Unions are an obstacle to progress

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/aa6a070e-c5c5 ... ftcamp=rss" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

My earliest memories of unions in action are bad ones: in particular, my father being threatened in the late 1970s with a libel action by the late Jack Jones, then the boss of the Trades Union Congress, after a prescient article my dad had written denouncing the way strikes were ruining the British economy.

Experiences since have not changed those first impressions. In New York, a union city, I have witnessed how they rule the docks, Broadway, the construction industry and the hotel trade. Woe betide any naive overseas investors who want to risk their capital there. Classic American pragmatism is replaced by total closed shops, institutionalised entitlements and costs that are several times what they would be if a free market pertained.

If you contrast trade unions with entrepreneurs, the comparison is not flattering. Unions never create jobs or generate wealth – they simply attempt to redistribute it – usually by the threat of strikes. They see the world as a zero-sum contest. But business founders build companies, innovate and increase output through their ingenuity. More often than not, start-ups avoid unions altogether because they tend to act as an obstacle to change and progress. Frequently, new companies succeed because they are not burdened with out-of-date working practices that render the established players inefficient. Silicon Valley is not exactly renowned as a hotbed of union activism – its enterprising workers are too busy inventing the future.

Unions are usually engaged in trying to preserve the past, entrench privilege and resist technological advance. Britain’s Royal Mail underperforms desperately because its vast unionised workforce will not accept reforms and mechanisation. It will continue to decline if it fails to adapt, and will never attract the investment it needs to improve, until its unions adopt a more enlightened attitude towards modernisation.

Increasingly, unions rely for their power base on the public sector. They are also the principal paymasters of political parties such as the Democrats in the US and the Labour party in Britain. When in office, those politicians in turn bribe the unions with the taxpayer’s money.

The idea that public service was a calling for which citizens made sacrifices has been turned on its head. Now those in the public sector tend to enjoy higher salaries, better job security, work shorter hours and get far better pensions, and take more time off sick than their private sector counterparts.

In the global 21st century economy, industry is simply too competitive for the destructive and unrealistic behaviour of the union dinosaurs. Those elements of the private sector where US unions have called the shots, such as the Detroit auto industry, have been a disaster. Non-union plants have been far more productive and successful.

Ultimately, the British government might have to study what President Ronald Reagan did in 1981, when early in his tenure the US air traffic controllers insisted on huge new salary increases. Their demands were rejected, so 13,000 of the 17,500 union members walked out. Because they had signed an oath never to strike “against the public safety”, the government felt able to sack most of them. Meanwhile, non-striking controllers, their bosses and military personnel kept the skies open and more than half of all airports operated normally.

Within weeks, thousands of new recruits had joined the service to train as controllers at the old salaries. The fresh applicants provided undeniable evidence that unions exist partly to force up the cost of labour beyond a market rate. Remarkably, there were no accidents, and aircraft movements fairly rapidly recovered to levels prior to the strike. The old controllers never got their jobs back and their union was disbanded.

Militant, confrontational unions are a throwback that the west can no longer afford. They pretend to fight for causes such as equality, health and safety and skills. In reality their leaders are obsessed about two things only: money and power. I hope the public and our political classes remember that if there is conflict in the coming months.

The writer runs Risk Capital Partners, a private equity firm, and is chairman of the Royal Society of Arts

[stokes11eg]

MMMM--What has harmed the Britsh Economy most in the past ten years? Strikes, or Bad governments or useless bankers? And back to royal mail, they have ruined themselves, and built up the pension defecit,--but sadly I do agree with the bit about Union leaders being in it for wealth and power. if memeory serves me well, journalists were
very much militant themselves in the past.

[Straight4ward]

I really can’t be bothered to go through all of this but a few things leap off the screen.

What’s wrong with wanting to re-distribute wealth rather than leave it in the hands of the privileged few?

The idea that entrepreneurs are solely responsible, and that workforces have no part to play, in creating wealth is totally wrong.

To accuse the unions of attempting to “entrench privilege” is to completely ignore the fact that the wealth system is constructed to ensure that those in a position of privilege remain so. Unions remain implacably opposed to “entrenched privilege”.

“those in the public sector tend to enjoy higher salaries, better job security, work shorter hours and get far better pensions”

Not that I actually agree with this statement but, were it true, would it not be a measure of how unions have successfully brought decent benefits to many workers and how the private sector has been allowed to implement the reverse?

“Militant, confrontational unions are a throwback that the west can no longer afford - - - - - their leaders are obsessed about two things only: money and power.”

Surely, these are considered virtues in the businessman's lexicon? Money and power are the motivational force for the sainted entrepreneurs, so why should these pursuits be an anathema when it comes to union leaders?

[DirtyHarry]

It's only after reading a piece composed by an entrenched capitalist, that I really do appreciate how harmful, and how destructive, unrestricted capitalism, sometimes given the innoffensively sounding name, free market, is to millions of ordinary working people.

Those that would dare to call honest trade unionists "dinosaurs", would themselves march millions of working people back to a colder, harder, more brutal, repressive time, a time working people actually fought their way out of, but now sadly, and I do make allowances for corrupt union officials, allow themselves to be almost led by the nose to near serfdom.

And then, of course, there's our children, our grandchildren, high time our present generation stopped worrying about paying the mortgage next month, and started worrying as to how they'll be able to afford to continue paying towards a mortgage next year, and started waging total war on aggressive capitalism, and aggressive capitalists, for the sake of those we leave after us, at least.

[fishtank]

.
And then, of course, there's our children, our grandchildren, high time our present generation stopped worrying about paying the mortgage next month, and started worrying as to how they'll be able to afford to continue paying towards a mortgage next year, and started waging total war on aggressive capitalism, and aggressive capitalists, for the sake of those we leave after us, at least.

I can see your point Harry,if we are not careful those children will be around our feet a lot longer than we think,unable to move out because their wages are so poor and houses still so overpriced that a mortgage is out of the question and with social housing now almost non-existent their choice will be simple..stay with the folks and look after them when the're senile or pay some scummy slum landlord half their wages for one room in a shithole.
It's a hell of a legacy to leave behind for them...they must be proud of us.

[DirtyHarry]

.
And then, of course, there's our children, our grandchildren, high time our present generation stopped worrying about paying the mortgage next month, and started worrying as to how they'll be able to afford to continue paying towards a mortgage next year, and started waging total war on aggressive capitalism, and aggressive capitalists, for the sake of those we leave after us, at least.

I can see your point Harry,if we are not careful those children will be around our feet a lot longer than we think,unable to move out because their wages are so poor and houses still so overpriced that a mortgage is out of the question and with social housing now almost non-existent their choice will be simple..stay with the folks and look after them when the're senile or pay some scummy slum landlord half their wages for one room in a shithole.
It's a hell of a legacy to leave behind for them...they must be proud of us.

Makes me mad, fish.......Makes me wish, as Caligula similarly wished of the Roman mob, that the working classes had but one head, and I could knock some sense into it, except that Caligula wanted to go a little further with the Roman mob!

[gideon 60]

we need another watt tyler to bring these selfish greedy fools to book

[RelocatedRick]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/aa6a070e-c5c5 ... ftcamp=rss

The writer runs Risk Capital Partners, a private equity firm, and is chairman of the Royal Society of Arts

I think this bit says it all, how much damage have private equity firms done to industry over the last 20 years, buying up companies, carving them up and laying off thousands of workers, and stuffing the boots of their bentleys full of cash stolen from what is left over.

It is precisely people like this "writer" who can't wait to see RM privatised so they can buy bits of it, "asset strip" and make a huge killing.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.strongerunions.org/2010/09/2 ... and-wrong/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Rich entrepreneur Luke Johnson has a weekly column in the Financial Times where he drips bile on people like trade unionists under the guise of offering pearls of wisdom. He has contributed massively to society by making pots of money out of hedge funds and grim restaurant chains, exploiting his workers and using money to make money. But in his latest column, “Unions are an obstacle to progress and change”, he takes his bigoted and poorly researched jottings to a new low.

Admitting from the start that he has a personal grudge against unions because Jack Jones once threatened to sue his dad, he serves up prejudice and anecdote as fact. If he wrote this stuff about any other group in society he’d be banged up, but of course unions are fair game.

For the record, we are not perfect, and like any large group, we have our bad apples. But there’s been research. Unions produce higher wages, more equal treatment, longer holidays and safer workplaces. Hedge funds, which is what Johnson runs, destroy jobs (venture capital, which starts new firms and therefore obviously creates employment, is a different animal) and reduce wages for everyone but the elite. There’s lots of academic research that shows unions actually make change possible, while maintaining ordinary people’s living standards – which is why people in their millions (hundreds of millions, globally) join us.

It can of course be difficult to summarise all the material in a short article, but this one is shorter than Johnson’s and is more grounded in fact.

Actually, on reflection, it’s pretty easy to summarise the issue in a sentence. Unions are good, Luke Johnson is bad.