Greg Vernon

Blaming unions is not class warfare

Recently, a comment was made on my blog that placing partial blame on unions for the automotive sector's collapse.  Eto, you couldn't be further from the truth!  By agreeing to poorly contrived contracts the United Automotive Workers union not only priced themselves out of the market, but agreed to huge fiscal overheads placed on labor.

In a perfect world, unions are a good thing; that is a group of workers willing to actively strike and protest the unfair treatment they sustain on the workplace.  These utopian unions would be a simple association of workers working towards goals of honest compensation and reasonable working conditions.

Somehow, these unions became more than this association of workers and blossomed into a full-blown criminal business.  Workers represented by the unions pay a price for the "privilege."  Union dues are far from cheep; my mother, represented by a teachers union, has dues equal too federal taxes.

If these union costs went to pay for the benefits gained through union actions, it would be understandable - even a bargain!  But instead these dues pay the salaries of the union leaders; that's reasonable until you learn how much they make.

Example: John Sweeny, a union leader, earns upwards of $200,000 per year - fourteen times the amount an minimum wage worker earns or seven times the average salary in the United States.  For those who don't know: John Sweeny is the President of the AFL-CIO, the largest union federation in the US.  You read that correctly, he doesn't represent a single worker yet still takes home seven times the amount the average American earns.

In His book, "Give Me a Break" John Stossel published an interview he had with Mr. Sweeny.  One of the subjects Stossel questioned Sweeny about was his wage and the very clear disparity between him and the average worker.

Interestingly, while the federal minimum wage has only been raised about $4 in the past thirty years, Sweeny has never refused a pay increase.  Even when workers', who earn far less, pay his ever-increasing salary he maintains he isn't greedy.  As Stossel would say: "give me a break."

I suppose since my original argument was against the UAW, I should justify my remarks.  Tough Ron Gettelfinger, the UAW president, earns less than Mr. Sweeny, his salary is still in the triple digits.  Gettelfinger's yearly paycheck: $145,000 - three times the amount his workers represent.

I also have a theory as to why the UAW opposed the automotive bailout.  Their common reason is they don't want to see their workers lose pay; which really is a fair demand.  What the UAW may not mention is the average worker would only lose $5/hour - which makes their salary equal to what Honda, Toyota, and Nissan employees earn.  It is my opinion, that the UAW opposed the bailout not to protect its workers, but to protect its bank account.

Union dues at the UAW are equal to 2 hours per month - this is about $52/month.  Under the first bailout proposal, the UAW would lose $10/month, or $120/year.  Spread that figure across the total UAW membership of 600,000 and suddenly the union loses $72,000,000 every year.  Factoring what Mr. Sweeny said about greed and suddenly things become clearer.

I hope now, Eto, that you understand that unions today are far from what they were in the past.  Instead of protecting their represented workers, they're very much in it for the money.  So I guess, knowing that, wouldn't supporting the unions, and their greedy habits of stealing from workers, be class war far?