The Evolved and Enabled Envious Employees – Union Labor and Economic Trouble

It seems like every time a troubled industry starts to make money, the labor unions in those large companies in those industries demand more money, and if they don’t get it, they will strike. This is one reason the airline industry cannot re-invent itself, innovate, or buy more fuel-efficient airplanes to help it to greater profitability. The auto industry desperately needed to re-tool to build smaller cars instead of SUVs due to the higher fuel prices.

Unfortunately, the big three automakers were bogged down in sand due to the labor unions. The increased profits from making all those SUVs should have been reinvested in the future of those companies. But instead the labor unions demanded better benefits, more health care, greater pensions, fewer hours, and more money. That took away all the profits, which should have been re-invested.

John Sweeney the president of the AFL CIO is retiring and what a beautiful golden parachute indeed. He had enabled the envious employees and labor unions to destroy General Motors and Chrysler. Along with several auto parts companies such as Delphi which closed 25 plants, taking most of that work to Mexico. Who won? The answer is nobody.

In the end, it was the US taxpayer who bailed out General Motors and Chrysler. This is interesting because it was also the citizens which paid more for buying American cars because the unions demanded more and those cost increased the price of American-made automobiles to an uncompetitive and unsustainable level.

Adam Smith warned us that we have to look out for corporations and governments getting into cahoots with each other. Still, we should have also been watching the labor unions, and how their politics and political strategies have harmed consumers, free markets, and shaken the core of capitalism itself. Please consider all this, as the coordinator for the Online Think Tank; I am quite concerned about our future, and global competitiveness.