March 11, 2005
Union Rant # 467
My oldest and dearest friend was president of his Union local for 4 terms, and would have been re-elected had he not chosen to take a break from Union responsibilities for a while and concentrate on his real work.
We have often had some rather heated discussions about Unions in general over the years...well more like knock-down drag-out fights, but we have always managed to agree to disagree in the end and get back to the all important beer hoisting exercizes we were engaged in.
I sincerely believe that the Unions have become what they were created to fight...a managment structure that has it's own interests, not the workers, at heart.
I believe that this action by the AFL-CIO proves my point, and you can be sure that I'll be filing the information away for the next time the Beer Swilling Lushes Debating Society gets together.
Take note of the reason WHY the AFL-CIO has decided to release a fourth of their wage slaves skilled office technicians. Ask yourself, what would the Union have done to any company that would have released that percentage of workers due to TRUE budgetary need?
No, the Union has decided that it was going to cut back on their member services/recruitment activities and utilyze the money to go into the National Legislative business instead. Their main beef being the Presidents proposed partial privatization of Social Security...After all, should the sheeple get a taste of economic independence, they may just start wondering if the Union dues they have been paying are really worth the services they have been getting.
After all, membership has fallen drastically in recent years...Union demands having closed down the businesses where their members worked. Yes, the Union got their members the highest wage/benefits packages that could be extorted from Management, regardless of the economic realities of supply and demand.
It didn't matter that those packages only helped the workers for as long as it took for the company to move operations offshore to retain economic viability, after all, the Union could use that movement as propaganda to prove just how EVIL management was in convincing their other members of other companies to fight for THEIR new packages in the next negotiation, with the Union skimming the cream off the top in dues and fees.
Of course in the end, the Unions are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, but the officials at the top have already ensured their own nests have been feathered and made safe from economic stress, so why should they care?
The Union plans to increase it's political action funding to $45 million from it's current rate of $32M and cut it's organizing efforts by $15 million to pay for it.
Take a look at that sentence and see if you saw the same disconnect I did.....
A. "organizing efforts" is union speak for getting new members to grow the Union and providing services to them. In other words, the Union has become an unelected political Party, instead of a protection group to it's members.
B. The Union is making a $15 Million dollar cut to fund a $13 Million dollar effort...seems they believe that their average dues paying member won't notice the disparity, and/or they may just assume that the sheeple won't care if they did notice, who are THEY to question the ones on high?.... my question would be just how many of the top officials are in on the split of that $2 million difference?