AFL-CIO Wants to Fix Labor's Image

Reader Comments
Back to blog

It's no accident that the decline in unions over the last 30 years has coincided with the decline of the middle class. I hope unions make a comeback, and soon. If workers run their union democratically, they can do a great job representing the economic interests of their members. Unions are about using collective bargaining to gain better wages, benefits and retirement, things that all "free" men deserve. I don't like being expendable. I don't like worrying that I might have to work until the day I die and/or that I'll die young and poor. I trust unions more than I trust Wall Street and I will be supporting pro-union candidates in future elections.

Hilary of CA 3:46AM September 11, 2009

but the most entrenched unions today are the public-employee unions. And there is no sign they going away---since everybody who works in the public sector knows how capricious the mid-level supervisors of government enterprises can become. You want to teach for some school-board-pressured principal with no union? Not if you have a modicum of wits. You want to be a cop for some city-council-pressured chief with no union? Same answer.
As for the first comment below that unions drove the jobs out of America----I'd invite you to consider whether it was more likely the greed magnet of high-end tax cuts that evaporated your jobs. After all, an empirical case could be made that the less the private-sector work force was unionized in recent years, the FASTER the jobs have disappeared. But those tax cuts that were sold to you for job "creation"? Well, you still have ALL of them---and what's your result?

Muser of NM 2:23PM September 10, 2009

That is all.

Harry of GA 1:59PM September 10, 2009

No matter how many PR consultants and ad dollars Trumka and his unions throw at improving their image, they cannot escape the fact that:
1. Unions, due to their uncompetitiveness, have helped decimate millions of jobs in the Auto, Steel, Trucking, Textile and Telephone industries.
2. The majority of their members are required to pay these unions, not by choice, but under threat of termination due to the fact they work under "Union (income) Security Clauses" in non-Right-to-Work states.
3. That unionization costs employers between 10 and 20% on just administrative fees (not counting wages or benefits) and that more unionization will drive more jobs away from America...or smaller companies out of business.
4. A vast number of union pensions are under-funded, which will be the next tax-payer bailout.
5. Unlike yesterday's union leaders (like Gompers, et al), today's union leaders have embraced collectivist force and coercion, as opposed to individual rights and freedom; their power is not in persuasion, but in coercion.
The list goes on...
However, PR and advertising will not alter facts.

LaborUnionReport.com of NY 1:29PM September 10, 2009