September 4, 2002
Let's say a man stands on the street corner and greets you as you leave work each Friday with a crisp $10 bill. “What's this for?” you ask. “It's just a token of my appreciation for the job you did this week,” he replies. “Above and beyond your regular pay.” You shrug your shoulders and walk on. Each Friday thereafter for over a year the same man greets you each Friday with another $10 bill. Then one day, after more than a year of greeting you with a smile and a ten spot, he merely hands you $5. Do you become indignant and demand to know where your other $5 is? If you do, you probably belong to a union.
You see, some of us come to think of gifts as God-given rights. Company-provided health care benefits, pension plans and the like, once they're in place become ours, in some people's minds, even though we don't pay for them. Once we get used to them, they become expected. Hardly a one of us would stop to thank our company for providing health insurance.
Such is the case at Peterbilt Motor Company's heavy truck plant in Madison, Tennessee. My understanding is the latest dispute has been over the company retirement plan. Sales are down, layoffs are eminent and the company wants to scale back its generosity to help the bottom line. The union has now come to see that generosity as their God-given right.
It's not like the workers don't get a fair shake at Peterbilt. The average union worker there makes $21.65 per hour. That works out to a little over $45,000 per year, not including benefits and overtime. Not a bad living at all. Surely better than most comparable work is paid in this area. Still, the union, as it has done historically, growls to bite the hand that feeds it.
Unions have driven countless factories from the North down South or overseas. They pull themselves from the wreckage and head out in search of another prospering business to destroy. Not all unions have such an antagonistic relationship with management. Some, instead of pulling in the opposite direction of the company actually pull together to try and make a better product or provide a better service. I would venture to say that those workers don't need unions at all. If management is happy with the union workers it's because the workers are doing what's expected of them to make the company successful. Those workers don't need the union because unions exist to protect the mediocre.
I've heard from countless former union workers who tell me that they were asked to slow down in order to not make the rest of the workers look bad or to extract overtime pay from the company. Let's face it, if you're good at what you do - if you make yourself indispensable to the company - you don't need a union. If you're in denial of that fact, look at anyone who has excelled in his or her profession and tell me if they need a union to cut their deal. Do you think Clark Gable really needed the actor's union? Did Elvis need the musician's union?