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Here’s something you wouldn’t expect Mitt Romney to say:
Not all unions adopt counterproductive attitudes. … [I]n some cases, unions are a necessary check on excessively demanding, insensitive, or thoughtless employers.
Poor corporate management and excessive CEO compensation are capable of causing the kind of worker resentment that undermines hard, smart, effective work. While governor, I met with union workers at a plant in western Massachusetts that manufactured socket sets. These workers had been informed by their management that they had to agree to a pay cut or the facility would be closed. The union leaders understood that it was in their best interests to agree to the cuts rather than risk unemployment in a weak job market. But the fact that the company’s CEO had received a reported $20 million bonus the prior year outraged these workers as it would have me had I been in their shoes. It was all they could talk about. The rank and file simply wouldn’t surrender a large share of their wages when the CEO had been so selfish. (254)
Independent // Mar 12, 2010 at 10:04 pm
DavidF, the whole ‘let’s take John Edwards 2 Americas scheme” and apply it to Romney is failing you, guy.
You seemed surprise that a kid who grew up in heavily labor unioned Michigan, where the UAW was born –with the help of some real Red Communists– just a stone’s throw from Romney’s home, and where kids were taught the union culture was the best asset the auto manufacturers had in their tool box could appear pro-union and sympathetic to the worker?
Really now? You might not expect that of Willard Mitt Romney, but the people who know him aren’t surprised in the least.
That says less about him and more about your lack of knowledge and discernment, I think. IMHO.
wonda // Mar 13, 2010 at 2:16 pm
I’m a teacher who always resented teachers unions. My attitude was: “why do I have to pay $140 out of my paycheck a month for a service that merely serves to keep crappy teachers employed?” I used to believe laws would protect me.
That was when I worked for a school district with a strong union.
Now I work for a school district with a weak union and an administration that takes advantage of that fact by treating all its teachers terribly.
I’m now a believer in unions, but I’m really resenting that I have to pay $140 for a union that doesn’t protect me.
I’m missing my other union now and appreciating how it protected me as well as the weak teachers.
Unions are flawed, but I’m beginning to realize in a world where teachers are unfairly demonized, I’d rather have one than not.
Carney // Mar 16, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Really, wonda? Teachers are “demonized”? Ed majors are the bottom-feeders of academe, having the lowest SAT scores of nearly any other major. Ed school entrants have the lowest GMAT scores of nearly all grad school students.