That unions have protected workers from abusive and dangerous conditions imposed by employers seems to be undeniable. Work weeks were long and days were hard in the days before unionism; remuneration was slight, and days off were few or nonexistent. Life for workers was tougher before the rise of unions. But like all human experiments, there was a downside. Employers simply transferred the additional costs associated with meeting union demands to the customers who happened to be the very unionized workers. There’s always a glitch of some kind. Seems that we humans are in the habit of never getting things completely right. Just when we think we have adopted a solution…
Pre-union Conditions
If I had to recommend a place where one could learn about those pre-union days, that place would be the Lackawanna Coal Mine in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Tour guides lower tourists into the anthracite mine via the same car the miners used and then tell them about the life of the miners who had to dig and load 3-tons of coal into a “coal car” during a shift or go without pay. Conditions in the mine, about 55 degrees, damp, and dusty, were both uncomfortable and dangerous: Falling ceiling rock, explosive methane, and choking carbon dioxide. If a miner died, the coal company required his family to provide another worker or abandon the company house where they lived. The new worker was often a child. In an era with no social, outcast family members were subject to hard times. Children as young as eight worked in the mine. Imagine a typical eight-year-old today spending his time sitting alone in a dark damp room with rats and having the job of opening and closing mine doors for the passing 3-ton coal cars—one slip near the track meant dismemberment or death.
Union Conditions
So, yes, unions helped to alleviate some daily pain and elevate some remuneration for workers. Unions improved working conditions--for some. But that “never getting things completely right” then kicked in; and it was compounded by segregated unions and rabid Marxists. * A movement that had begun in the mid- to late-nineteenth century spread throughout most of the country in the early twentieth century, but it excluded many blacks and almost all Asian Americans. Outside the mines, other workers, some belonging to formerly considered white-collar work, saw the benefits of unions. Teachers unionized; college professors, also.
The “not getting things quite right” then became a blanket protection for all members, and by virtue of the protection, a safety net for the least competent. Unionization meant applying the principle of equity. All workers, regardless of effort and merit, had to be treated the same. All earnings stemmed from a graduated level of remuneration based on seniority. That seniority-over-merit still pervades union thinking. It shackles the energetic, bright, and most productive to the union wagon.
And government workers! And that’s where “never getting things completely right” manifests itself. That’s where seniority leads to an Anthony Fauci becoming and remaining director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022 at a final salary of more than $400,000, that is, more than POTUS. Live long in government, and, as they say on Planet Vulcan, prosper. And the prospering comes with many perks, including a very lucrative retirement, adulation even in the mishandling of the COVID crisis, and a pre-retirement pay increase based on preventing pandemics.
Deleterious Effects
One of the first unions—it might have been first—to form in the US was the International Typographical Union (ITU), founded in 1852. It was the union to which my father, a linotypist, belonged. He joined the union after returning from WWII and acquiring the skill on a linotype in the 1940s, and he faithfully paid his dues until the ITU dissolved, virtually eliminating his retirement in 1986. Mismanagement of funds by union bosses seems to be one of those “never getting things quite right” processes. Union bosses generally live better than those they represent.
In what seems to be a long time ago, I watched the deleterious effects of unionism in Pennsylvania’s 14 state universities. For one very small example, consider the division of labor. Unions define the parameters of jobs very specifically. That means—and this seems ridiculous in retrospect—that when I carried a small cabinet across the campus during a change in offices, I violated the rules governing what I was allowed to do. I probably should have done it in the dark, for a dean saw me carrying the cabinet and told me that wasn’t my job and that I could “get in trouble” for moving the small piece of furniture. I continued to carry it anyway, and he sheepishly went on his way after I said, “I’ve been waiting for this for weeks; I’m done waiting.” Ah! The hubris of the tenured faculty member who is also protected by a union. I was imbued with the audacity to be curt with a dean.
That was a small and insignificant incident in the context of division of labor and forced “equity” that a faculty union imposes. During my four-decade tenure, I saw the equity in action as awards for research were doled out regardless of the research quality or effect. Someone’s getting a $200 local grant equated to some other faculty member’s getting a $200,000 national grant. All research was in the union’s eyes of equal value. Without that equity, the members would have to acknowledge individual differences, including differences in skills, knowledge, and talent: In a unionized faculty everyone deserves a trophy.
And that context of dividing labor enhanced the separation of academics into departments with the sole rights to their disciplines. In other words, it was anathema for someone in geology to have the audacity to teach what someone in biology taught. Yet, if we look to the nineteenth century and the development of academia, we see that naturalists like Darwin concerned himself with both geology and biology. Compartmentalizing subjects negates the interrelationship of knowledge bases. A paleobotanist surely must know something about the physical environment in which the plants grew, just as a botanist must know something about soils and hydrology.
Did I benefit from being a member of a state union? Yes, in a number of ways, but I am not an avid supporter of a union of state or federal employees, and in that I fall into the thinking of FDR.
Government Employee Unions at the Heart of Government Employee Corruption
At present, Americans have just gone through a time when a few corrupt government officials have interfered with a national election. The now proven falsity of allegations about Russian collusion and the slow-walked allegations about a sitting president having taken bribes in pay-to-play international relations, both stem in my mind from the protections afforded unionized government workers.
Guaranteed increases in relatively high salaries based on longevity and protected to the Nth degree from dismissal, a hubris has settled in the minds of some. They can act with seeming immunity even when those actions teeter on the brink of a coup. The mindset of invincibility has made some government employees, like those in the FBI who irresponsibly handled the FISA warrants, use a government agency as a weapon.
Invincible? Really. Who has been punished? Who has been held accountable? And as FDR saw, a government union can thwart the will of the people who rely on laws as a manifestation of their democracy. It is the US, Congress, not government unions, that expresses the will of the people. In his words, “. . . a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable.” ** FDR did, however, concede that a government union had a place in protecting workers from inordinate work hours and safety. But he warned that “meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government.” To allow government unions or not to allow them: That is the dilemma.
Teacher strikes? Professor strikes? Both similar. The teachers hold the local school board and constituents hostage. The professors hold the state hostage until their demands are met. That subverts the purpose of elections. It essentially makes an alternative government. And it definitely leads to government employees feeling that they have power over the rule of law as legislated by elected officials.
I believe that the unions served an important social purpose in their development, but I also believe that unions and union-thinking provides the context of today’s seemingly corrupt FBI and DOJ. Yesterday, I saw a video of Senator Ted Cruz fruitlessly questioning the deputy director of the FBI about allegations against President Biden. The director refused to comply with the senator’s request for documents—unclassified documents—and recordings.
And what will happen? Will anyone in the protected status of a government position suffer the consequences of subverting the will of the people? FDR was correct. Unionized government employees do subvert that will; he was insightful, but he, even in working with J. Edgar Hoover, might not have been aware of just how insidious such subversion could—and ostensibly has—become.
*See https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/labor#section_2
**https://showmeinstitute.org/blog/government-unions/what-was-fdrs-stance-on-government-unions
Pre-union Conditions
If I had to recommend a place where one could learn about those pre-union days, that place would be the Lackawanna Coal Mine in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Tour guides lower tourists into the anthracite mine via the same car the miners used and then tell them about the life of the miners who had to dig and load 3-tons of coal into a “coal car” during a shift or go without pay. Conditions in the mine, about 55 degrees, damp, and dusty, were both uncomfortable and dangerous: Falling ceiling rock, explosive methane, and choking carbon dioxide. If a miner died, the coal company required his family to provide another worker or abandon the company house where they lived. The new worker was often a child. In an era with no social, outcast family members were subject to hard times. Children as young as eight worked in the mine. Imagine a typical eight-year-old today spending his time sitting alone in a dark damp room with rats and having the job of opening and closing mine doors for the passing 3-ton coal cars—one slip near the track meant dismemberment or death.
Union Conditions
So, yes, unions helped to alleviate some daily pain and elevate some remuneration for workers. Unions improved working conditions--for some. But that “never getting things completely right” then kicked in; and it was compounded by segregated unions and rabid Marxists. * A movement that had begun in the mid- to late-nineteenth century spread throughout most of the country in the early twentieth century, but it excluded many blacks and almost all Asian Americans. Outside the mines, other workers, some belonging to formerly considered white-collar work, saw the benefits of unions. Teachers unionized; college professors, also.
The “not getting things quite right” then became a blanket protection for all members, and by virtue of the protection, a safety net for the least competent. Unionization meant applying the principle of equity. All workers, regardless of effort and merit, had to be treated the same. All earnings stemmed from a graduated level of remuneration based on seniority. That seniority-over-merit still pervades union thinking. It shackles the energetic, bright, and most productive to the union wagon.
And government workers! And that’s where “never getting things completely right” manifests itself. That’s where seniority leads to an Anthony Fauci becoming and remaining director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022 at a final salary of more than $400,000, that is, more than POTUS. Live long in government, and, as they say on Planet Vulcan, prosper. And the prospering comes with many perks, including a very lucrative retirement, adulation even in the mishandling of the COVID crisis, and a pre-retirement pay increase based on preventing pandemics.
Deleterious Effects
One of the first unions—it might have been first—to form in the US was the International Typographical Union (ITU), founded in 1852. It was the union to which my father, a linotypist, belonged. He joined the union after returning from WWII and acquiring the skill on a linotype in the 1940s, and he faithfully paid his dues until the ITU dissolved, virtually eliminating his retirement in 1986. Mismanagement of funds by union bosses seems to be one of those “never getting things quite right” processes. Union bosses generally live better than those they represent.
In what seems to be a long time ago, I watched the deleterious effects of unionism in Pennsylvania’s 14 state universities. For one very small example, consider the division of labor. Unions define the parameters of jobs very specifically. That means—and this seems ridiculous in retrospect—that when I carried a small cabinet across the campus during a change in offices, I violated the rules governing what I was allowed to do. I probably should have done it in the dark, for a dean saw me carrying the cabinet and told me that wasn’t my job and that I could “get in trouble” for moving the small piece of furniture. I continued to carry it anyway, and he sheepishly went on his way after I said, “I’ve been waiting for this for weeks; I’m done waiting.” Ah! The hubris of the tenured faculty member who is also protected by a union. I was imbued with the audacity to be curt with a dean.
That was a small and insignificant incident in the context of division of labor and forced “equity” that a faculty union imposes. During my four-decade tenure, I saw the equity in action as awards for research were doled out regardless of the research quality or effect. Someone’s getting a $200 local grant equated to some other faculty member’s getting a $200,000 national grant. All research was in the union’s eyes of equal value. Without that equity, the members would have to acknowledge individual differences, including differences in skills, knowledge, and talent: In a unionized faculty everyone deserves a trophy.
And that context of dividing labor enhanced the separation of academics into departments with the sole rights to their disciplines. In other words, it was anathema for someone in geology to have the audacity to teach what someone in biology taught. Yet, if we look to the nineteenth century and the development of academia, we see that naturalists like Darwin concerned himself with both geology and biology. Compartmentalizing subjects negates the interrelationship of knowledge bases. A paleobotanist surely must know something about the physical environment in which the plants grew, just as a botanist must know something about soils and hydrology.
Did I benefit from being a member of a state union? Yes, in a number of ways, but I am not an avid supporter of a union of state or federal employees, and in that I fall into the thinking of FDR.
Government Employee Unions at the Heart of Government Employee Corruption
At present, Americans have just gone through a time when a few corrupt government officials have interfered with a national election. The now proven falsity of allegations about Russian collusion and the slow-walked allegations about a sitting president having taken bribes in pay-to-play international relations, both stem in my mind from the protections afforded unionized government workers.
Guaranteed increases in relatively high salaries based on longevity and protected to the Nth degree from dismissal, a hubris has settled in the minds of some. They can act with seeming immunity even when those actions teeter on the brink of a coup. The mindset of invincibility has made some government employees, like those in the FBI who irresponsibly handled the FISA warrants, use a government agency as a weapon.
Invincible? Really. Who has been punished? Who has been held accountable? And as FDR saw, a government union can thwart the will of the people who rely on laws as a manifestation of their democracy. It is the US, Congress, not government unions, that expresses the will of the people. In his words, “. . . a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable.” ** FDR did, however, concede that a government union had a place in protecting workers from inordinate work hours and safety. But he warned that “meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government.” To allow government unions or not to allow them: That is the dilemma.
Teacher strikes? Professor strikes? Both similar. The teachers hold the local school board and constituents hostage. The professors hold the state hostage until their demands are met. That subverts the purpose of elections. It essentially makes an alternative government. And it definitely leads to government employees feeling that they have power over the rule of law as legislated by elected officials.
I believe that the unions served an important social purpose in their development, but I also believe that unions and union-thinking provides the context of today’s seemingly corrupt FBI and DOJ. Yesterday, I saw a video of Senator Ted Cruz fruitlessly questioning the deputy director of the FBI about allegations against President Biden. The director refused to comply with the senator’s request for documents—unclassified documents—and recordings.
And what will happen? Will anyone in the protected status of a government position suffer the consequences of subverting the will of the people? FDR was correct. Unionized government employees do subvert that will; he was insightful, but he, even in working with J. Edgar Hoover, might not have been aware of just how insidious such subversion could—and ostensibly has—become.
*See https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/labor#section_2
**https://showmeinstitute.org/blog/government-unions/what-was-fdrs-stance-on-government-unions
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