It was 1956, and, after a year of college, I was unable to afford the next year so I got a job at GE making TV sets. The pay was equal to the combined pay of my mother and father, but after some coercion from fellow workers, I joined the IUE or International Union of Electrical workers. After a year or two of layoffs, I decided to get back into school and left GE. It was not many years later that the TV Department was shut down and moved to a state without many unions. I worked at a couple of jobs after graduating but never met another union organization until I moved to West Virginia. I took a job as plant manager in a pharmaceutical company, and the workforce was unionized. It was the first time I had encountered this arrangement.
The plant was a “closed shop,” as most unionized West Virginia union shops, and the non-management employees had to join the union to continue to work there. The contract manual spelled out the working conditions and benefit package so those were hardly ever an issue. After a short time, though, there was an issue with me in that the people who had chosen to have a third party argue their position with the union officers had separated themselves from the company and were not in a position to receive some of the company benefits that we received such as stock options. While I never saw a problem, there were a few older union members who felt they had been left out.
West Virginia was a very strong union state with the mining industry driving union organization. In studying some of the area’s history of coal mining, I learned that the unions had made mining safer and raised pay to livable levels. I’m not sure this would have happened without the unions coming in. Today, most of the mines still operating are non-union, and I don’t know why most of the union mines have closed with the demise of coal use. The West Virginia legislature voted to become a “Right to Work” state where it is not necessary to join a union to keep a job. The unions have fought back in the courts, but I still see companies requiring union membership. This is where I see the need to redefine the labor union movement between the trade-guild unions that sponsor training programs, find work for members and carry retirement plans, and the large unions that represent many companies. These large unions become the company that the tradesman is working for instead of the tradesman being able to work at many different companies plying their trade. The unions at large companies in most cases are not needed and, since one union can represent the employees of many companies, there is an imbalance to a single company’s ability to negotiate (based on its abilities) instead of having to comply with another company’s abilities. The auto industry provides a good example when the auto workers’ union targets one company to set the standards for negotiation at all auto companies. The anti-trust laws were never used against labor unions, and this has allowed them to become greater that the companies they represent.
The excuse for forcing all employees to join the union has always been that if the new employee enjoys the benefits of working at a company, they should have to pay dues to the union that negotiated the benefits. There is a problem with this in that many new employees have never seen any benefits, and I will explain that later. The union dues that are collected rarely benefit the employee paying them, and a large percentage of them are given to the Democratic Party for political benefit. The labor union movement has been the largest donor to the Democrats for many years, and many court cases have challenged the taking of dues from people who do not support the Democrats. There is a case before the Supreme Court now that will be decided later this year. The political influence by the unions has given them great protection by Congress and state legislatures to keep the money rolling in.
The government employee unions are some of the largest and, while they do very little for their employees, they send huge amounts of campaign contributions each election cycle. An example includes the two unions that represent the West Virginia teachers. There was a strike this year to get a 5% increase, which keeps them at one of the lowest paid teacher groups in this country. The pay is so low that new teachers graduating from West Virginia University usually have to find work outside of teaching to pay off their education loans before they start to teach. Dues are paid each month but for what? The pay is the same for each teacher regardless of their geographical area or subjects taught, which has caused severe teacher shortages in many areas of discipline and geographical spots, especially those near bordering states that pay teachers much higher. The union has done nothing to aid in teaching our children but has given teachers extra days off for meetings and strict hours of work, which many do not follow. We have teachers in our state for one reason, and that reason is pure dedication because they cannot make a decent living doing it.
Thirty years ago, my son got a job in a grocery store bagging and carrying groceries to the customer’s car. He was paid the minimum wage. After a couple of weeks, his pay was short, and he was told that it would be short for a few more weeks because he had to pay an initiation fee to the union and then start paying dues. His minimum wage had become much smaller, but the store was unionized and a union shop. Therefore, he had no choice but to pay tribute to have a minimum wage job as a teenager in school. Twenty years later, a co-worker of mine told me his son had got a job in the grocery store for minimum wage and that he also had to pay both an initiation fee and dues to keep the job. I know another person working at the store who is paying dues and still near the minimum wage level after three years of seniority, plus the City is taking $3 a week from his pay to pave roads. His pay is way below the minimum level. After more than thirty years, the union has done nothing for the minimum wage workers at the grocery store in pay or benefits yet still requires these people to join the union because they might reap the benefits of past negotiations. The minimum wage worker should have the “Right to Work” without anyone lowering his minimum wage.
The Democratic Party should be ashamed of taking money from minimum wage workers by force. It is not much different than the Mob of yore, which made people pay protection money or they would burn their business or shoot the owner. An American should not be forced to pay tribute to anyone for a job, and union membership should be completely voluntary. There should be no person’s union dues given to any political party at any time. Dues should be used for the benefit of the member in retirement, work stoppages and major medical issues. The practice of forcing workers to pay tribute to have a job is unjustified, immoral, close to criminal and has to be stopped. The grocery store minimum wage worker having his or her pay lowered to help a political party elect someone is disgraceful.
Since the Obama Administration destroyed the auto industry, took the bond holders’ money and gave it to the auto unions, I have stopped buying any car made by the United Auto Workers. To buy a UAW-made car is an automatic contribution to the Democratic Party, and I will give my political donations to the individual whom I wish to without a union doing it for me.
-30-