Why do people think unions are bad when they help workers?

Question

Unions force factories and companies to pay their employees benefits and a good wage before splitting all the profits with the stock holders in the form of dividends. If it was up to a company, they'd s***w the employee and give all the money they make to shareholders as an incentive for them to buy more fo their stock, while employees get hurt, their wages go down, they trim jobs and even take them oversees. Unions watch out for the interest of the employees so that sharks don't get away with making them slave away in return for bread crumbs. So why do they get such a bad wrap??? Wouldn't the country be better off with more unions so people could have retirement funds, healthcare and a good wage as was the case back in the good old days before corporations paid off politicians to do away with this??

Answer 1

Unions can be as corrupt as the corporations they negotiate with.  In the past, some unions would try to influence voting.  Members that dissented with union leadership were removed from the union.  That behavior was unconstitutional and against the very grain of American freedom.  They've also enjoyed close connections in the past with organized crime.

Fortunately today, those practices are mostly gone.  A summary of the usefulness of unions would conclude that initially they were desperately needed, and were very successful.  Then they became corrupt like I mentioned above.  Today they are more tame, but irrelevant.  OSHA and minimum wages laws secure all that they work for.

"If it was up to a company, they'd s***w the employee and give all the money they make to shareholders as an incentive for them to buy more fo their stock, while employees get hurt, their wages go down, they trim jobs and even take them oversees."

That's totally wrong.  The reason why companies go overseas is so they can employ workers for less.  If they could do that here, they wouldn't leave.  The massive amount of outsourcing is partially the fault of unions.  More power for the unions will drive companies overseas where they don't have to deal with them.  This is NOT something that we want.

The president of the company I work for once told me something very true about unions.  "They are great.  For the families."  For everyone else, not so much.

Answer 2

Simply because in different parts of the nation unions are different.

For example, i have a friend who's husband is a union wokrer.  UP north where they are from things were alot different with his union.  They had all the earmarks of a great organization that was helping the workers get better benefits and better pay.  Down here, the unions were much different than up there.  

Unions were at one time the best way fr workers to get looked out for.  These days with all the laws for pay, and OSHA for safety; unions are not what they used to be.

Answer 3

Unions "help" BAD workers, they do little for good ones.  In fact, more often than not they HURT good workers, because good workers have to be treated the same as everybody else.

And don't be so naive to believe that unions are anything other than big business themselves at this point.  The could care less about their members, as long as the dues keep pouring in.

Answer 4

They help workers? Really?

How about workers helping themselves?

Just so you know there are minimum wage laws, as well as laws concerning getting hurt on the job, or for health care for full time employees. Though if you expect to raise a family of four bagging groceries or slinging hamburgers you should probably rethink having a family, your career, or both!

Unions drive up costs to consumers. For instance, a guy working at at transmission plant had to on one out of every ten transmissions use a rubber mallet to tap in a piece because there was a small bur on it that would cause it not to fit properly, he refused so the company had to shell out money for a guy to sit there, get up every ten transmissions or so, and tap in the piece. How was that cost offset, by passing it on to the consumer.

The auto industry has been forced to lay people off in certain plants because they make trucks and SUVs, yet the laid off employee gets 90% of his salary to sit at home and do nothing? Once again, the cost is passed on to the consumer.

Grocery stores in my area are unionized? Are you kidding me? You bag groceries, run a cash register, and stock shelves! What special skill is that that you couldn't teach to a trained monkey? In fact I was in line at a checkout and the cashier just got up and walked away because she was late for her break. Poor baby.

Unions served their purpose years ago, but they don't do anything beneficial today, except drive up costs to the consumer. The other thing they do is protect the lazy and people who just aren't cut out for their current job.

Answer 5

I have always said the union is only as good as people make it.I have seen people in the union that was to lazy to work half the time and if the company tried to get rid of them that is when the union steped in and stoped it.As i say it is only as good as the people make it.

Answer 6

When unions first formed they did a lot of good. In fact they did everything you listed above and so much more. Now a days that has changed. In my opinoin they just keep lazy people employeed, eliminate free thinking, stomp out competition, and keep companies from turning as much profit as possible. I have worked in several unions. I never saw any good things come from them .  

Answer 7

I wouldn't say that unions are innately bad, and they have served a purpose.  However, they are partly responsible for companies looking for non-U.S. citizens for their workforce.  Rather than pay Americans a decent wage, they prefer to pay someone else peanuts.  But, let's not completely villify the companies.  One of the negatives to a union is that sometimes it tries to protect workers that may deserve to be fired, or paid a lower income.

Answer 8

when unions were first started they were very much needed. they did an excellent job protecting workers rights. now they do more harm than good to workers. they are not as good as they once were. once the dues that workers had to pay were low and decent now they are high and with what workers have to pay for food,gas and other payments they can hardly afford to pay their union dues.

Answer 9

Name 1 positive that the UAW is doing currently.  They single handedly add about $1,500 to the price of every car they build compared to the foreign automakers in the US.

They force automakers to keep thousands of employees who have no work.  They are paid more than the educated people who designed the cars.  They are lazy yet you cant fire them for making mistakes.  The biggest benefitters to the union are the worst workers and the highest ranking handful.

Answer 10

Being from a family where my father is a railroad engineer and a union man his whole life and I am in a union myself, I can tell you exactly why unions get such a bad wrap.  Republicans hate unions!  They hate unions simply because the top 10% of the tax brackets are white collar workers who get paid so much a union isn't needed.  They are also the CEOs who have to pay more because of unions.  The unions give us better benefits, quality of work, and job security for a small amount out of my paycheck every month.  As far as I'm concerned, they put in 10 times what they take out.  The middle class is the strength of our economy and unions represent us.  

Answer 11

You seem to be confused.  They USED to protect people from predatory business and criminal employers.  Unions USED to help workers.  Now, they help union bosses.  They fight to take money from workers (including people that are not and have never been union members), destroy businesses that actually do right by their employees, and break contracts (harming countless other employees and owners) in order to squeeze a little more money for themselves.  

Answer 12

First of all, unions hurt the customers by raising prices.  Second of all, unions actually encourage jobs to move overseas, where the wages are cheaper and labor problems are less.  Furthermore, it isn't just a "handful" of bad employees who get benefits.  In many industries, the majority of workers will get lazy and apathetic once they get tenure and cannot be fired.