© 2016 Jim Spence - At the beginning of the year my daughter sent me a frantic
email from Portland. It seems that her husband, who works for a contractor that paints jet
airliners for Boeing, spotted union organizers hanging around the plant. Eventually they made inroads with the brainwashing and it looked like they were going to get the workers to force a vote to unionize.
My daughter said she was freaking out because the young couple had finally
gotten on their feet financially after years of struggling and she was
terrified that the actions of the proposed union, if they won the vote, would destroy the economic viability of the company
and eventually cost her husband his job.
I weighed my response to her for a few days and thought carefully about her
concerns. My response was to suggest she organize an educational campaign at the plant and also save every nickel of discretionary income they had for an emergency fund.
Her husband did his best
with the rank and file. He warned them repeatedly of how unions tend to price
themselves right out of their jobs. Not enough of the employees listened to him and in
the summer the workers voted to unionize the plant.
What followed was predictable. The union negotiated for much
higher wages than were justified based on skill levels and also lobbied for drug tests to not be so “random,” so the often stoned workers could know when to be clean. Additionally the union insisted that when
workers did test positive, they would not be fired for creating a safety hazard
for others, but instead that the company would pay the hefty costs for their rehab.
The company contract was up for bid by year end and unfortunately, management had to add all of the additional costs the union had piled onto the
operation this year into the new bid.
Low and behold the company lost the contract and everyone at the plant is getting laid
off.
In communist Portland, a place where businesses are treated like monsters, the union warnings fell on deaf ears. Portland is
a place, much like New Mexico, where people come out of high school and college
without even the most basic understanding of economics. They got greedy and they got burned.
My daughter and her husband are now scrambling furiously to put their
contingency plans into action. The clueless workers who got conned by the union activists are suddenly mad as hell at the union
organizers for talking them into self-destructing. It is a story that has played
out in every state without right to work laws, including New Mexico.
Speaking of the clueless, in New Mexico we are back at it again after a brief flirtation with chances for prosperity. Democrats now run both legislative bodies again. And with the oil and gas businesses in New Mexico reeling from the heavy hand of dumb laws passed under Bill Richardson and kept in place by Senate Democrats, state tax receipts from the industry have dried up.
In typical fashion the Democrats, who love to spend oil and gas revenues, are whining because the golden egg laying goose they poisoned, is not pumping out as many eggs.
Does anyone notice the link between unions, Democrats, and self-destruction? My daughter and her husband do. They saw the self-destruction coming from a mile away.
Posts
