By: I.M. Windee

Last week, UAW President Bob King stated that the “old ‘Us vs. Them’ mentality” is a relic and the financial viability of the automakers is important. Better late than never, perhaps, but there are probably many former “Old GM” and
“Old Chrysler” stakeholders who would disagree.

For those who were caught up in their lives or may have forgotten, a refresher is in order.  Many decades of a confrontational stance by the unions, and ultimate kowtowing to union leaderships’ demands by management stuffing their own satchels, resulted in the bankruptcy of both GM and Chrysler in 2009, resulting in equity owners being wiped out and creditors getting pennies to the dollar.  Although common and convenient folklore is that such only affected “the rich” and Wall St. barons, it hurt many older, middle class folks (think: the World War II generation) who believed that both the workers and management would never sell out the way they did.

Meanwhile, over at the teacher’s unions, recently revealed on their website via a PowerPoint was the cynical maneuver by the leadership of the American Federation of Teachers to scuttle “parent trigger.”  For those not familiar with “parent trigger,” it is the ability of parents to vote to have a failing school change management, generally.

Of course, the teacher’s union leadership was against such as their sole, though unstated, mission, is to preserve and grow the dues-paying ranks, which keeps costs high.

And there is a larger lesson here for both government worker unions and spendthrift politicians, especially here on “Planet Jersey.” To wit: the taxpayers (including “the rich”) are not some endless “horn of plenty” that can support any and all programs. The more taxes are taken from the economy, the less prosperous it becomes, and the less it is able to support government. A sort of slaying the of the goose  that lays the golden eggs.

All of this suggests that, perhaps, we are a long way from the Sylvester Stallone movie F.I.S.T. that portrays 1930’s unions as a necessary and good force.

Perhaps it is time to re-evaluate the need and role of unions in the U.S. economy.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 7th, 2011 at 7:21 am and is filed under Planet Jersey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.