Unions and Labor Day at the Business & Media Institute
Your Business Blogger has an article this week at the Business & Media Institute,
CNN Doesn’t Mention Pro-Union Guest Was Union VP
Author’s former job explains her adoration of unions, but she is unopposed on ‘Your $$$$$.’
The AFL-CIO reports that only 12 percent of the work force belonged to unions last year and the hosts of “Your $$$$$” are not happy.
Hosts Ali Velshi and Christine Romans told viewers why labor unions are good — and business was not — on the September 2, pre-Labor Day broadcast. To help, they brought in Beth Shulman, author of “Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Failed 30 Million Americans and Their Families.” Shulman was introduced as a “labor consultant” rather than the more accurate former vice president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union…
Read the article and let me know what you think.
Thank you (foot)notes:
The Business & Media Institute (BMI) is a division of Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center. BMI is headed and edited by Dan Gainor. More at the jump.
Dan Gainor, The Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow and the Director of the Business & Media Institute, is a veteran editor with two decades’ experience in print and online media. He has served as an editor at several newspapers including The Washington Times and The Baltimore News-American. Mr. Gainor also has extensive experience in online publishing – holding the position of managing editor for CQ.com, the Web site of Congressional Quarterly, and executive editor for ChangeWave, published by Phillips International. He has worked in financial publishing in his last two positions, launching new services for ChangeWave and Agora Inc. Mr. Gainor holds an MBA from the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business and a master’s in publications design from the University of Baltimore. As an undergraduate, he majored in political science and history at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Mr. Gainor lives in Alexandria, Va., and volunteers as a media and issues speaker with the Close-Up Foundation.
Gainor has made hundreds of radio and TV appearances including appearances on: Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes” and “Fox & Friends,” as well as CNN’s “Paul Zahn Now.” He has appeared on local or national shows in every state including: the Jerry Doyle Show, the Chuck Harder Show, Battleline with Alan Nathan, The Right Balance, Janet Parshall’s America, the Thom Hartmann Show, Money & More, the Gordon Liddy Show, America at Night, Dateline Washington, the Lars Larson Show, the Jim Bohannon Show, Home Talk USA, The Weekend, Money Dots on Main Street USA, American Family Radio, and Entertainment USA.
He has been published in a wide variety of publications, including: Investor’s Business Daily, The Washington Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Orange County Register, the New York Post, the Baltimore Examiner, Canada’s National Post’s Financial Post & FP Investing, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Augusta Free Press, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the Houghton Daily Mining Gazette, the Port Clinton, Ohio Beacon, Contacto Magazine, the Caribbean Voice, the Newtown Bee, the Frederick News-Post, The High Point Enterprise, the Easton Star Democrat, the Midland Daily News, the Findlay, OH, Courier, and the Simi Valley, Calif., Acorn.
But of course, Jack. Labor unions are good, businesses are bad. If only we could just get rid of all the businesses in the country, everyone would be better off.
Sometimes I wonder. Would businesses owned and operated by labor unions be both more profitable and more worker friendly than those run by corporate managers? Who would workers rather work under?
Dear Jon,
Yes, we are still looking for Plato’s philosopher king for political leadership — and the equivalent for commerce and economies.
Your Business Blogger is not persuaded that businesses owned by labor unions would be profitable.
We have at least three models that might address your hypothetical questions.
1) There are currently businesses that are run by labor unions: The labor union pension funds.
I lunched this past Tuesday with Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity and he talked about his recent article in the Wall Street Journal. See:
http://taxplaya.typepad.com/american_shareholders_ass/2007/07/good-phil-kerpe.html
When asked about the convergence of interests of workers and stock owners, he said that the union managed pension funds will work against the best interest of the fund’s profitabilty in favor of legislative agendas. As in any command economy, politics trumps profit.
(And he explained why we should care about taxation of private equity partnerships, which might happen if Senators Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) get their way.)
2) Employee owned companies do quite well and that would be an interesting structure to have the employees as stockholders. But with out the layer of bureaucracy (or questionable leadership) of union management. (No, I am not saying that all union leaders are modeled after Tony Soprano…not all.)
http://www.charmaineyoest.com/2007/06/tony_soprano_conflict_resoluti.php
3) Our final example to union leadership of business might be seen in command economies like, say France. With the Gaullic 15% unemployment and that Airbus abortion.
Or perhaps Mother Russia whose GDP is now lower than the…Netherlands and no job creation.
No, Jon, I would submit that the interests of workers and management and business owners are today very closely aligned: they are usually each stockholders in the company, if not the stockmarket, thru a 401k retirement account. The workers may indeed already ‘own the company.’
A German-based client recently told me that “a company that got a union deserves a union” and the misery that goes with it.
Management and Management Training is getting better at motivating today’s worker. Which is why union membership is down from 36% in 1945 to 12% today. Membership will continue to erode.
Management will continue to do better — this is my personal mission in life: https://www.yoest.com/
Thank you for your question,
Jack