I am sorry you have lost your job. I feel for those of you who are no longer able to support your family, retain your home, and are wondering what to do next.
I also have advice for you: leave your union.
My first job was as a financial analyst for a major bank. I was disappointed with my pay yet happy to have employment. I remember stumbling across a union-supported website that allowed me to compare my wages with those of my CEO. I dutifully entered the requested information and the site produced the ominous report:
You would have to work 140 years at your current pay to earn what your CEO earns in just one year!
I think that message was supposed to incite me to anger, ill-will against my "overpaid" company leader, and organize my fellow worker into a union. Luckily, I have a logical mind, a drive to succeed, and ambitious dreams. I crunched the numbers. I calculated not my pay against CEO pay, but the pay of the ENTIRE COMPANY against CEO pay. I calculated what I was "giving up" in compensation to the CEO so that I could have a job that paid my bills. Allow me to illustrate using GM.
- The CEO of General Motors earns $1.7 million per year. "More than anyone needs", many would say.
- GM employs - directly - 252,000.
- This means that the CEO of GM earns about $6 for every person he employs.
Think about that the next time your union rep tries to highlight the "outrageousness" of executive pay.
A few other questions you'll want to answer:
1) How much do the union lawyers get paid vs. how much you get paid?
2) If unions protect jobs, why don't you have one?
3) Why are non-union auto-companies in the south still thriving?
4) Knowing that a CEO doesn't own a company, shareholders do, and that unions and the 401k plans of "normal" Americans are the primary shareholders of large corporations, who are you really fighting against? You're trying to squeeze money from the "owner" - that happens to be you!
5) Calculate how much you have spent in union dues over your career. Ignoring the complexities of compound interest for a moment, multiply that number by 5. That's what it would be worth had you invested it. Has the union provided that much value to you?
6) Did you know that for every 1 week you spend on strike without pay, you need at least 2% increase in total compensation or you have come out behind? Prolonged strikes ALWAYS benefit the company - unions want to 'win', companies want 'profit'.
Here are better ways to spend your union dues:
1) Education. Learn something that allows you to succeed in the new economy - like, how to assemble a computer.
2) Your Health. Join a gym and use it
3) Invest it.
One last note specially targeted to those unions in the public sector - teachers, police, fire, etc. You realize that you are striking against the government, right? Who are you mad at? There is no "evil owner". If there is money, it is PUBLICLY DISCLOSED by LAW. In order to pay you more, the government needs to raise taxes. That means YOU PAY MORE. Quit asking the government to raise my taxes.
I could write a book on how bad unions are for the economy, and how much worse they are for union members, but I don't have the time or the interest for such an endeavor - and, the last time I was a known union foe, I received death threats. Unions have become communist mobs. They started out as organizations to protect workers from exploitation, and they were successful in achieving necessary, government supported worker protections. Now, they have devolved into the local thug wanting protection money from the workers.
It's time we sided with merit instead of tenure, and paid people for contributions and productivity, not some pre-negotiated rate. Nothing hinders American prosperity and productivity like a union.
