to rob the safe of the Union they work for...In retrospect, not such a bad idea.
At a time when the auto industry has been suffering tremendously from high fuel costs and a credit crunch, a contributing reason for industry failure-the labor union- shows itself to be richer than the companies that employ its members?
United Auto Workers Union Worth $1.5 Billion in 2007
Many may disagree with me, because labor unions try to pass themselves off as being as American as apple pie, and thats fine, because they once were. The fact is that in this day and age, labor unions are responsible for the demise of some of the country's largest and most successful companies.
American Freightways was second in size only to UPS 5 years ago and today? GONE. The competition bought them out because the union wouldn't budge on its salary and benefit demands and was ultimately kicked out as a part of the take-over by Fed-Ex freight.
NW Freight is a local example of the same thing for Coloradans reading this, except that the owner in that instance pulled a John Galt. He said "screw you" to the overreaching union that was telling him how to run his business, closed up shop, liquidated his assets, and disappeared, leaving thousands of employees left to wonder what had happened.
Why do unions do this to American business owners? Its not that their intentions are bad, immoral, or even unnecessary. The problem is that the people who head these organizations are more often that not completely oblivious to how businesses operate, the laws of supply and demand, and capitalism in general. Often they are attorneys who have never written a paycheck or had to make important decisions that could make or break the future of a business they head.
These labor Unions demonize the companies that the members work for so badly, that the members are often more dedicated to the Union than they are to the company that actually employs them and allows them to have a decent life in America. As a former member and steward of a Union shop, I have sat through many a meeting in which the members in attendance are told "this is how the company is trying to screw you this time.." "its us against them...". As a man who has been self-employed since 1999, I can tell you, nothing is further from the truth. Most business owners walk a difficult line between what is best for the employees NOW and what is best for the entire company and its future LONG TERM.
I am in a profession where I have to explain to alot of folks (mostly truck drivers) almost daily how the oil industry actually works. I have to justify fuel surcharges and the question always comes up, "what about the record profits?". "Why are they not giving that money back to the employees, or cut the price of fuel at the pump?" The answer is very simple. First of all, the "record profits" that our "honest" and "balanced" media tells you about are GROSS profits- ie; before all expenses such as drilling, transportation, refining, distribution, labor, and administration. When it is all said and done, the oil companies will see a NET profit of about 4 cents per gallon and with fuel as high as $4.50 over the summer, this is a net profit of less than .01 percent. This is hardly an outrageous or greedy number,(frankly, as a business owner, if I spent 99.99% of my revenue just to operate, I would throw in the towel, because it isn't worth the hassle). The sick fact is that the government at the state and Federal levels confiscate up to ten times that amount in fuel taxes, sales taxes, and miscellaneous environmental taxes imposed on each gallon consumed-Not to mention the tax on the actual NET profit that the oil company receives per quarter. After all of this, the company is ultimately putting .0070 percent of their total revenue in their pockets, and most of that is actually used for exploration, and investment in the company's future.
The terms "Big Oil" and "evil corporate greed", for the most part, are propaganda lines created by Marxist professors of today, Hippies of the 60's, and have been injected into the American dialog via the mainstream media and Hollywood. If you doubt this fact then ask yourself this; when Hollywood remade the movie "The China Syndrome" in 2005, why did they make the conspirators an international corporation instead of a Communist regime, as it was originally written and filmed in the 60's?
Are there companies out there who's executives take outrageous golden parachutes? Absolutely, and in alot of cases it is wrong, in others (such as Lee Iacocca's resurrection of G.M.) it is completely justified. As much as we want economic equality in this country, it is not a RIGHT to have a job, or to have alot of money and be successful,but it is your RIGHT to TRY. As long as nobody hurts you or does anything illegal to stop you during your pursuit of happiness, it is THEIR right to try to beat you in the marketplace.
Competition is what economic freedom is all about, and (circling back to the original point of this posting), competition is exactly what greedy unions destroy. They demand raises when the company isn't raising gross revenue, and they refuse to give any ground back when that same company is losing money, or getting beaten because the competition offers up a similar or higher quality product at a better price. They squelch competition between employees by stressing seniority and grievances, rather than skill, ingenuity, dedication, or motivation, and this in turn produces a mediocre product to market. The only group of laborers who produce lesser-quality products than many modern-day Union workers are those who are forced to labor, such as in China and in parts of South America.
This is not meant to be a dig on the ideals and beliefs or skills of the workers themselves, but a chastising of what the once-necessary American Union has become....a home for failed politicians, lawyers, Marxists, and fiscal leaches. When a Union has more money in its coffers than the companies who produced the money in the first place...BILLIONS more, and workers are still getting laid-off and having to collect unemployment, isn't it time to question why Hollywood doesn't make a movie about the greed and corruption of "Big Labor", and why "60 Minutes" hasn't release an explosive expose about the lavish lifestyle of James Hoffa Jr.?
Fellow travelers are often ignorant of where the road they are taking is leading them...history should be their road map, but they choose to ignore it hoping that the destination will somehow be different than where it lead previous generations. Why do union leaders think that THEIR travel down the road to a worker's army will end up any different than the USSR's or Cuba's?
