Unions

My friend Erin asked me what I thought about everything that's going on in Wisconsin. I have to admit-- I haven't been following the mess there as closely as I should be. Probably because union workers protesting their "right" to get more money always annoys me. Actually, unions in general annoy me. I understand that when they were first created, they served a legitimate purpose. And there are certainly times when the worker needs to be protected. But I'm not convinced that every union is doing this.

I should explain where I got these opinions from. While I was in college, I spent most of my summers working for Airborne Express, up until the time they were bought out by DHL. My last summer there, my job was to clean out the corporate offices as they prepared to move to Florida, where DHL's headquarters were located. Since my work wasn't very hard and my boss was very busy, she encouraged me to take my time as I sorted out which documents needed to simply be thrown away and which had information on them that required that they be shredded. So in order to work slowly, I often read the documents I was sorting. One of the drawers I cleared out was filled with correspondence between the CEO of the company and the Teamster's Union.

Now, if you know anything about the Teamster's Union, you're probably aware that they are the most thuggish of all unions. So maybe I shouldn't have been surprised by the letters I found. But I was. The letters from the president of the Teamster's Union threatened to shut down the company at Christmas time, talking about little kids not getting their Christmas presents. And this was just because it was time to renegotiate contracts! Something that happens on a regular basis! He was doing this mostly just as a way of flexing his muscles, proving that he was more powerful than the CEO. It was slimy and mean and completely unnecessary.

In direct contrast, I also found instructions from Airborne on how to keep your stations union free. Thinking this might explain why the teamster's were so angry with the corporation, I read these closely as well. The shocking advice I found was mostly along the lines of, "Listen to your employees, try to keep them happy" and genuinely good and caring suggestions like that.

I'm glossing over a lot here, but hopefully you're getting the idea. After that summer, the conclusion I had to come to was that Corporate America was usually much more interested in what would make its workers happy than any union was. The union was a power- and money-hungry institute that took away from worker's paychecks while trying to beat up on the suits in the company.

So Craig and I were pleasantly surprised when we moved to Virginia and discovered that it is a union-free state (okay, okay, "commonwealth." Whatever that means). So while there is a "Teacher's Association," they are not allowed to put any pressure on teachers to join. So Craig never did.

And because of that, we have experienced this economic slump very differently than, say, the teachers in New Jersey. Because Craig hasn't had a raise in three years. And he has always had to pay for some of his health care. When Governor Christie told the New Jersey teachers they weren't getting a raise and would need to pay for 1% of their health care premiums, Craig and I were cheering! Why shouldn't these teachers have to experience what the rest of the country was experiencing? (Oh, and our premiums went up 30% this last year. Thank you, Obama. We weren't very sympathetic to these teachers whining because they had to pay anything at all.)

This is where you might be thinking, "But if Craig had a strong union, maybe he would have been getting raises and not having to pay so much for health insurance!" No, probably not. With a strong union around, Craig probably would have been laid off that first summer after the housing market crashed. Because he was the low man on the totem at that point, and unions always look out for the person who's been there longest-- no matter what their qualifications. This was true of the pilots that worked for Airborne. They made sure that starting salaries were so low as to be nearly impossible to live on (much like teachers, actually) and the older pilots got all the benefits. As my boss once said, "They eat their young."

The teacher's union is no different. Craig has told me about a teacher at his elementary school (in New Jersey) who apparently hated teaching: she would come visit Craig's teacher as often as 13 times in one day, looking for reasons to abandon her own classroom. That is appalling behavior, but she couldn't be fired because the union was protecting her. She had been there for 30+ years, was making a fat salary, and was virtually un-fireable. This was what the unions had done for their schools.

Craig hasn't had a raise in three years, and my understanding is that with the economy this bad, he's not the only one in that boat. But because there isn't a strong union, he still has a job, while the teachers who weren't particularly good teachers have been the ones to get laid off, along with some of the administration positions that were slightly less necessary.

Do I wish Craig would get a raise? Heck, yeah!

Do I think his school district has the money for it? Probably not right now. Although I'm praying for an economic recovery!

Until they do have the money, there's not much point grousing for more of it. That's how you end up with states like California-- drowning in debt with no foreseeable way of escaping it. In the same way that I avoid credit card debt, I'd rather Virginia (and Manassas Park) not hurt themselves that way. It wouldn't actually be solving any problems.

So my opinion about Wisconsin boils down to pretty much the same thing: if there's no money, you can't very well give people raises. If the only way to get more money is by raising taxes, all you're doing is encouraging people to want to live somewhere else, meaning there are less people paying those taxes. It becomes a very bad cycle. (And it's one of the reasons my in-laws didn't mind leaving New Jersey-- their taxes were outrageously high there.)

And when people talk about how it's their "right" to get a pay raise, I say that it's their right to go work somewhere else if they're not happy with what they're earning. But it's not their right to demand that I pay more taxes when the same poor economy that they're living in is effecting me (and my wallet), too.


I think that's enough of a rant for now. Maybe some day I'll treat you to an essay giving you my thoughts on teacher's salaries. Maybe.