Writing Inspired by The Thomas Sowell Reader, by Thomas Sowell, pages 71-72, Union Myths.
When a jar is not broken, you do not fix it, unless of
course you are one of the many Government Unions looking to steal the contents
of the jar in the name of improvement.
This is the situation of the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act”, which
does not actually provide employees with more freedom but enables unions to control
them.
The way the current system works when decisions of company unionization
arise is by taking an employee ballot.
The National Labor Relations Board oversees the ballot to ensure that it
is fraud free and that a person’s vote is kept completely confidential unless
that person shares his decision with others. In the new “Employee Free Choice Act”, a union does not need
to win a ballot to gain control over a business; they simply need to collect enough
signed cards to have a majority.
Since the first Presidential election in 1788 [1],
the purpose of elections has been to enable voters freedom of choice without
fear or coercion. This freedom is loathsome
to the unions because it allows workers the choice to refuse unionization in
their workplace.
In the world of “Employee Free Choice”, the unions will have
the power to harass citizens into signing them in for multiple terms since most
people will give in to per pressure or other forms of intimidation. Therefore, the union has the ability to force its way into office. It might still be expected of the union
to serve the people by doing their job of organizing and helping the workforce,
but the union’s wonderful work can be seen in the way they siphon money off the
businesses that provide a living for hundreds of people. Unions do not make money, for
businesses or for themselves, but take it from tax paying workers, although
there is a limit to how long they can siphon it.
The president of the United Mine Workers from 1920 to 1960,
John L. Lewis [2], was the most famous union worker of his
time because of his increased wages and new job benefits for coal miners. Although the workers could not have
gained these advantages through the free market, they came at a cost.
Between the high wages and the strain on the coal supply,
prices went up, causing many businesses and homes to switch to oil. This caused many coal miners to lose
their jobs and even more when the high wages increased the incentive to replace
workers with machines.
The end result by the 1960s was a huge decline in the
employment of coal workers, leaving many mining towns desolate and virtually
abandoned.
Four years after John Lewis retired, on September 14, 1964, he
was awarded the Presidential Medal Of Freedom that read "[An] eloquent spokesman of labor,
[Lewis] has given voice to the aspirations of the industrial workers of the
country and led the cause of free trade unions within a healthy system of free
enterprise."[3]
Even when unions are utterly and completely failing, they still stop
to congratulate themselves for the wonderful difference they are making in the
lives of the unionized workers.
[1]Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMWA
[2] Wikipedia: Lewishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_L._Lewis
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