Why Employers Hate Unions

I have mixed feelings about Unions.  On one hand, they do serve a good purpose in making sure its members earn decent and livable salaries (usually), get decent benefits, vacation pay, etc; on the other hand, they also abuse their power.

While I can understand their purpose and agree with it, I have a problem with most Unions’ stand about companies having to tolerate poor performance/behavior from employees for unreasonable amounts of time.  It really isn’t fair to the employer (not all of them are dogs after all).   IF an employee is absent a lot, doesn’t do their job, doesn’t keep up, causes extra work for their fellow employees who have to pick up the slack, a company should be allowed to replace that person.  I don’t think a union should force a company to tolerate such poor performance and have to pay the person on top of it.

An article on the NorthStar Writers’ Group today gives an interesting take on the GM and UAW:

But that’s me, and it’s probably you. If you want to know why General Motors is now in bankruptcy, get this: GM’s recent big triumphant new contract with the United Auto Workers stipulates that an employee who helps himself to an unexcused absence can be fired – once he’s done it six times.

Six times!

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

Read the FULL STORY here.

Can you imagine what would happen if I just didn’t show up to work with no phone call, no email, no explanation?   I might get away with it once, but since I’ve never tried that I can’t say for sure.  But I could pretty much guarantee I’d be fired the second time I tried that.  I remember once in my first job and apartment, I had no phone.  I woke up with a fever and sick as a dog.  I had to walk a block to the pay phone to call in sick.  And I did!

At GM you can take all your scheduled PTO (paid time off) time (vacation, sick days, personal days) and still blow off work with NO notice or anything 6 times before you can be fired?  That’s like an extra week off each year……………….guaranteed by your union.  How nice for the GM employees.  However, I wonder about GM’s management team for agreeing to this nonsense to start with.

Years ago while I was living on Cape Cod, I worked for a while in a Bradlee’s department store.  For those who don’t know Bradlee’s, they are like Target stores.   Anyway, they were also unionized and it was a pain in the butt to fire anyone.

So the next time you are shopping, and the staff is unresponsive, lazy, rude, etc.  I’d bet if you asked you’d find out they were in a union and the Store’s management can’t do crap about it until they have a bazillion complaints on file.  It’s no wonder so many companies don’t want unions for their employees.  In which case, my suggestion to those companies would be to treat your employees with all loyalty and respect you demand and pay them living salaries.

Unions were good at one time; then they got too big, too political, too powerful…….now they seem to create as more headaches than any good they might do.

~ by swfreedomlover on June 12, 2009.