Lessons learned

[mqbush]

If we haven’t learned by now, we never will, that working hard, doing a good job accounts for nothing whatsoever if there is no protection for these good workers. Workers are definitely better off with union protection than without. But abuses by the inevitable rotten apples have given unions a bad name, even among workers. This unsatisfactory status resulted from a basic failure, a foolish, even suicidal failure in unions,-their failure to set internal standards for continued union membership.

Union members, paying for a service, have every reason to expect that that service will be provided. But the union should refuse to accept dues from someone who ceases to satisfy union standards. That person would then be at the mercy of the employer.

Decent standards would not simply be a businesslike accounting of speed, efficiency, productivity, and the like. An agency existing to help people who are dependent on jobs provided by business from being overly exploited by business, abused, capriciously discarded,-such an agency has a social function that puts the needs of people above the wants of business. Not everyone is as sharp as you are, as healthy, as strong, as vital. But these less capable people cannot be cast out to perish, not in anything like what we want to believe is a civilized society. We do, though, need to recognize that rotten apples exist, and that all the good apples will be harmed if the rotten ones are not removed.

Business will always say that we’ll be living in a vast Appalachia, from sea to shining sea, if we don’t get more “competitive,” which, in business-speak means working for less than third-worlders. Of course, if we did work for less than third-worlders, we WOULD be living in a vast Appalachia, from sea to shining sea. It’s business that benefits from Americans working for peanuts, certainly not the workers.

Business and people are constantly in a tug-of-war. Business is winning now, as it has so often before. It’s time for the people to flex their muscles and regain some ground. Unions are a vital part of this effort. But this time let’s get it right, and make unions optimally useful instead of being instruments of their own demise.