Celebrating strong unions at 22nd Labor Day picnic
SPRINGFIELD, Ore. -- Lane County's labor unions teamed up for the 22nd Labor Day picnic Monday afternoon at Lively park in Springfield.
The annual picnic celebrates the labor movement with lots of barbecued food and speeches from labor representatives.
While the recent recession has hurt union numbers nationally Oregon remained strong in labor representation. Bob Baldwin, president of the Lane County Labor Council said that Oregon has the sixth highest number of workers belonging to a union.
Oregon historically has been at the high water mark for organized labor and that goes back to the wood products union movement, before the local timber economy took its hit." Baldwin said.
Union workers account for about 17% of the Oregon workforce, while nationally the average is about 12% of the working population.
Baldwin said that most of the Lane County union gains have come from public sector jobs - not private businesses.
I believe that there is a huge difference between Government Unions and Private Sector Unions. They should not be painted with the same brush, because they are totally different. For the most part Government (public) unions don't produce anything, they do provide services, fix roads, enforce a ton of burdensome regulations, and rules. They are accountable to no one other than their union and their immediate bosses. Private sector unions on the other hand sometimes provide services, and sometimes produce and manufacture products. If they fail in their production, they go out of business, or people will not buy or use their product. Public unions don't fail, they don't go out of business, they don't promote by merit, they have really no accountability to their employer (the tax payer), they just simply continue on. Incompetence is not an issue as we all saw that with the Department of Revenue lately. A public Sector union member has to do something really awful or not politically correct to get fired, but most of the time they just get suspended with pay for a long time before anything gets done. They have better everything than the folks that are paying for them. So in summary I believe in Private sector unions because they have accountability. I do not believe in Public Sector Unions and neither did FDR, he saw the peril for the taxpayer.
During my last job before retirement, I worked for the State of Oregon. I was required to be a union member to have that job. I worked at that job for 12 1/2 years. I did the exact same job on my last day of work as on my first day of work. I did not seek promotions. (I had already retired from two previous high-stress jobs and knew better.) After 12 1/2 years and because of SEIU 503, my salary doubled for precisely the same work in that time frame. As an employee, I took the money; as a taxpayer I was really not happy. Without promotions or changes in responsibilites, I think a job worth keeping should keep up with inflation; it should not be paid twice as much in just 12 1/2 years.
I see no reason to celebrate unions. Unions are something we need to eliminate. It is nothing more than organized crime. And union membership in America has dropped by close to 50% over the last 30 years because of the corruption. Government employee unions are destroying this country faster than anything else. If not for prevailing wage all union construction companies would be out of business.
I can remember when unions were strong and organizations of principle, today, they are an embarrassment, ponytailed middle aged men who cannot keep their focus because of long term drug abuse, eroding the public sector like a cancer, they have to hire three men to get one mans worth of work out of them and the quality is poor, so the public sector is forced to out source to try and give the private sector some accounting for their taxes. there was a time when good men needed to organize, todays unions are an embarrassment to good men.