Anti-Union Narrative
I am not knowledgeable on labor issues or, for that matter, much of anything that doesn’t have the word “health” or “insurance” in it, but I have been hearing what I understand to be a very odd argument, and it goes something like this.
Unions are bad. This is because unions produce overpaid workers. Rather than looking for a labor surplus in unionized fields (oh that teacher surplus! There are so many damn teachers we don’t know what to do with them! We have to turn 15% of them into glue!), I can prove this point by simply comparing union compensation to private compensation. Actually, I won’t even do that. I’m going to compare union retirement benefits to private retirement benefits. Let’s ignore the fact that sacrificing yearly work compensation for retirement benefits is something that is very characteristic of unionized labor (which tends to be long-term) and not so much of non-unionized labor. Let’s also ignore the fact that public unions, in particular, because their workers are employed by state monopolies, are among the best candidates for retirement benefits in the entire labor force because it’s not exactly like you can leave the Madison Police Department and start your own Police Department.
Finally, let’s ignore the fact that, even if unionized workers had better compensation than non-unionized private workers, that might have something to do with the fact that they’re in a union, and maybe I should be saying “I want a union, too,” instead of “fuck these guys.”
Did I pretty much get that right? This is what you guys are saying, yes?
