dai bread wrote: I wonder what stick you could wield to get them to think of their members?
In the United States unions have become an anachronism and exist mainly to serve as a money laundry for the Democratic Party.
There is no reason public employees should be allowed to unionize even though the majority of union members in the U.S. now work for the government, teachers, blue and white collar workers and managers, fire police, etc rather than the traditional union members working for a "for profit" company (UPS is a good example of a unionized work force)
Now, these public sector unions (PSU) don't have to negotiate with company management, they just need to funnel "campaign money" into the coffers of the politician who promises them the most. For their part, the bought politician, almost always Democrats, for some strange reason, is happy to make concessions on things like retirement and health care which bills won't come due until long after they are out of office.
Now, unions are the largest political donators in the U.S. using members’ dues to fund their favored politicians. It’s actually illegal to forcibly use members’ dues to donate to political campaigns but that law is always ignored when there is a Democrat in the White House.
So, this is what we currently have. A large percentage of union members totally isolated from the vagaries of the economy since their employer, the government, is always profitable.
The PSU think they are fighting for their future benefits and lavish retirement but they are actually fighting for their survival and don’t know it, yet. The American people are just learning how badly they’ve been screwed and how much they have to pay of their money, jobless or not, to maintain the PSUs is what can only be described a form of luxury denied the vast majority of “real” working Americans.
