SAINT_MICHAEL

Hardly. They do it so they lazy tenured teachers won't look bad when they don't go the extra mile. To force teachers to have to work on weekends you'd have to force the kids to as well. We know that ain't gonna happen.

No, today's unions' goal is to get the most amount of money they can for it's members while performing the least amount of work possible. A person with a good work ethic would have no problem working their way up through better jobs with or without a union. Unions do more protecting of lazy workers that should be fired than they do of strong workers. Employers want strong workers...they don't need to be protected!

Believe it or not, all corporations are not monstrosities that are run as sweat shops only to torture the employees. Surprisingly, many have begun to realize that if you reward good workers with good salaries and good working conditions you get happy employees who do quality work. After all, there are plenty of workers in this country that are fine not working union jobs. In 2010, 88.1 % of the US workforce was non union:

Union Members Summary

So it seems that unions aren't always needed to protect the poor workers from the companies and their evil managers. 88 or so percent of us didn't need them in 2010.

BringTheWood

This isn't all together completely true. Just because someone busts their ass doesn't mean they are going to get their due. You can't honestly believe that. Ideally that is how it should work, but that's being optimistic. I can say to you, from experience, that I have seen more than 10 instances of workers being let go for less than substantial reasons. I live, and have almost always lived in Texas, an at will state. That means that you can be fired, at any given time, for no given reason, and you'd be surprised how often people get canned for no other reason than the managers don't like the people.

I won't disagree that some unions are leeches, because that would be a foolhardy thing to say. However, there are many that are not. To the same effect, as you stated, that while many companies are not unfair to their workers, some actually are. You have good and bad with anything. Personally, I support unions. That doesn't mean that I WOULD support EVERY union, especially the ones that I know are dirty. Objectively, unions are supposed to promote fairness and job security. Objectively, employers should take care of their employees, assuming they aren't terrible workers. How often are people objective though. Optimism and even pragmatism take a quick backseat to pessimism in this country. I try to stay optimistic and pragmatic.

To argue against unions fundamentally is just a bit wrong in my opinion. Any level headed individual can see that more often than not, it is the worker being screwed. Both sides do get screwed, just workers more often than not. Also, I feel that it is worth noting that RARELY would you have a PRIVATE company that would deal with unions. More often than not unions are there to combat corporations. Corporations elect leaders whose primary, and often only goal is the maximization of profits, without promoting well being in the workplace, worker incentive, or job security.

Lastly, without completely researching the EXACT statistics I would say that the 88.1% number you gave isn't because 88.1% of people are COMPLETELY fine without union support. There are a whole list of reasons why some people won't associate with unions, many of which aren't an ideological distaste. If you would have me elaborate on some, I could. And, truth is, Reagen went around in the 80's busting up most of the unions like Ryu against a car in a bonus stage. There just aren't nearly as many unions today as there were when America was more industrial. Lastly, to my last paragraph, America outsources so much freakin' work that many would form unions for, therefore we also see a drop in statistics. There just aren't as many industrial jobs in the states as their used to be.