Anti-Union Ads

[K-Mac]

I saw these anti-union commercials last night while watching the news. I love their sarcastic overtone. Whomever is behind these ads sure are brave. I've heard of people's lives threatened by unions for less than this.

The UAW's response is nearly as humorous as the ads.

Edited June 19, 2008 by K-Mac

[Zip]

Thanks for that Kelly, so priceless, so true.

[ruveyn ben yosef]

I saw these anti-union commercials last night while watching the news. I love their sarcastic overtone. Whomever is behind these ads sure are brave. I've heard of people's lives threatened by unions for less than this.

The UAW's response is nearly as humorous as the ads.

Why are unions referred to as the American Labor Movement? I think the more accurate phrase would be the American Labor Stagnant.

ruveyn

[Publius]

Is there something wrong with unions in principle, or just the way unions are commonly organized and managed?

[Qwertz]

There's nothing wrong with a group of people deciding to tie their employment fates together and act "collectively" to try to get something better from their employer. Saying "give us all raises or we'll quit" is not coercion. They make their choice, and the employer must be allowed to make his. There is something deeply wrong when that group uses force to compel the employer to give them a raise and prohibit the employer from firing them. The problem isn't with unions per se, but with federal and state laws that force employers to deal with unions.

~Q

[eriatarka]

Whomever is behind these ads sure are brave.

Its not going to be one guy running it from his basement or whatever, I assume its going to be a front group being funded by corporations with an interest in weakening the power of unions.

edit: quick googling:

The Center for Union Facts is a secretive front group for individuals and industries opposed to union activities. It is part of lobbyist Rick Berman's family of front groups including the Employment Policies Institute. The domain name www.unionfacts.com was registered to Berman & Co. in May 2005.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title...for_Union_Facts

Berman & Co., a Washington, DC public affairs firm owned by lobbyist Rick Berman, represents the tobacco industry as well as hotels, beer distributors, taverns, and restaurant chains. Berman & Co. lobbies for companies such as Cracker Barrel, Hooters, International House of Pancakes, Olive Garden, Outback Steakhouse, Red Lobster, Steak & Ale, TGI Friday's, Uno's Restaurants, and Wendy's. It also operates a network of several front groups, web sites, and think tanks that work to keep wages low for restaurants and to block legislation on food safety, secondhand cigarette smoke, and drunk driving.

According to a July 31, 2006, profile of Rick Berman in USA Today, Berman and Co. has 28 employees and takes in $10 million dollars a year

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Berman_%26_Co.

Richard Berman is a Washington-based industry lobbyist. Through his public affairs firm Berman and Company, Berman runs several industry-funded front groups such as the Center for Consumer Freedom[1] and the Center for Union Facts[2].

Organizations managed by Berman

The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) The CCF criticizes groups who advocate regulating restaurants, meat, dairy, food processors, and alcohol. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC), Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), Center for Science in the Public Interest, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have been attacked by CCF.

The American Beverage Institute (ABI) The ABI fights laws designed to regulate alcohol consumption, including the push to further raise existing blood-alcohol arrest thresholds[citation needed].

The Employment Policies Institute (EPI) The EPI is opposed to raising the minimum wage, particularly in the labor-intensive restaurant industry. It argues that increasing the minimum wage for waiters and waitresses would help drive the poor and uneducated out of the job market.

The Center for Union Facts (CUF), an organization that on February 13, 2006, ran full-page ads in major print media outlets (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post) to blame trade unions for the bankruptcies of American industries. The CUF website includes the largest online database of labor-union reporting on salaries, budgets, and political spending. Recently, they have produced TV attack ads accusing trade unions of intimidation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Berman

I do agree with some of the messages his groups are campaigning for, but front groups and PR companies make me feel a bit uneasy in general regardless of whether I support their aims. The union ads seem a bit dishonest though - they state on the website that they arent anti-union but are only anti-'certain union practices', but the ads seem to be attacking the existence of unions ("Unions force me to pay money to join and reduce my overall earnings") rather than just their more dubious practices. There's nothing wrong with unions as long as they arent coercive, and theyre sometimes a good tool to help low-skill workers negotiate better deals.

Edited June 19, 2008 by eriatarka

[D'kian]

Is there something wrong with unions in principle, or just the way unions are commonly organized and managed?

what Qwertz said, plus:

Unions often become entrenched political players that impede liberalization in many fields. Consider the teachers' unions all over the US. What do you think the chances for an all-private school system are as long as they exist? Not even lesser evils like school vouchers have made any great headway.

In Mexico unions are run for the benefit of union leaders. the leaders get rich from their cut of membership dues and from shaking down businesses. In return they allegedly obtain better salaries and benefits fro their members. I say allegedly becasue I can quote two well-documented cases where the demise of a union actually helped produce more jobs with better pay.

One was the movie theater workers union, shich was part of the larger Confederation of Mexican Workers. Under union rules the same employee could not handle more than one task per shift. Thus forcing owners to hire more workers, rigth? Not quite. At the concession stand you had to go on several lines, because the guy who sold you pop corn couldn't sell you soda. at the box office in a small 4-theater miultiplex they had to employ 4 cashiers, because one selling tickets for one theater couldn't sell for the other, and so on. There were relatively few theaters with lousy quality (scratchy pictures, mediocre sound, etc).

By the mid 90s a group of nvestors opened a large, modern multiplex with the latest technology in everything from porjetcion, to sound to even the concession stand (don't ask). But instead of going with the regular union, they opted for an independent one, not part of the confederation cited above. Of course there was a hue and cry from the larger unions, jobs will disappear, cinema will end, etc. But by then the unions' power had been reduced in some industries; so they had to let the new theater operate.

The result was a huge hit. People flocked to the new theater in large numbers, some coming from many miles away. Soon they opened branches and franchises, and other investment groups rushed to copy their model. Now there are many more theaters thant here used to be, employing more people per screen at much better salaries. Because, you see, an employer making lots of money can offer better salaries than one who's barely getting by. Prices did go up, but for admission and concesisions, but not that much. And the new theaters are much better than the old ones. Better visual quality, great sound quality (many are Dolby and THX), more comfortable seats that recline and have cup holders, cleaner theaters, shorter lines at the concession stand, more movie offerings and in more variety (subtitled, dubbed, IMAX screens). There are VIP and Platinum theaters which are quite expensive but are worth it for some films. About the only thing I miss are the intermissions.

It was not the demise of the old union alone that made for this success. There were other liberalization measures taken by the governments at the time. For instance, theaters were required to run "cultural interest" short films before the main feature, which were produced bya government agency. No one cared about them and they only took screen time away from the theaters. That was scrapped and amde the movie-going experience mroe pleasant. Theaters were also forbidden from runing paid ads, except for sneak previews. the prohibition, too, was removed (more revenue for the theaters, and it holds prices somewhat in check).

If you like I'll tell you about the time our family company faced a fake strike by people we dind't employ.

[FeatherFall]

If you like I'll tell you about the time our family company faced a fake strike by people we dind't employ.

Oh, please tell.

[D'kian]

Oh, please tell.

You asked for it.

Our employees were enrolled in a union under the Confederation of Mexican Workers (hereby known as CTM). Another umbrella organization, the National Confederation of Workers (CNTE), offered our employees to change to their union. Our employees refused. So far it's ok.

But then we get to the factory one day and find black and red strike flags draped over the entrance, and the front gate of the building locked with a chain and padlock (never mind the businesses on the first floor had nothing to do with anything; they couldn't get in, either). Why? well, the people from the CNTE had a court order forcing us to accept the employee vote to change unions, which you'll recall they refused to do.

We asked to see the record of the vote, but were told the vote is not available to anyone outside the union. eventually they di show it to us, whereupon we saw 25 votes against and 250 for. Only problem is we employed about 30 people at the time, ten of whom were never part of any union. No matter, the CNTe claimed all "ellegible" workers had voted. How does a worker not under or employ become entitled to a say about our employees choice remains unclear, but the law at the time allowed such thing (something abuot workers we may hire in the future or some other such incredible nonsense). They allowed the adminsitrative staff in, but no one else.

Next day the chain and padlock were back, plus a dozen or so people with picket signs, generic ones. I don't know exactly what followed that day because I had an appointment with a supplier, and I was told not to go back tot he office that day.

The day after that we saw our lawyer. he said the CNTE wanted a certain amount of money. We asked whether we could fight it somehow. The lawyer said yes. We could file papers in a labor court (not making this up) and at the Deparmtent of Labor (STPS). With luck and about half the money the CNTE wanted, the strike could be declared illegal in a month or so, but the CNTE could re-strike a week afterwards, and there we'd go again. This cycle could be repeated for several months until a judge and the labor department agreed to declare the strike permanently illegal, or until our employees switched unions. Of course, if they switched then the CTM could do the same thing to us again.

So we paid them off.

As you can see it was a mere shakedown move to get an undeserved payment from us, as classy as a mobster asking for protection money. We were paying for the removal of a threat, which maybe we shouldn't have. Later on the legal and political environemtn changed to make such things impossible.

Further than that, I did sit in in an argument with the CNTE goon in charge of this action. An exchange more or less like this followed:

My dad: But our employees don't want in your union.

Goon: Fire them. I'll get you more.

Me: And what about our employees? Some of them have been with us since we opened.

Goon: Fuck them (he said this literally) Do you want to stay in business or not?

The final touch is the CTM, remember this was our employees' original union. Some weeks after the trouble went away we had a visit from the CTM delegate for our region --he came by every 90 days or so asking for a "donation" to some union charitable fund or another, in kind or money. He asked my dad for "a little extra" for that period's "donation" to keep the CNTE away. How come? well, the CTM was paid off to let the CNTE shake us down, now they were paying the CNTE back a little. Why admit it? To show he could do whatever he anted whenever he wanted and we couldn't do a thing to stop him.

So what concern from the union's leaders for the workers? "Fire them." "Fuck them."

[ruveyn ben yosef]

You asked for it.

...................................

So what concern from the union's leaders for the workers? "Fire them." "Fuck them."

Your government and mine not only permits this kind of extortion, it positively sanctions it.

ruveyn

[gags]

Unions in Michigan are helping to destroy the state's economy. Years and years of their exorbitant wage and benefit demands have crippled the domestic auto industry. Now that high gas costs are forcing the automakers to build more fuel efficient vehicles, the domestic industry is short of capital and facing tough competition from lower-cost higher quality foreign manufacturers. Not surprisingly, unemployment hit 8.5% in the state this week.

[Chops]

D'kian, holy crap. I'm speechless.

[K-Mac]

Is there something wrong with unions in principle, or just the way unions are commonly organized and managed?

My ex is from Indiana. When he was a child in the 70s, he vividly remembers the UAW strikes in the 70s and told me an awful story about his neighbor. Because his neighbor's wife had breast cancer, he could not participate in the strike. He had to work and keep his health benefits. Because of this, he was labeled a "scab" and there were drive by shootings at his home. How sick and evil does a human have to be to perform a drive by shooting on the home of a woman dying of cancer? That type of thug mentality is what's wrong with unions.

Its not going to be one guy running it from his basement or whatever...

I figured it was a group and not just one person. Regardless of their numbers, I still think they're brave due to the aforementioned story.

With regards to D'kian's story, what a great illustration of pure evil. How frustrating for your family to have to deal with.

Edited June 20, 2008 by K-Mac

[D'kian]

Your government and mine not only permits this kind of extortion, it positively sanctions it.

Things have changed somewhat.

Mexico was ruled by one party for 80 odd years. Since the end of the Mexican Revolution (really a civil war) until the year 2000, every president, governor, congressman, senator and mayor came from the rows of the PRI (something like Revolutionary Institutional Party, the name is nonsense in Spanish too).

We had a party dictatorship rather than a personal or dynastic one. Presidents served for 6 years and only six years. the Congress and Senate were rubber stamps. But we had election, in which other parties did participate and always lost. So the elections were for show, right, but the government made it sure people would go out and vote. It had to put on a good show.

So while unions were nominally independent, they were grouped in one of a few umbrella organizations like the CTM and such. These, too, were nominally independent, but in fact were controlled by the PRI. the CTM in particular was presided by the same man, allegedly endlessly re-elected, for several decades. the theory was that the unions kept the workers and peasants happy, or at least not too unhappy, in return for votes for the PRI. There were also large government bureaucracies dispensing subsidies to keep them dependent on government handouts.

At the same time there existed a private sector. The larger businesses were all owned by people with government connections, including the one "independent" national TV and media conglomerate. Newspapers were controlled by a government monopoly in newsprint. Smaller businesses, and medium-sized ones, survived as best they could. protectionism was the norm, with some import permits and quotas here and there along with high tariffs, duties, taxes, etc.

The system was never formally named. I think an appropriate name would be "The Third Way." Think about it.

Things have changed, though. Starting in 1988 President Carlos Salinas rammed through a liberalization agenda. Some government monopolies, like the phone company and the railroad company, were privatized. Banks, nationalized in 1982 by president Portillo (known as The Dog), were re-privatized. Trade was opened up in increments. Salinas negotiated the NAFTA treaty with the US and Canada (it isn't really free trade, but it is freer than it used to be), and dragged the country along into the GATT, later to become the WTO. Change to laws such as the labor laws took power away from the unions and other groups that did ward politics jobs for the government.

Naturally he pissed off his own party. In fact, his nomination by outgoing President de la Madrid (82-88) pissed off a large segment of his party. In 1988 a lot of high-ranking members left the PRI and joined with fringe left-wing parties to launch Cuauhtemoc Cardenas as candidate for the presidency. The 88 election was so fraud-ridden it became legendary. The belief is that Cardenas won, but Salinas stole the election. I've no idea whether that happened, or whether Salinas "merely" tampered with the numbers to make it seem he won by a wider margin. But there was massive fraud, including a convenient malfunction of the vote-counting computer system that endured for over a week.

For once I didn't mind. Cardenas was far to the left, and he's the son of President Lazaro Cardenas, the man who nationalized the oil industry in the 1930s and set up a government monopoly called PEMEX, which endures to this day.

Salinas' term ended in 1994. By then things were going along pretty well. But the PRI had finally split, with the more lft-leaning members leaving to rally around Cardenas and his new Party of the Democratic Revolution. 94 was a bad year. Salinas' hand-picked successor, Luis Donaldo Colosio, was murdered. Outgoing PRI presidents picked their successors, who always won through fraud or phony elections. So Colosio's murder was tantamount to killing the president.

Salinas then picked Ernesto Zedillo, an obscure technocrat, to succeed him. He won the election against Cardenas and against the National Action Party (PAN) candidate. For once I think a PRI candidate won fair and square. But then conditions were very good and people were inclined to vote for the ruling party.

Soon after Zedillo assumed power in December of 94 trouble struck bad. While Salinas' reforms and privatizations improved economic conditions, a mix of government corruption (many privatizations involved cronyism) and Salinas' tax policies (known far and wide as tax terrorism for reason enough), had left the currency precariously balanced. Zedillo removed the things that were artificially propping up the peso, which naturally collapsed.

I'll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that the dollar rose from 3.50 to 10. Interest rates charged by banks reached into the low 100%s, which meant a high rate of loan defaults, which led to the bankruptcy of most banks, which led to a government bailout of them, which is always the worst possible thing to do.

Zedillo spent most of his term trying to fix the economy. Salinas became the most hated man in Mexico, and naturally his liberalization policies were blamed for everything. Zedillo did at least two things right. He made the central bank autonomous, for real. And he set up the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) to oversee elections. And the PRI remained split. And in the year 2000 with the leftist vote split between PRI and PRD, the PAN put Vicente Fox in the presidential chair.

That didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped, or as most of the people who voted Fox in hoped, but it was a momentous occasion. In 2006, despite allegations of fraud (mostly false or imagined), a second PAN candidate, Felipe Claderon, won the presidency. He has re-started some of the reforms that Fox let lie dormant, but he's doing so too gradually, and he's a populist. But that's another story.

[Publius]

D'Kian, I'm assuming the system is very corrupt down there In Mexico. Apparently rule of law does not apply, as you couldn't even make sense of the court ruling.

There is something deeply wrong when that group uses force to compel the employer to give them a raise and prohibit the employer from firing them. The problem isn't with unions per se, but with federal and state laws that force employers to deal with unions.

I'm not that familiar with unions, but I wasn't aware that unions could compel raises and prohibit an employer from firing them. What federal and state laws do you mean? The closed shop/open shop state laws, the NLRA? My understanding is that its an employer's right to hire permanent replacement workers to continue operations during a strike. I think its called the Mackay doctrine based on an old Supreme Court decision.

I have never been in a union but my wife is in one with UPS. She appreciates the union even though there are quite a few absurd things that go on because of it. Namely, people that get fired for good cause and then the union intervenes and gets their jobs back, exorbitant union dues on part time employees, indifferent union reps, etc. However the constant pressure from management to ignore safety standards is ongoing, despite the union contract and OSHA.

I once came close to being in a union. I was working part time at night for a marketing company of about 12 employees, myself having no interest in unionizing. Four of the older employees banded together to push for a union, and got enough people to sign union cards to bring it to a vote. That's when the company owner contacted a union busting consultant. He fired two of the employees the next day, as he was able to demonstrate somehow that he had planned to eliminate their positions anyway. He promoted the other two into management, essentially taking away their potential union vote. Over the next few months he subtly intimidated the rest of the staff into not voting union by pulling individuals in for meeting and probing them with questions. He even directly asked me if I was involved, which is illegal according to my understanding. Luckily I wasn't. Ultimately the big union the original four had petitioned decided it was best to not even bring it to a vote. So that was that. The remaining two union organizers that were promoted were subsequently fired not long afterward.

[gags]

However the constant pressure from management to ignore safety standards is ongoing, despite the union contract and OSHA.

Just curious, what safety standards are management pressuring employees to ignore?

[D'kian]

D'Kian, I'm assuming the system is very corrupt down there In Mexico. Apparently rule of law does not apply, as you couldn't even make sense of the court ruling.

The Mexican people did not invent corruption, but they perfected it.

Corruption is integral to Mexican politics, too. Things are set up thus. The government is too powerful, the laws too extensive and too complex (the Mexican constitution has over 130 articles and several thousand modifications). But there's corruption in the private sector, too. Not only in dealings with government, where you could argue bribes are a kind of survival mechanism, but entirely within private entities, too. A simple illustration, when we got DSL installed the phone company employee (by then a private business but still a near-monopoly) said we'd given the wrong specs, he dind't have the right equipment, yadda, yadda, yadda. He wanted 300 pesos to do his work.

Call his supervisor? Sure. He'd back him up. He'd politely explain why we screwed up and his poor employee can do nothing but come back in three weeks and try again. Why? Because the supervisor gets a cut.

This no longer happens because now there are many more choices for high speed internet access. Now there's DSL by other companies, cable modems, radio modems, sattellite feeds, even the cell companies offer it. So they can no longer get away with it. But when they can they do.

As for unions, they're not necessarily bad. Our company dealt with the employees' union rep who also worked for us. We got along fine and we negotiated with her in good faith. We didn't want her to get the union directly involved, and neither did she (surely you can see why from my long post).

We had one bad conflict over the way we paid wages. We used to bring cash in from the bank ourselves. We stopped doing that because twice the people bringing in the cash were robbed. Instead we hired a cash transfer company which brought the cash with armed guards n an armored truck. Well, once the payroll was stolen right after the guards left. So we decided to do direct bank deposits, and to give each employee a bank account and debit card. They really dind't want that. We had a rep from the bank come to talk to them. Eventually enough employees were convinced it was a good move for them and the plan went through. One person in an adminsitrative psot did hold out, however, but she wasn't in the union anyway. She wanted a check instead of a deposit, and that was fine by us. What we wanted was to stop having large amounts of cash in the premises.

[Marc K.]

There's nothing wrong with unions as long as they arent coercive, and theyre sometimes a good tool to help low-skill workers negotiate better deals.

Doesn't the second phrase contradict the first?

Does the second phrase indicate a just system?

[brian0918]

The system was never formally named.

I'd call it "Orwellian" if that word wasn't so cliche. Great post. You should put a book together.

[eriatarka]

Doesn't the second phrase contradict the first?

No, collective bargaining isnt coercive.

Does the second phrase indicate a just system?

Yeah. Salaries are the product of negotiations between employers and employees, not something that employers have the divine right to set on their own. If workers believe that collective bargaining can improve their position and increase salaries, theres nothing wrong with that. In low/medium skill jobs, employers have a disproportionate amount of power against individual employees when it comes to negotiations since workers at that level are easier to replace, so banding together is probably a decent idea in many cases.

The only problem is when unions are granted coercive powers by the state.

Edited June 20, 2008 by eriatarka

[D'kian]

Great post. You should put a book together.

Thanks. I'm going largely from my own memory of events, plus a few books by mexican scholars.

[Marc K.]

[...] and theyre sometimes a good tool to help low-skill workers negotiate better deals.

This is unjust because low-skill workers should get what they deserve, not something better.

And the reason I said it contradicted this:

There's nothing wrong with unions as long as they arent coercive, [...]

is because the only way you could get a rational employer to pay someone more than he deserved is through coercion.

So I agree with your statement that:

The only problem is when unions are granted coercive powers by the state.

Workers should be allowed to form voluntary organizations and bargain collectively; they should be free -- and so should an employer be free to fire any or all of them.

In low/medium skill jobs, employers have a disproportionate amount of power against individual employees when it comes to negotiations since workers at that level are easier to replace, [emphasis added]

There is a reason this is so and a way to alter it within the reach of anyone who is willing to work hard.

[K-Mac]

There is a reason this is so and a way to alter it within the reach of anyone who is willing to work hard.

I agree with this completely. As a college drop out and waitress, I was approached by a regular customer who wanted me to come work for her. She saw that I was a hard-working, honest person and she brought me into her business, an industry I had no experience with and trained me for what is now my career. Throughout the past 13 years, I have been steadily working my way up in this business, past many lazy workers and college grads, because of my work ethic. I am now at the high end of my pay scale for my current position and ready to move on to the next level within the next several years. If someone wants more from their job or career than they are currently getting, it is well within their power to earn more for themselves. You don't need to pay thugs union dues to bully your boss into what you feel you deserve.

[softwareNerd]

... Throughout the past 13 years, I have been steadily working my way up in this business, past many lazy workers and college grads, because of my work ethic....

If someone wants more from their job or career than they are currently getting, it is well within their power to earn more for themselves. You don't need to pay thugs union dues to bully your boss into what you feel you deserve.

Indeed. In fact, what the union does is to (relatively) penalize and hold back those who deserve to get ahead. The union takes the hard-workers and the slackers, and combines them into a single bargaining group. It is analogous to group-based health insurance where rates are not set by the health of the individual, and the healthy subsidize the sick. So too, in a unionized system, the good workers subsidize the bad.

[Publius]

This is unjust because low-skill workers should get what they deserve, not something better.

And what is it that they deserve, and who decides? Low skilled workers have little leverage independently to negotiate, so grouping together they can achieve more than one can individually in most cases. The above comment implies that people should never look to gain leverage to negotiate better deals. This runs counter to any business philosophy that I am familiar with. Companies are always looking to get leverage in negotiations with other companies to get "something better", not "what they deserve." Why should it be different for workers?

There is a reason this is so and a way to alter it within the reach of anyone who is willing to work hard.

In a low skilled job situation, working hard is a virtue but is not going to get you much leverage at the negotiation table, because you are still a low skilled worker and easily replaceable. You must rely on the good graces of your employer.