Little less conversation...

This weekend, of course, is Labor Day. Many people today, educated people, scoff at the idea of unions. They hold up examples of financial abuses in a categorical way, unlike the corporate abuses at the top levels we have seen in recent years. Maybe this will change, and people will remember those failures of leadership too.

Lots of unionized workers work in not necessarily dangerous or unsafe conditions, but riskier lines of work than your average office or clerical jobs. By choice, of course. Sometimes heavy machinery fails, sometimes supervisors pushing for higher rates of production ignore safety details, sometimes job openings are not posted, and preferences are given to buddies of supervisors. Unions help not to eliminate, but at least to acknowledge some of these problems, and put them on the table to bargain about. Labor helped our country grow and become, in the past six decades, the amazing country it is.

Here are some personal examples for those of you who may come from totally white-collar environments: My friend's brother, in the 70s, was working at a paint factory in South Chicago. He had an epileptic seizure, fell into an open vat of acid from a catwalk above, and died. No one's fault really, but a unified organization can work with managers to help prevent something like that from happening again. Namely by safety proofing open machinery. Someone who might die would have more concern, naturally, in correcting these situations through preventative measures than someone who does not work under the conditions present. These workers might have better ideas too than outsiders regarding the efficiency and effectiveness of work procedures. (And yes, there are good places who work proactively with risk managers to protect their assets. Some might just need a little more encouraging...)

In the mid 90s, my friend was working for a natural gas company in northern Wisconsin. By December the ground was frozen solid, but because the company wanted to get the lines laid to a future subdivision, they continued working, jackhammering into the frozen ground. My friend is a good German, and never questioned his job until he started waking up in the middle of the night with his hands numb and pain going up the arms. He was never properly trained on the equipment, nor given special gloves that would have helped protect his hands from the pneumatic pounding. He is a big guy, not much of a questioner, and just plugged along doing his job. The employer had an incentive to keep his charges working, not to protect their health necessarily by calling off the job when the conditions changed. He sold the company, the next year, to NSP -- Northern States Power.

In my work now, we routinely see, in smaller areas especially, preferences given to workers who have pleased their supervisors (perhaps by campaigning for them on the off hours, or from previous family/friend relationships). These are public jobs, supposedly open for application to all workers who have been receiving good job evaluations. I am not arguing, necessarily, that managers not be allowed to select for a position based on who they like for the job. But when a successor for a position is appointed without the job even being posted, there is an efficiency question about whether you truly are getting the best person for the job, or just surrounding yourself with yourself, as they say. Also, every now and then, you see older workers get hung out to dry, not because they are not doing their job, but because they are too costly too keep around. Previous promises get broken. (see the steel mill closures, where I'm guessing men like John Roberts' father did not feel, or help share, the pain of an industry and a region restructuring.)

Union haters don't see some of these problems. Sometimes they have the "God bless the guy who is willing to do it cheaper" mentality that is so highly touted in right-to-work states. I understand this point of view, but to embrace it so whole heartedly, so one sidedly, tells me you are kinda clueless about how things can work in a part of the real world that some people have to work in. (and please don't tell me everyone could get a better education and get a white-collar job. Somebody -- some worker -- has to perform some of these tasks in our society, and usually the sons and daughters do not follow in their parents' work paths.)

Take, for example, the current Northwest Airlines mechanics strike. They did their jobs, fixing and performing preventative maintenance on the planes. The people running the company -- responsible for managing the finances and other big picture items-- mispredicted somewhere along the way, and now cuts need to be made. So labor is asked to take a 25% pay cut, making less I heard than the United mechanics were offered under bankruptcy proceedings. What I want to know is, how much did the managers, the white collar people, sacrifice when they failed in their planning and budgeting role? Another example: In Wisconsin, we have just passed the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, meaning property taxes will be capped, even though expenses are rising. Public workers will be expected to absorb the cuts, in terms of less manpower and less salary.

It reminds me of the immigration fix we are now facing together in our country. If we don't want the illegal workers here, why are so many companies hiring them to work? If we are hiring them once they get here, we should take responsibility for their being here. If we are not taking on this social responsibility, we should not be hiring them and indirectly encouraging them to move here. You can't have it all, certainly not both ways, and definitely not in the long run.

Somebody is making a lot of money out there, and often it's not the people asked to risk the most or work the hardest and longest. I am all about paying more money for brain power. But please don't abuse the perks. It don't take much brains to see that we're all better off working together with each other -- crafting compromise solutions that consider the long-term interests of both the workers and the managers in preventing deadlock and keeping things running smoothly.

Happy Labor Day, America.