Prisoners to fill jobs that used to be held by unionized workers

[MMI]

If [unions] want members they should be forced to compete, just like any other business.

Except unions are not businesses. They are (or were) combinations of workers who united to protect their common interests against oppressive employers and governments.

Competition is anathema to them.

[Thorne]

Except unions are not businesses. They are (or were) combinations of workers who united to protect their common interests against oppressive employers and governments.

Competition is anathema to them.

The operative word here is "were". Many unions have become little more than monopolies, paying huge sums of members' money to politicians in order to insure that real business cannot carry on without their approval. Not to protect the workers, except as an afterthought, but to protect the incomes of the union leaders. The devastation of Detroit, the disappearance of the US steel industry, the transfer of jobs overseas, and many other business collapses can all be laid, directly or indirectly, at the feet of the unions.

[js207]

Except unions are not businesses. They are (or were) combinations of workers who united to protect their common interests against oppressive employers and governments.

Competition is anathema to them.

Just as it is to Microsoft, the IBM of old, Standard Oil ... that doesn't mean it's in anyone else's interests to protect them from competition!

If I have the right to work in a place, and have the right to join a union if I wish, why should I not have the right to join a union which represents my interests better than the one other people there have joined? As in the Wisconsin case, where the teachers' union was hooked up with a health insurance provider charging excessive amounts for coverage (not directly harming the members, because it was the taxpayer getting ripped off), there will come cases where the union's interests conflict with the members' - the ability to switch to a more honest union seems a very useful safeguard there.

As for not being businesses, when they charge people money for a service, fight to keep their customers and sometimes pay their management well into six figures, where is the difference really? That they channel their profits into political activities and/or their senior staff rather than investing it or returning it to investors? That's exactly the basis a lot of small businesses operate on!