Losers want unions
Ok folks, here is a real life example of how unions protect the weak at the expense of the strong: the Honda plant in Lincoln, AL. I mentioned recently that the UAW was talking to some employees there and that UAW infestation there would spell ultimate disaster just as it has in Michigan. An editorial in the B’ham News provides a little insight into the meeting between UAW officials and some plant workers.
Because the UAW is itching to organize the Honda plant, the more workers who show interest, the better the prospects look for the union. Even so, 300 workers aren’t 7 percent of Honda’s Lincoln work force of about 4,500 employees. Subtract several hundred managers who wouldn’t be in a union, and that still leaves fewer than 10 percent of the work force.
Any company as big as Honda will have a few disgruntled employees. Those pro-union workers contacted the UAW, which would like nothing more than to start organizing Southern automobile manufacturing plants. So far, they’ve struck out big time in Alabama.
Meanwhile, the great majority of workers at Honda appears satisfied. Many came to the plant from old jobs that paid about $20,000 a year; in 2005, the average salary at Honda was $54,443 – well above the $34,500 average wage for Alabama workers. Benefits are good. Safety isn’t an issue. The company emphasizes teamwork.
Wait a second: One worker complained she couldn’t take days off anytime she wanted. Another said workers are blamed when they complain about a problem. Sounds like slaving in the salt mines, doesn’t it?
The 10% number is interesting. Jack Welch of GE fame employed (pun intended) a method often referred to as “rank and yank” in which all employees were ranked and the bottom 10% were canned. The philosophy behind this was that employee quality was distributed according to a bell curve and that the bottom 10% were of sufficiently poor quality that they did not need to be retained. This was one of the management decisions that earned him the nickname Neutron Jack.
So, back to 10%. What we’re seeing here is the bottom 10% of the Honda plant – the flotsam and jetsam – seeking out the union. Why? Because they know that their skills, work ethic, and job performance are probably not good enough for career advancement and may even lead to them getting shown the door. They understand that unions effectively restrain the upward mobility of the talented, are ambivalent to the employees in the middle, but preserve employment for the bottom feeders. Look no further than the “job banks” demanded by the UAW (and granted by short sighted management) during the 1980’s for a good example. As recently as 2005 the big three and Delphi were paying full salary plus benefits to over 12,000 fired workers while they sat around doing crossword puzzles. That’s a great idea – for the losers. The company and all of the workers worth keeping are the ones suffering. It’s one thing to get fired, but how much of a loser do you have to be for your employer to decide to get rid of you even though he still has to pay your wages and benefits?
On a lark I decided to see if there was a correlation between union membership and unemployment. I used unemployment rate by state from CNN and union membership by state from the AFL-CIO website. I plotted union membership vs. unemployment rate for all states and then added a linear trend line. Although there are exceptions (as always), the trend clearly indicates that higher unemployment rates are found in states with the greatest union membership. I should add that the lowest unemployment rate (2.4%) was in the state with the highest union employment (24.7%). The state? Hawaii, which is something of an outlier due to its isolation and tourism heavy industry.
By the way, Alabama’s unemployment rate for June 2007 was 3.5% and our union membership is 8.8%.
