American Labor Unions; Are They Dinosaurs?

What is a union? A body of like-minded people. What is a labor union? A body of people seeking rights that laws don't provide. Hmmm. I do agree that in-between the founding of the US, 1492, and today, 2007, we did have periods of time with either no or very weak labor laws existed. When such situations occurr[ed], unfortunately, employers get "High and mighty" too often and disregard employee's needs/rights.

From 1920 through 2006, hundreds of labor laws have been created so that all employees

at least, under the law, are treated fairly. One of those laws, naturally, permits employees to

unionize. My question is, why would employees want to unionize, with laws that exist to protect them? It is agreed that too many employers still find the need to fill the pockets of the executives of a company AT THE expense of the [lower level] employees. When executives go crazy, it behooves the employees to buy company stock and go to share-holder's meetings and complain and if needed, gain majority positions in the stock and force changes! TV shows and movies have been written about this.

What these movies do not discuss is the negatives of unionizing.

Let me share some of these concerns and negatives with you:

Facts;

When a company is unionized, the union gets a percentage of every employee's paycheck.

While pay equality is supposed to be the idea, it is not. Your author was a retail clerk. A highly skilled retail clerk. While I agree that anyone can be trained to become a retail clerk, anyone can be trained to be anything-that is what schools are for. A meat cutter, a musician and a truck driver earn more money than a retail clerk. That is not equitable or fair. A top truck driver can earn $100,000 a year. An equally trained retail clerk running a department of 15 other employees and $5,000,000 in inventory earns about $15.00 an hour or $24,000 a year, less than 1/5 that of a truck driver!

When a strike occurs at a company by union wanna be's or current union employees, research has shown that the wages lost by the employees is never recovered. Also, a union employee is not more highly skilled than a non-union employee.