Union, Jack.

I remember a story I heard about a fellow in Dallas back in the late 1970's who raised a few mil from a Union Pension Fund to drill oilwells. 

"Ol' Floyd hit the mother load" The other promoters thought enviously.  Kinda like the grudging respect they gave their enviro-shysters brethren when they hit Hollywood. 

Ol' Floyd leased hundreds of thousands of acres in the Palo Duro Basin, then and long thought to be a duster basin, and drilled a few more dusters to confirm that reputation.  Strangely, the Bend may yet prove 'em all wrong and Floyd right.  Maybe.  Anyway, he blew through all that Union money like a, well, like a Union Boss on a Vegas Junket.  They found 'ol Floyd shot to death in the foyer of his home with a note pinned on his bathrobe that said "There is no such thing as a dry hole with <Name of Union> money". 

"There but for the Grace of God Go I", thought his promoter colleagues.

I don't understand the love affair between Americans and Unions.  I have been told countless times that Unions were necessary in the days of Robber Baron Industrialists and that they are an iconic part of America, that they represent the "wookin' man" in the idiom of Snakehead Jim Carville.

Maybe so.  I sure as hell wasn't around in those days, and I suppose I will take at face value the presumption that there were no jobs in America prior to the end of WWI that didn't involve working for the Trusts that were owned by Monopolistic Robber Barons.  In other words, The Man owned everything, and we lived in an entirely static world, devoid of competition, and our forefathers were lucky to get work at slave wages at all. 

What is the excuse for Unions today?  Especially Unions of Government workers?  I mean, what the hell? 

This is an excellent educational video on Unions... Government Employee Unions... heh heh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3mw49mk_x0

I hire people that I would characterize as Creative People, and because of that, I need excellence.  See, an excellent person is worth 5 times an average person in a creative job.  I depend on excellence.  Average is a non-starter.  I pay excellent people what I need to to keep them, because all the rest of you sumbitches want to hire Excellent people as well.  Damn it.  You don't ever seem to want my "below average" people. 

So, take-away lesson number one is Excellent Workers have mobility, and they have the capability to increase their earning power because of that mobility.  And I say this as an Employer.  One would think that the "protectors of the working class" would thus strive to create Excellent Workers as the primary means to ensure that workers are paid a reasonable wage.  One would be wrong.

A Union, the "protector of the working class", is the Champion of Mediocrity.  Protection and promotion of those LESS capable, whether due to poor motivation or by lack of inherent ability, is the operating principal.  Those MORE capable are saddled with the poor performance of the less.  From those according to ability, to those according to need.  Where have I heard that before?  As we have all heard: "Beautiful in theory", if you are mediocre. Significantly less so if you are not.  The end result is exactly what you would expect... a workforce that is not incentivized to be excellent, but rather force molded into lowest common denominator performance. 

"Can't work too hard, otherwise Delbert and Daryl will kick my ass after work for makin' em look worthless".

"Why the hell should I work my ass off when it doesn't do me any good?"

OK, any of you that have had a Union job knows what I am talking about. 

So a fundamentally flawed premise, ie Being the Enemy of Excellence is crushing enough to the entire backbone of Labor as a Movement.  What if we combine this institutionalized celebration of mediocrity with a management structure so thoroughly rotten that if they managed any other kind of legally recognized grouping of interest would find themselves behind bars for fraud so quickly you couldn't say Enron.  In fact, the Extra Legal Union most closely resembles the mafia in structure, the major difference being that the mafia generally sells stuff that people actually want to buy. 

When a CEO of a company defauds their investors, it is big news, and roundly extolled in the media as an indictment of corporations in general, and free enterprise and deregulation specifically.  When the President of a major Union is accused of ordering a hit on a Union critic, or embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars from the pension fund, or laundering Mafia money, it is all together shrugged off.  Uhhh, why is that?  I mean, these guys are so protected in fact, that I expect law firms to move away from their LLP structure towards a "United Brotherhood of Dewey, Scruem, and Howe, Local 183". 

Could it be that they control huge pension funds, control votes, and give heavily to one particular party?  As the great Texas Democrat George Parr said, the definition of an honest politician is he that is once bought, stays bought.

When I was younger, I held the romantic view of Unions that most you probably have... you know, the one taught us in our fine public schools. It wasn't until I went to a trade show in Las Vegas, a Union town, and not very coincidentally, a Mafia town, where I couldn't set up or take down my own booth without Union "help" at $100 per hour, minimum 2 people at 2 hours, or plug in my own light strip or any of my lights into the light strip without hiring a Union Electrician.  Apparently the term Union Electrician means they don't have to do real electrician stuff, like putting in fuse boxes, managing line load and the like.  Just plug stuff in.  And don't ask him to carry a box!  That isn't his job, that is the Confederation of Light Box Carriers guy's job.  A 5 year old Texan qualifies with the skill set of a Union Electrician at a Las Vegas Convention Hall, apparently.  They just need to wait on seniority.  In any case, I figured out that this trade show cost me more than 5 times what it would have cost me had I been able to carry my own dang boxes and plug in my own dang lights, and 3 times the cost of having the same work done in a non Union State.  A real eye opener.

I am not against ALL Unions.  Back when I worked for Big Oil, I used to kid around with my managers that I had heard rumblings from the geophysicists that they were trying to organize a Local for the Amercian Geophysical Union. Since the AGU is actually comprised primarily of Earthquake Seismologists and academic rather than Exploration Seismologist, the concept of Unions protecting mediocrity... never mind.

I am on the board of a company that has a Maquilla in Mexico that hires line workers.  By law, it has to use Union labor.  However, in Mexico today, there are competing unions that the employers contract with, and the unions compete to act as an HR service.  The Mexican Unions truly seem to understand the need for excellence and discipline, because Mexico is today losing the outsource game to China and Singapore, and Mexico woke up and did something about its poor labor practices.  Unlike the US, which is in the enviable position of squandering its national wealth on the 5th flat screen TV for our new homes, Mexico is still dealing with people squandering their pay on... food and basic shelter.  The major economic opportunity in Fox's administration was the introduction of home mortgages!  They cannot afford to say "Déjeles comer el pastel" quite just yet. 

Today, we choose to spend our wealth in a way that breaks the fundamental rule my daddy taught me... minimize spending on things that lose value, and spend heavily on things that build value.  He was unsuccessfuly trying to talk me out of buying a Camaro.  To spite him further, I got into the Oil Business.

So, here we are in the richest country on Earth, where incredible job opportunities abound, albeit probably NOT in basic manufacturing, and we DEMAND that we create rote work that pays $40 an hour.  Yet we are unwilling to pay for the products that come from this forcing.  Then we complain that American Corporations are bad and greedy for making bad, over-priced goods, and that they should be regulated, ignoring the basic fact that Someone Has To Pay For It.  Let's tax the rich and make THEM pay for it!  That is always the answer when none of the rest of us want to actually BUY this crap.  We force the rich to Buy it!

Unfortunately, the Mandarins like Teddy Kennedy in DC who demand that we employ the equivalent of buggy whip makers at exorbitant cost aren't themselves too interested in actually drinkin' the flavor of kool aid they sell the rest of us.  They like Mercedes and Beemers.  Only the poor, deluded Union membership still buys American.  I salute them for that, if not for their forced choice of the worst form of advocacy ever devolved.

Comments

[Tex Dinero]

Open Choke - You are killing Lou Dobbs. George Parr? Do you really think Parr is that different from the Landman in the White House?

[Open Choke]

Yeah, Dobbs seems a decent sort, albeit nearly entirely wrong. I wonder if his name isn't really Debbs, and misspelled accidentally on the birth certificate.

The ol' Landman in the Whitehouse. ArBUSTo seems an appropriate name for his career instead of only his oil company, doesn't it?

[Tex Dinero]

Oh yeah. Arbusto certainly was an omen. Except for fleecing the taxpayers of Arlington, everything else has been pretty much of a bust for him.

[joe-6-pack]

Excellent rant.

Neal Boortz is one of those of the school-of-thought that unions did act as a check-and-balance during the "robber baron" era.

[John]

Last programs installed were Ad-Aware, and System Mechanic 4When I select Internet Explorer the hour glass comes up for a second and vanishes, after that, nothing happens.