Stossel: Strangulation by union

By: John Stossel

The Chicago teachers strike is over, but the public didn't win, and nor did the students. Only free enterprise can truly improve the lives of all Americans……. At a union rally, I asked union workers if it bothered them that slackers are paid as much as good workers. The activists actually said, “There is no slacker,” and that union rules mean less productive colleagues are helped, “brought up to speed.”  C’mon, I asked, aren’t there some workers who are just lazy, who drag the enterprise down?

“No!” they told me.   The union activists were also quick to say that unions built the middle class, that without unions, greedy bosses would lead a “race to the bottom” and pay workers next to nothing. “There would be no weekend, or eight-hour day!” they told me. “All that came from unions!”

Nonsense………30 years later …. the UAW appeared and unionized the workers. Union membership gave them good benefits for a while, but then growth slowed and stopped. That sure didn’t help workers. Consider what happened at GM. Over the past 20 years, much-less-unionized Toyota created 15,000 jobs — in America, not in Japan. Over that same period, GM lost 400,000 American jobs. One reason GM shrank was union rules. How’s that good for workers.  To Read The Entire Article…..

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