One thing I’ve noticed (and you may have, too) is how unions are always portrayed by the media: unions are, without exception, good. The companies? Oh, yeah, now THOSE are some serious bad guys! Movies as recent as North Country and Bread and Roses, or classic films such as Norma Rae and On The Waterfront (plus lots more) all show the same thing:
unions=sweetness-&-light; companies=evil/big meanies.
I could go chapter-and-verse on union tactics and strikes over the years (Union Relations was my major), but that would bore even me. Instead, let’s just look at a couple of their most recent activities.
From Businessweek.com:
A rule change by the National Labor Relations Board that allows for faster votes on union elections was thrown out by a federal judge who said the agency lacked a quorum when it approved the measure.
—
The rule change, challenged in court by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, simplified and shortened balloting at a time when the unionized share of the workforce is falling, according to labor relations consultant Phillip Wilson. The compressed schedule could have cut the time permitted for voting in half to as few as 15 days, Wilson said.
That’s ….curious.
I just can’t fathom why unions would want less lead time for employees to find out all of the goodies that being in a union holds for them. Heck, if being in a union is so totally awesome, why would it matter? Maybe because giving employees a little more time to review the facts does make a slight difference in how the voting tends to go:
Unions win 87 percent of elections held 15 days or less after a request, a rate that falls to 58 percent when the vote takes place after 36 to 40 days, according to a February report by Bloomberg Government.
I wonder why?
—————————-
Next up: Unions working hand-in-hand with Big Daddy Government to get some free, federally enforced PR.
From the Daily Caller:
Last August, the National Labor Relations Board, which Obama packed with union lawyers from the private sector, issued a new rule requiring 6 million businesses to hang up posters advertising workers’ rights to organize.
The posters themselves read like a marketing campaign for unionization. Out of seven bullet points on the poster, the first six explain collective bargaining rights under the National Labor Relations Act, including the rights to strike and picket. ***Only the last point informs workers of their right not to join a union.
—–
Under the rule, if an employer does not take the action of hanging up the sign, it is considered an “unfair labor practice,” even in the absence of any evidence that the business owner did anything coercive.
The unions are on somewhat of a bad run right now, because they lost this one, too.
——————————
The fact that the NLRB would attempt crap like this shouldn’t surprise anyone, certainly not after their attempted jihad on Boeing in South Carolina, which ended in somewhat of a draw. Obama implicitly approves of NLRB’s actions, since unions are a major part of his base. And the fact that you didn’t HEAR much about it means the media knows these were loser arguments. If they could have spun them as a positive, they would have. Count on it.
Add in the alliance that unions have forged with the Occupodos, and we can only guess at what they’ll come up with next. Both groups are looking for greater government intervention in every aspect of our lives, with the misguided notion that this somehow is a superior way to live.
Gotta admit, though: their sales pitch is tempting.
Two Heads are Better Than One 