AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article was originally written as a letter to the editor. It voices views gained through more than two and one half decades of observing how unions, especially ones whom represent people whom provide important and vital services to their respective communities, have gotten away with essentially � holding the community hostage” while pursuing their narrow-minded, self-centered, and often trivial concerns. The author’s anger and frustration arises from the apparent lack of fortitude of the general populace and of management whom always caves in to their demands. This only leads to later layoffs and manpower shortages, inflation, and decreased efficiency and quality of care and services.

At the moment of writing there is a vitriolic nurses' strike at a local hospital. This is most unfortunate because those who will suffer most will be the patients. The outcome is predictable as they will receive a raise and this will also impact the payers of health insurance premiums because this contributes to their spiraling rates. It's all so predictable that it's boring. But the nurses will also be hurt in the long run because despite how many promises and safeguards you put into the contract wording, within six months there will have to be job cutbacks to cover the costs of the raise. The nurses' union is no different than the UAW, IBEW, CSEA, or any other union. Experience and history should have taught them all a lesson by now, but somehow they never get the message. Ho hum.
Today those Americans who belong to unions number about 7% of the workforce (and declining). This is the lowest in the last 40 years and perhaps the lowest since the days of Samuel Gompers. The reasons for this are many but just a few are that the unions have priced themselves out of existence by constantly repeating the same mistake which I mentioned above. When management has to find ways to absorb the cost of large raises "something's gotta give". The consumers and tax payers have had it and won't stand for rising costs and taxes any longer, so all that's left to do is cut the payroll. It's as plain as that. Little by little workers are beginning to realize this and are decertifying their unions and going it alone.
I, for one, have had the misfortune of being represented by four unions in my working life and because of their chronic non-representation and other abuses have had to either outright sue or take each of them to Administrative Law Court. It's not as though I voluntarily choose to be a member of a union, it's because as a government worker in this state I am coerced into belonging because of the abominable Agency Shop Law which says that I have to pay union dues whether or not I join the union. The unions have gotten so bad that the government protects their existence by virtue of the Agency Shop and other such laws. I say let them prove themselves, for if they were actually doing their job they would be self-justifying. The current circumstance is nothing but welfare, monopolism, and protectionism for organized labor. I'll add that whenever protectionism is applied it is invariably symptomatic of the natural decline of that which is being protected. Even such draconian measures will only buy it limited additional lifetime. The unions are in their death throes. They have so undermined themselves that no amount of favoritism will save them any more than you could protect the abacus during the computer age.
Whenever I see situations like the nurses' strike, I always applaud the replacement workers because their presence will ensure the continuation of business with some semblance of normalcy. In this case, the continuation of health care for the sick. I don't see how or why such strikes can be allowed to occur as they endanger the public safety. I propose that the responsibilities of the Taylor Law should be extended to those who are also connected to the safety of the public like nurses, doctors, and healthcare workers in general. Any union which violates this should be decertified.
As a government worker I earn a much lesser salary than any nurse - not that that is the issue here (although I'd certainly be glad to have their salary). But when one of my past unions tried to go on strike in 1979, I gladly and proudly crossed the picket line. When they were punished for violating the Taylor Law by the court-ordered cessation of dues withholding in 1986, I gladly and proudly refused to pay them during that period. I said then as well as now that it served them right for doing something so stupid and which was not in the best interests of the membership. When this same union was decertified last year, I also gladly and proudly supported this, albeit late, move in the right direction. Were I a nurse, I'd do the same in this instance without reservation.
The unions have to get the message quickly or they'll become as extinct as dinosaurs. In this day and age workers are negotiating their own contracts on an individual basis and it's a much better system because, for one, the employee negotiates out of his/her own best long-term interest and not having the union bosses negotiate them out of a job in six months as is usually the case. The collective bargaining system, is becoming as antiquated an institution as delivering the mail by horse and buggy.
Copyright © AJS 1999