My experiences with unions have not been good. My father was a Shell Oil union member. His union went on strike long ago when my mother was pregnant with my younger brother. After a few months on strike it was growing obvious (according to my father) that it would end soon in failure from the union perspective. The union bosses feared that my father and others would return to work before the union had formally given up. They came to our house and told my pregnant mother that it would be quite unhealthy for her if my father returned to work.
While a student at the U of C Berkeley I had taken jobs for three summers with Shell Oil, one of the perks they give their workers’ children. Two summers were [spent] roustabouting in the oil fields of Kern County, California with regular Shell employees who never spoke of labor relations with the company. Instead they talked about their families and non-work activities. The middle of the three summers with Shell, I was assigned to the supply yard behind Shell’s Kern County headquarters. I assisted the one employee there who loaded pipes and other oil field equipment onto trucks that then delivered the equipment to the fields I had worked in the summer before. Much of the time the two of us just hung out there waiting for the next truck, very unlike digging ditches to repair leaking pipes as I had done the previous summer in 112-degree summer heat. We drove around in the small portable crane used for loading the trucks. The entire time my “companion,” an avid union member, complained about how Shell Oil was exploiting us. After a few weeks I dreaded having to be around him.
This is from Warren Coats, “Unions vs the Gig Economy,” Warren’s space, November 14, 2020.
This was not like my own experience with union workers, all of whom I liked. Maybe it was because we got a bonus for every foot we drilled, which made us very productive. I’ve written about one very positive experience here.
But Warren’s story is like many I’ve heard from people who worked in union jobs in the summer and then got out of them.
The whole thing, which is not long, is worth reading.
READER COMMENTS
Alan Goldhammer
Nov 22 2020 at 3:37pm
Speaking of unions, there is a good story in The New Yorker about the police union in Vallejo California and how they are keeping rogue cops on the force. Vallejo has had to pay out over $12 M in wrongful death and use of force lawsuits. The local police union sees nothing wrong with this. This is a problem in other areas as well. I don’t know why the some of the Libertarian commenters are not talking about this abuse of power by unions.
BTW, I still have my Launderer and Dyeworkers Union card from when I worked in a union shop commercial laundry back in college for a summer. We were paid ten cents more than the minimum wage.
robc
Nov 22 2020 at 5:25pm
Because we are and tired of talking about it? As much anti-police talk as we hear, none ofvitvseems to be suggesting things like ending pubsec unions.
Alan Goldhammer
Nov 22 2020 at 7:04pm
President Reagan busted the air traffic controller’s union. Why shouldn’t the same thing be done to police unions. What service do those unions perform other than protect bad cops?
Fred_in_PA
Nov 23 2020 at 1:52pm
Alan;
Not sure whether you’re being serious or sarcastic (it sound like serious), but . . .
Isn’t the function here like that of all unions?
That capital is concentrated and mobile, while labor is more dis-aggregated and (relatively) immobile. And unionization is an attempt to improve the workers’ leverage by having them speak with one voice — to reduce the worker-groups’ roaring babble.
(Two problems admittedly remain:
(1) Capital (and Management) are still more able to simply walk away from a bad situation (or town). But the workers remain more tied to their job histories and locales. With the click of a mouse, capital can decide to invest in Upper Slobovia rather than here. (And skilled managers are readily employable elsewhere.) But the supply yard’s forklift driver is valuable mostly for his/her knowledge of this supply yard. And working class persons tend to be more tied to their community and its social support networks.
(2) When the union speaks with one voice, that inevitably won’t / can’t match-up with every member’s views. So some members inevitably pay their dues to hear the union’s spokesperson taking positions they don’t agree with.)
There is obviously a competition between labor and management as to who is going to control how things work around here. The flaw is that too many workers and too many managers come to see their competitors as their enemies. They lose sight of the necessity that we work together / co-operate in order that there might be some spoils for us to scrap over. This partly explains the “us-vs.-them” mentality behind the union’s defending bad cops.
But there is also the problem that the individual union member — who knows this is a bad cop and resents being tarred with the bad cop’s transgressions — has a hard time influencing their “distant” union spokesperson. (For that matter, the spokesperson’s distance makes it difficult for him / her to assess the goodness / badness of the accused cop. It’s easier to just fall back on the enmity trope, “If Management accused him, he must be a good guy.”)
Jon Murphy
Nov 22 2020 at 7:13pm
Libertarian commenters have been discussing this issue for decades.
john hare
Nov 22 2020 at 4:22pm
I worked a little over a year for a construction company that did some union work and some not. I liked the money, disliked the attitudes. On one job I got reported six times in six weeks for doing things considered out of my classification, and they were very simple things.
robc
Nov 23 2020 at 9:56am
None at all. I am entirely in agreement with you.
You, me and George Meany all dislike public sector unions. That and a nickel is still mostly worthless.
robc
Nov 23 2020 at 9:57am
That was supposed to be a reply to Alan, not sure how it ended up down here.
Mark Brady
Nov 23 2020 at 11:12pm
Public sector unions get away with abuses (whether it’s police unions who defend bad cops or teacher unions who defend poor teachers) because state assemblymen, city councilors, and county supervisors let them do so. It shouldn’t be a question of abolishing unions, rather recalling and not reelecting legislators who fail to do their jobs.
Mark Z
Nov 24 2020 at 12:10am
Public sector unions institutionalize deference to public sector employee interests, sometimes making it contractual, and also organize them while creating a convenient mechanism by which they can disproportionately influence public policy in areas like education and law enforcement. I don’t think it’s strictly a matter of will on the part of politicians; these unions do constitute actual institutional and political obstacles.
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