#991 Federated Union

I guess I just have a well-tuned nose for the ironic. It may be dangerous. With my golden voice, my silver tongue and my fine sense of irony, I’m surprised I don’t die of heavy metal poisoning.
Take the whole union thing. Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the industrial age was really kicking in, there were no unions. So you had fathers, mothers, and children working 100-hour weeks and being paid barely enough money to afford beetles for their soup.
Slowly, the formation of unions gave the ordinary worker the magic of a little idea called collective bargaining. Collective bargaining employed the power of numbers. People working together for a common aim often achieved that aim.
Later, a lot of that power was co-opted by some corrupt leaders, but that didn’t mean unions weren’t a good thing.
But it did mean companies now had to negotiate with labor from a more equal standpoint. Something some companies still don’t like.
It’s the big dilemma of business—is labor a cost or an investment? According to Wall Street, it depends on how big your million-dollar bonus is. They say they have to pay their executives obscene bonuses because you need good pay to attract good people. So they appear to be saying labor is an investment.
But then they hate it when unions negotiate a 25-cent raise for their long time line workers, so they appear to be saying labor is a cost.
Wall Street cheers when Obama forces concessions from the unions in the auto industry. But they boo when Obama forces executives to step down. The irony is, either way he’s interfering in the free market. A true free marketer should be equally disappointed if the prez interfered in labor or management.
I saw a speaker recently from the National Federation of Independent Business. He seemed to think all unions are bad. How ironic. Because if you get right down to it, his “Federation” is a group of people banding together to advance their interests.
Using, um, the power of collective bargaining.
Sounds like a union to me...
America, ya gotta love it.