Unions Are Nuclear Option

[Image courtesy of The Sweet Spot]

The image at left is from a blog by a mom named Aimee, who likes to do cool things with her husband and sons like putting firecrakers in Twinkies. It was the first image that came up when I did a Google image search for "exploding Twinkie" to jazz up this post. It's one of those "just because we can" kind of activities which keep life enjoyable.

Kind of ironic that I stumbled across this, because "just because we can" is exactly the kind of attitude that I believe drives a lot of modern unions in America, and one of Hostess' unions did the equivalent of the above. The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union voted in September to reject a new contract which would cut salaries and benefits for all union workers at Hostess plants. The Teamsters approved the contract (barely), blaming executive mismanagement for the company's troubles but also expressing disappointment at the bakers' disapproval of the contract.

For a long, long time I have been extremely vocal about my disdain for unions. At my first job I was forced to join the UFCW, paying dues but receiving very few benefits because I was under eighteen. My father was a member of the UAW for thirty years, and, being the hard-working and ethical guy he is, suffered greatly at their hands, as most such people do in union shops. Unions drain a tremendous amount of resources from companies, force companies to retain some workers who have no business holding jobs at such compensation levels, and remove much-needed flexibility from workplaces due to job rules. I have seen the phrase "it's not in my job description" stymie many efforts by management at the various jobs I've held to keep their businesses profitable. The Teamsters have been doing this union thing for a little while now, so they understand the delicate balance between compensation and profitability, and spend quite a bit of time this month trying to talk the Hostess bakers down from their tree-stand. The fight isn't over yet, but I'm not hopeful. The exact same thing forced my first employer to close many of their locations, and my dad's former company went bankrupt, wiping out his pension.

As I've stated in several posts, I have a pretty good job. The compensation package I receive from The Company (known only as that in these posts -- they don't endorse my blog) makes me technically lower-middle class, and I work hard for it, as do most of my fellow associates. In a typical ten-hour night, I may switch jobs a dozen times or more, depending on where production efforts need to be focused. If I were a union worker, this would be impossible, because I would have a "job description" and work rules would be in place to prevent "disruptive" job-switching.

The simple fact is that business is rough these days. The Company does all of its business online, and the Internet never sleeps, so production demands can change literally in minutes. Without the kind of flexibility that I and many of my coworkers demonstrate, The Company would not be able to function. Thanks to other major retailers, The Company employs an abomination a strategy known as Just-in-Time inventory control (JIT), where just enough product is kept on hand to fulfill customer demand and is replenished dynamically, keeping inventory costs low to raise the marginal profit on sales. The net result is that our warehouses, and the production facilities of our suppliers, operate twenty-four hours a day to meet the ever-changing demand of our customers. The Company couldn't operate without workers like me, who are willing and able to switch from picking to packing to palletizing to loading and back again within minutes.  Imagine if restrictive work rules prevented me from doing that, if the union said, "Well, Annie's job description says 'forklift driver,' so you have to keep her on that forklift, even if you don't need another forklift driver right now." You won't get your Game of Thrones box set in two days like you wanted, because it's sitting on a shelf in the warehouse and we don't have enough pickers and I'm not allowed to go pick it.

Three years ago my job was gathering nuts and firewood, and the "warehouse" was a new-growth forest on the side of a mountain, so I consider myself fortunate to have a job. I'm triply fortunate because it's a job with a Company I like which suits my "Genius and Habits" so well. But there's eighteen thousand or so people who are not going to be so fortunate, losing their jobs right before the holiday season because five thousand of them want to buy their kids the new iCrap and believe they can't without the extra eight percent being cut from their contract. This is the dark side of democracy, where the majority suffer from the tyranny of the minority and vice versa, and unions tend to give validation to folks who want more than their fair share.

Which is why I would vote "no" if there was ever a card-check at the warehouse. Of course, that probably wouldn't be enough for my volatile personality. I would have to do something totally over the top like Sharpy a giant "DENIED" across the authorization card and staple it to the forehead of the union rep. But that's just me. More later.