I don’t consider myself anti-union per se. There’s nothing wrong in my book with workers coming together to support one another. But most unions today aren’t really groups of workers fighting for better pay and benefits. Instead they’re a few well paid individuals who agitated relationships between employers and employees to ensure an environment exists where their six figure salary can continue to be justified. In fact I’d argue that most unions today don’t give two shits about the workers they supposedly represent. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Los Angeles:
Labor leaders, who were among the strongest supporters of the citywide minimum wage increase approved last week by the Los Angeles City Council, are advocating last-minute changes to the law that could create an exemption for companies with unionized workforces.
The push to include an exception to the mandated wage increase for companies that let their employees collectively bargain was the latest unexpected detour as the city nears approval of its landmark legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020.
The union heads have been pushing for these $15.00 per hour minimum wage laws in various municipalities under the guise of fighting for the workers. But now they’re turning around and exempting the very employees they supposedly represent from the new minimum wage increases. I guess they feel that union laborers aren’t as good as non-union laborers, which is a strange attitude for a union boss to have.
This move does make sense though. If union shops are allowed to pay less than $15.00 per hour it encourages more companies to utilize union labor. More union labor means more employees giving a percentage of their paycheck to the union itself and that means the higher ups can bump up their six figure salary. These unions aren’t fighting for workers, they’re fighting for union executives.