ubertuber

If workers want to organize, that's fine by me - but I think they and their unions should still be subject to the consequences of their actions. I wonder what would happen if some small-business owners tried to sue the longshoremen.

And Mbwuto, in your rush to hyperbole and sarcasm you've forgotten some precedents. Remember the air-traffic controllers and Reagan? They were allowed to organize, but not to strike because of the consequences of their work-stoppage. They struck anyway and attempted to negotiate from that stance. And then they were fired, because they didn't have a right to strike. When asked about firing them, Reagan replied that as far as he was concerned, they had quit their jobs by breaking their contracts. I don't think that's so unreasonable.

My personal experience with union work (in NY, a highly union-sensitive city) has been that unions have two major effects. They price the workers out of their markets, which is why we have hardly any TV, movie or substantial recording work in the NY musical market. Secondly, they virtually guarantee an inferior quality of work, likely at a higher price. I see that in the building in which I live and work all the time.

The painter in our building (union guy) attempted to stop us from painting our office OURSELVES. Our maintenance staff is horrible and each of our elevators spend around 15% of the malfunctioning in some way. Is this what union labor is getting us? Then our elevator repairmen went on strike, and our elevators were still broken. This makes life in NY almost impossible - have you ever thought about living in a 29 story building without a working elevator? We hired scabs to fix the elevators so people could GO HOME at night and the rest of our maintenance staff put signs up and stood in front of the elevators because they were being serviced by non-union laborers. One wonders exactly how they thought they were going to generate support that way, because at the end of the day, I want my elevators, heaters/air conditioners, toilets, and shower drains to work. If the union is going to make this more expensive then they damn well better be doing a better job as well. If they are going to make this impossible, then for all I care they can all lose their jobs, because by refusing to do them they have quit. This is one reason I like Bloomberg - in his negotiations with the transportation workers' union (among others) he demands productivity increases along with any concession he grants.

Possibly the most irritating thing I see is unions demanding money that doesn't exist. I see this in the music business and in other industries. When unions are too powerful the become focussed only on their half of the equation and try to win battles that will lose them the war. Then when their particular factory/orchestra/industry goes belly up or the freelance work in the area dries up and goes somewhere else, they all complain.

I think unions have outlived their usefulness in a large way. If they want to survive, then they'll have to start acknowledging the real world and the big picture. The days of globalization (which is here whether you like it or not) have made it very easy for a union to price its workers out of jobs. A company may be left with no choice but to outsource labor that is prohibitively expensive in this country. To fail to do so would be irresponsible, and might even invite legal action by shareholders over failure to act to preserve and increase shareholder value. It is time that we get our heads out of the sand and start paying attention to the ways of the new world - because the penalties will be enforced whether or not we want to play by the rules. In that frame of thinking, Walmart may be doing companies a favor. By "extracting a poind of flesh" and force companies to take the supply-chains and logistics seriously, Walmart might actually be saving American businesses from going under 10 years from now.

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Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam