Today's Unions: Stirring the Kool-Aid and Causing Collateral Damage

As former union leaders, there was a time when we admired unions and what they allegedly stood for. However, like many, the deeper we dug, the more we saw, and the more we experienced the betrayal of workers, the more disgusted we became with the union leaders of today. Like many people who are duped into believing in something, only to find out it is based on a false premise, a collectivist creed, and, in the end, causing more harm than good, we left in order to oppose that which we once preached.

There are several stories circulating in the media that offer prime examples of just what is meant by the above paragraph.

The first, of course, is the sordid battle going on between the SEIU and the CNA. There are enough stories floating around the internet for one to research on their own, so we won't spend any more time on it, except to offer you our opinion on What's Really Behind the SEIU vs. CNA Fight, which we posted on Friday.

The second story comes by way of the Detroit News and discusses a United Auto Workers' (UAW) strike against General Motors at one of its plants and several others that the UAW has threatened with strikes. The title of the piece is aptly titled: Motive in UAW threats unclear.

In the piece, the writer quotes a UAW striker, Michael Shrubbe, as saying: "None of us know why we're here."

Mr. Shrubbe, the article states, has been walking a picket line in Delta Township, where workers have been off the job since April 17 at the factory that builds GM's popular crossovers.

The article goes on to say:

GM believes the UAW threats, all against factories that either make critical models for the automaker or supply the parts to build them, are a tactic being used to draw the company into the strike against American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc., according to several sources familiar with negotiations. Labor law prohibits the union from striking because of a dispute elsewhere; many think the union is using local negotiations to apply indirect pressure.

"There's a feeling among workers that their jobs are being jeopardized by things beyond their control," Gary Chaison, a labor specialist at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. "Their expectations were when everything was tied up nationally everything would fall into place. Now it appears to be unraveling so fast."

The American Axle strike, in its ninth week, has created a parts shortage that has forced GM to idle or cut production at more than two dozen North American factories. But GM's bottom line has been relatively unscathed since the affected factories produce slow-selling large trucks and SUV that were backing up on dealer lots.

Now, besides strikers not knowing why they're unemployed and on the picket lines (that, by itself, is condemning enough of the union's leadership), the fact of the matter is, if GM's assumptions are correct and the UAW is trying to use local strikes as leverage to draw the car maker into the American Axle strike, then the UAW has become woefully inept at flexing its own muscle.

As every unionist (former or otherwise) knows, the strike is a union's only weapon and for a union to pull the trigger without making sure its gun is fully loaded and correctly aimed is not only irresponsible, but borders on a negligent dereliction of a union leader's duty--to care for his membership first.

In this case though, it would appear GM workers and their families are being sacrificed because of Ron Gettlefinger's poor calculations in dealing with American Axle and, if true, that is both reprehensible and inexcusable.

Our third and final story comes from the Los Angeles Times and deals with the aftermath of the 100-day writer's strike.

In the LA Times article, the reporter discusses at length the many hardship cases of the "collateral damage" caused by the strike. Namely, the crew members and other talent (mostly union members) that are facing financial ruin from the economic fallout from the writer's strike.

As the article states: Some are at risk of losing their homes. Some can't afford groceries. Others have filed for bankruptcy. Still others struggle to work enough hours to hold on to their health insurance.

Although hard figures are not available, union officials say that thousands of crew members who normally would be busy at this time of year are still idled because of the sharp contraction in television production. Some union locals report a quarter of their members are sitting at home.

Karen Hartjen is one. She can't bring herself to open the utility bills lying on her
kitchen table in Simi Valley.

The 53-year-old assistant prop master has been out of work since early November,
when a string of jobs on TV shows such as "CSI: New York" and "Medium" came to a halt after the writers walked out.Although Hartjen is accustomed to earning $100,000 a year, she is now $10,000 in debt and her home is threatened with
foreclosure. She has turned to her church and the Salvation Army for help with
groceries.

To add insult to injury, these workers who stood behind their union "brothers" and "sisters" are getting the shaft from their own unions who administer their health care...

Many crew members are in a race against the clock to keep their health insurance.
Union rules require that members work at least 300 hours every six months to
maintain their benefits.

After a four-month hiatus, foley artist Dominique Tabach of Valencia recently returned to work part-time on the CBS drama "Numb3rs." But she has nothing else lined up.

Without additional work, Tabach, 43, is concerned that she won't accumulate enough hours to keep her union health insurance beyond September. The insurance covers Tabach, her 8-year-old daughter and her husband, a former TV executive who recently lost his job.

Yet, in the face of an actors' strike that is certain to bring financial devastation to those teetering on the edge right now, NONE of these "victims" seem to question whether their "union solidarity" was worth it. None seem to wonder if "Hollywood is a Union Town" is really a good thing, or perhaps it is a bad thing.

Last December, we received a comment from a rather irate wife of a man who was unemployed due to the writer's strike (which is posted here). In her comment, she called she and her husband "collateral damage," to which we took her to task. In sum, if you place yourself in harm's way, then you cannot call yourself "collateral damage."

In closing, as was stated at the beginning of this post, when people realize that today's unions are based on a false premise, a collectivist creed and, in the end, causing more harm than good, perhaps they will stop allowing themselves to become the "collateral damage" to half-witted union leaders of today who only know how to lead people down a one-way path to self-destruction.

Writing about the Writers Strike...

...is getting really, really boring.

Perhaps it's because of America's collective addiction to the TV set, but we really cannot understand why the writer's strike has captivated so much media attention (Google lists over 1,700 stories on the topic).

Karl Marx once proclaimed that religion is the opiate of the masses; however, he never tuned into American Idol, Desperate Housewives, or Monday Night Football. Talk about opiates...

The Golden Globes ceremony has been scrapped...(yawn).

The Oscars may be next...(Zzzz).

Then there's the faux sympathy for the strikers (see Letterman and Obrien) as some late night talk-show hosts return to the air. And don't forget the faux anger from other late night talk show hosts who decided to become strike-breakers (see Colbert's sarcastic 'I don't like union's and I don't need writers' comment).

And, poor, poor Jay Leno, the doughnut-bearing friend of the strikers who now may be put on trial by the Writer Guild for (gasp!) writing his own jokes.

Why it's enough to make the average American...

...go to sleep.

However, there is the occasional moment of interest like today's op-ed in the LA Times from writer John Ridley on why he decided to become a financial core member and the hassle he's had to endure as a WGA member over the last 15 years.

So, what exactly is the issue that has over 10,000 writers out on the streets and the media in such a snit?

(Drum roll please...)

Residual payments for the writers when their content is put out on the internet or DVD. That's it in a nutshell.

The writers want more money when their products are used outside the boob tube and the producers are saying 'no.'

End of story. Time for REM.

That said, from time to time, we get comments from our blog readers that we like to post. A couple of days ago, we got an anonymous comment on our blog that really put the whole issue of the striking writers into perspective, as follows:

A writer has no more claim to downstream income than a set designer or a caterer, they are all just components in a complex business process that involves many people in many roles, from Janitor to Financier...

Ka-BOOM!

Like a clap of thunder, this anonymous reader's comment kicked the living crap out of our ho-hum, we're-so-bored-and-could-care-less observations on this whole stupid scribe strike.

The more we thought about it, the more pathetic the writers' claim for their strike seems.

Our reader is right.

If a worker is paid for his work on a product, should that worker be paid more if the buyer of that work has found other uses for it? Wouldn't that basically be double-dipping?...Getting paid for your product, then getting paid for it again and again and again?

We think that's the fundamental question that should be answered. So, in an effort to further define this, let's apply it to other industries.

Sports. Michael Jordan gets paid a gazillion dollars to play for the Chicago Bulls. He plays, he gets paid. Although he makes a gazillion more dollars on endorsing underwear and sneakers, he doesn't get paid every time a re-run of his jump shot is shown, does he? Nah.

Medicine. The Jarvik dude on TV who invented the artificial heart has made a ton of money, right? Hell, he invented a ticker that keeps ticking when your real one doesn't--that's something, right? Well, anyway, he got a patent on his pumper, and probably gets a legal kickback whenever someone installs one of his pumpers. BUT (here's the question), if one of the recipients of his pumps kicks the bucket and another doc reuses the same pumper, does Jarvik get to double dip?

How about this example: If you work in a lawnmower factory and you build a lawn mower, you should be entitled to some recompense for every blade of grass your mower mows?

You think that's ridiculous, don't you?

Well, what's the difference?

If you're writing a story and being paid for that story at the time of product delivery, why does the buyer of your story need to keep paying you over and over again?

Seems to us, that's double-dipping and that's what the writer's are striking for.

Now, if you'll pardon us, we're going to watch some re-runs so we can fall back to sleep...

STAR CROSSED: Hollywood Hypocrisy & the Writers' Strike

The writers' strike which has arguably crippled the television entertainment industry has entered its eighth week and (gasp!) the sun is still rising, America is still strong, and the political left in Hollywood (and elsewhere) have proven once again that they're a bunch of candy-assed hypocrites.

So much for the union slogans:

• United we bargain, divided we beg; or
• An injustice to one is an injustice to all...

Fugheddabout the union credo once called Solidarity. In the end, even Tony Soprano knew that was nothing more than Hollywood hype.

These are all principles that unions stood for at a time when Father Knows Best was still king of the boob tube--but no longer.

It's a dog eat dog world out there and, in the entertainment industry, it seems that, when push comes to shove (or should we say pickets), cold, hard cash trumps liberal ideology by a landslide...(or in California, it may be a mudslide)

In today's unions, as the writers trade their pens for the pickets, the support they've gotten from their 'brothers and sisters' in the union movement has been as thin and as transparent as a piece of onion-paper.

First, it was the Teamsters. Never a union to cross another union's picket lines--guess what they did...They crossed.

Then, it was talk show host Ellen Degenres and Carson Daly deciding early on that their "show[s] must go on," despite the fact that Ellen took some heat for her decision.

Now that late night talk show hosts Jay Leno, David Letterman, and Conan O'Brien have all effectively 'crossed the picket lines' by resuming their shows as well without their striking writers, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert jumped onto the bus recently to resume their shows, leaving their striking writers in the dust too.

Even the AFL-CIO's John Sweeney (aka the Boss Hog of the union movement) has been remarkably silent about all the other union brothers and sisters crossing the WGA's picket lines. An injury to one is an injury to all?...Apparently not to the Grand PooBah of Labor.

With all the hullabaloo about standing together against 'corporate greed' and the 'tyranny of the right,' it appears today's liberal left is willing to abandon their principles faster than Edie Britt (Desperate Housewives) sheds her clothes. For those who are paying attention to this (yawn) labor dispute, you are witnessing first-hand how little solidarity means to today's union movement, and how little principles mean to the leftists who push their ideologies on the rest of America.

Are you watching, Iowa and New Hampshire?