Just curious to see what everyone here thinks about unions.

Years ago I belonged to SEIU because the job I had was a "closed-shop" job and I had to join in order to work there.  I hated the union.  They took something like $62 out of my paycheck every pay period.  And they did nothing for me for the four years that I worked there, years ago.

All the local chapter's president cared about was putting his damn Wolfman Jack face in the newsletter and the local newspaper.  His ass was under investigation a few years ago.  Useless.

Now I'm at a job which is also a closed-shop.  You have to belong to the union, but the union turns out to be the United Auto Workers Union by a fluke of history which I'm not sure I fully understand, but when I heard who they were I said out loud, "really?" 

Now, I chose the organization I work for because they let me have a life.  It's probably the lowest pay I could have taken given my profession, but I get to have a life.  Now, in the next few months, they will go into negotiations for a new contract for us.  I'm excited as hell for them to go to bat for me after receiving my first paycheck.  : (

(Whut, I'm sending the dough I can spare tomorrow.  Love you honey.)

Anyway, I'm supposed to log in a certain number of hours each day for my salary.  But if I go over, they don't pay me more, they just give the time back to me as comp time.  -The more you work your ass off at the office, the more they want you away from it so you don't burn out.

So, my tune has changed.  I'm with Whut, I say unions are useful.  I'm hoping for a raise sometime soon where i would otherwise see none.  Oh, please god, please . . .  wdfnews.com needs a new pair of shoes . . .

If I worked 10-hour days on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I could take that Friday off.  And they negotiated way more paid holidays than are observed. So yeah, go unions. 

Haha, yeah, they can't fix the economy. 

And even though the UAW represents me, our organization has nothing to do with anything remotely akin to labor, or labour for you Brits.   I'm still scratching my head about that one.  I'm not saying what I do for a living, but it would be like having Jimmy Hoffa represent say, the local library librarians.  Yeah, it's that far off and freaky.

Pretty much.  Unions have also been applied to some of the silliest professions.  I get a good laugh when there's any kind of sports strike.  Nothing like overpaid baseball players going on strike.

Yes, the UAW has conceded a lot of ground, meanwhile executive compensation keeps on going up. Pretty much every union in the US has spent the past few decades conceding shit that took decades to win, all while worker efficiency and corporate profits have skyrocketed. 

A lot of ground such as?

The point is they are working harder, the business is making more money, but they still concede shit. Then when times are bad they concede more shit because for some reason no one ever thinks to start cutting at the top of the hierarchy first. Executive compensation has skyrocketed over the past few decades, it used to be something like 10-times the average wage. It's now 250-something times the average wage. Companies make money because workers do stuff, per hour worked they are doing more stuff than ever before and getting paid less for it. I know I bring this point up all the time but I think it bares repeating and illustrates what a failure the American economic system has been for the past several decades.

Re: Union interests running counter to long-term success of a business. I think a much more compelling argument can be made that it is actually the top management whose interests are more likely to run counter to the long-term interests of a business (or at least be overly focused on short-term interests to the detriment of long-term interests) and that it's unionized workers who are most likely to give a shit that their employer sticks around for a few decades.