|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Guest Column: Union Strikes Threaten Workers’ Livelihoods
Big Labor bosses are the only winners in recent “crippling” union strikes…
previous post
5 comments
More anti-union lies by the bought and paid-for SCGOP. Anything to convince gullible SC wage earners that they should trust their employers to look out for them. That they don’t need to stand up for themselves; and they don’t need better wages and better benefits, because that could lower company profits and which is bad for them.
I grew up in rural SC, in an unusual situation. My dad worked in a unionized factory. My uncles, my grandfather, and many of my cousins worked in the non-unionized textile industry. Despite similar working hours, my father made about 25% more than my other family members working for non-union facilities. My father had a significant retirement pension plan and my other family members did not. My father had 4 weeks of vacation a year, while my other family members had 2 to 3, one of which had to be taken over the 4th of July. If my father did not take all of his vacation each year he could roll it over or get paid; not so with my family working in the textile industry. My father had a better, less expensive, health care plan. My father had appeal rights if the factory wanted to fire him. All this was attributable to his union and the union contract.
So did this put my father’s factory out of business? No. In fact when the textile industry shut down and moved to China, with the blessings of the SCGOP, my father’s factory remained in business. He retired from that factory, long after the death of the SC textile industry. Without a college degree, he was even able to move into management before he retired. After working for the same factory for 35 years, my father never once regretted being in a union.
Unions are good for middle-class Americans, especially in states like SC where the middle class is poorer, less educated, and less healthy than in most of the rest of our nation. Americans have minimum wages, 40-hour work weeks, overtime pay, employer health plans, reasonable vacations, etc. etc, all thanks to unions.
So when bought and paid for politicians, try to tell you, that you don’t need Unions; that you get nothing for your money, and that your employer can be trusted to take care of you; just know that is BS and they are telling you that because they is what they have been paid to tell you.
Working-class union households hold nearly four times as much median wealth ($201,240) as the typical working-class nonunion household ($52,221), suggesting that membership vastly increases wealth for working-class families.
Greedy bastards who won’t pay their workers are threatening workers’ livelihoods. Strikes aren’t necessary if workers are allowed to work with dignity, keep the value of their labor, have their needs met, and have their safety prioritized.
Solidarity to fellow laborers.
Unions have their time and place. Some good, some bad. I have worked both sides of the fence. My personal experience was with a union that protected the jobs of those who could barely do the job. The irony is this op ed, it is written by a politician who hasn’t had much more experience than military and govt work…..
Unionized workers almost always have higher wages and benefits, along with better working conditions and job security. SC ranks near the bottom in percentage of its workforce that is unionized, as well as near the bottom in per capita wages. There is a correlation here. Voters in the lowcountry should reject Leber for lots of reasons and anti-worker is just one of those.