Unions from Planck's Constant Archives

Posted on December 22, 2011 11:51 PM

Detroit was once a vibrant and beautiful city. Here is what it looks like today after unions destroyed its automotive industry.

Read the Rest: 13 Images of a Destroyed Detroit

Posted on October 27, 2011 07:37 PM

Every union in this country employs the technique of making sure the job isn't done in one visit so that three times as many employees are needed to get the job done.

Read the Rest: Communications Non-Workers of America are Worthless Idiots

Posted on August 14, 2011 08:03 PM

People in a large crowd wave signs and shout as labor unions and supporters, turned out in the rain outside New Jersey’s Statehouse in Trenton, N.J., Friday, Feb. 25, 2011, at a unity rally in support of Wisconsin workers locked in a battle over collective bargaining rights.

Unions are one of the reasons we have the worst roads, the worst infrastructure, the worst cars, the worst products, and the worst service in the world. I cannot wait for the day that we rid this nation of unions altogether.

Read the Rest: Verizon Union - Fraudsters and Extortionists

Posted on April 15, 2010 08:34 PM

This financial crisis is forcing California agencies to make some tough decisions

Read the Rest: Crisis in California

Posted on September 14, 2009 03:00 PM

When the owners of the Stella D'oro biscuit factory in the Bronx told the workers of Local 50 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers that the plant could not continue to operate unless they took a pay cut from their $18-$23 per hour jobs and a reduction of the 9 weeks of paid leave, 134 workers went on a 10 month strike rather than save the plant.

Read the Rest: Union Kills Bronx Stella D`oro Plant

Posted on July 13, 2009 02:53 PM

I often come across well-meaning bloggers who exhort their readers to buy only American-made products. However, it is a futile gesture for a number of reasons:

Read the Rest: I Do Not Buy American

Posted on June 1, 2009 05:23 PM

Interestingly, Michael Moore is just as happy to see GM go bankrupt as I am, but for different reasons. Sadly, the poor fool doesn't even want to admit that the Unions finally killed the auto industry as they killed every other business they unionized.

Read the Rest: Michael Moore and what killed GM

Posted on April 16, 2009 05:05 PM

Yesterday a group of postal union employees and Soho residents protested the closing of the neighborhood’s only post office after it was announced that the location would shutter due to the economic crisis.

Read the Rest: Idiots Running the US Post Office

Posted on March 12, 2009 03:51 PM

In Seattle, boxes holding the city’s two major dailies. The Post-Intelligencer may be an online-only paper after next week.

I have written previously that Unions have killed our textile, railroad and automobile industry. They have also been killing the Newspaper industry for decades, fighting against typesetting equipment, offset printing, and anything that might automate the business. Sure, they eventually allowed news owners to get rid of manually inserted typesetting but only after years of costly struggles that saw thousands of newspapers close down. Then Unions begrudgingly allowed keyboard-activated typesetting such as Linotype but only after every non-union paper had it for years; more papers closed.

Read the Rest: Unions Killing our Major Newspapers

Posted on December 16, 2008 11:26 AM

We've heard it for years, the jokes of how Detroit hires lawyers to fight regulations and the Japanese hire engineers to comply with them, how Japanese engineers make more money than Japanese autoworkers but in Detroit it's the other way around, how Detroit CEOs are all MBAs without any technical expertise at all. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that eventually Detroit had to implode.

Read the Rest: The Big Three Do Not Need to Compete

Posted on December 14, 2008 09:26 PM

The difference between the two is very simple: here is Ford's 22 Pound, 2,215 page, 2007 Contract with the UAW in 5 volumes. The Coke can is for scale although the scale of stupidity of the automakers' management in agreeing to anything of this size is incredible.
Now take a look at the one page contract with workers for Japanese manufacturers.

Read the Rest: The Difference Between Detroit and Japanese Automakers

Posted on November 15, 2008 08:36 PM

After years of fleecing their employers and American consumers, United Auto Workers are now looking to Washington to help come up with money to continue their exorbitant and ridiculous pay structures.

One would think that the Union Leadership, faced with the imminent demise of the Detroit Auto industry, would finally be in a mood to make whatever concessions necessary to entice the government to help in a bailout; a bailout, by the way, to correct the very problems caused by the Unions in the first place. But one would be wrong.

Read the Rest: Let GM, Ford and Chrysler Die

Posted on November 12, 2008 09:38 PM

It is morally wrong to discriminate against anyone for their religious beliefs. However, refusing to hire someone precisely because their religious beliefs conflict with the purposes for which the business was organized is not discrimination any more than refusing to hire a black actor to play an albino is racist. It is not illegal to discriminate against midgets if the NBA does not hire them as players, nor should it be.

For example, no hospital should be required to hire a Jehovah's Witness to fill a surgical spot only to find out he refuses to operate on patients that require blood transfusions.

Read the Rest: 13 Things to Consider before Hiring

Posted on August 8, 2008 01:10 PM

Nothing would please me more than to see General Motors go under. And then Ford and then Chrysler. Hopefully this would decimate the United Auto Workers

Read the Rest: GM Bankruptcy would be a good thing

Posted on July 17, 2008 12:35 PM

I live in Bayonne, a mostly Democratic town, in one of the most corrupt counties in one of the most corrupt states in the country. Living in a city filled with Democrats means that Unions get to dictate how things are built in the city.

Read the Rest: How to Destroy a Downtown Business District

Posted on February 25, 2008 02:19 PM

Unfortunately unions were too strong years ago and so immigrants were unable to save our steel, automobile or railroad industries.

Read the Rest: Unions major cause of immigrants in construction

Posted on September 7, 2007 01:27 PM

Why does it take so long to get rid of ancient technology? We should have adopted HD-TV years ago.

Read the Rest: Old Technologies take time to die

Posted on September 5, 2007 03:35 PM

Twenty years ago I was a close friend of a one-time lawyer for the Teamsters by the name of Harvey John-Paul who spent a number of years in federal prison for stock fraud.

Read the Rest: Mexican Trucks a good thing

Posted on June 15, 2006 09:02 PM

Japanese compact car maker Suzuki Motor Corp and General Motors Corp's Opel division are working together to develop another small car but have not yet decided where to build it - one place they shouldn't consider is Detroit.

Read the Rest: UAW take GM, Delphi buyouts - US Needs to Dump entire Union

Posted on February 13, 2006 02:13 PM

I am often asked what is the difference between an industry with Union workers and one without that infestation.

Read the Rest: What mass transit would look like without Unions

Posted on January 22, 2006 09:17 PM

If Ford can wait until all its Union workers are dead, it might have a chance at surviving as a car manufacturer. It needs to build a completely new automated plant with no workers. That's what Unions have achieved - they have bled American Industry so badly that we practically have no industry left and if we do produce anything it has to be completely, entirely, 100% without workers at all.