The problem with unions

By Garth McLennan

here was a time in North America
To unions were desperately

needed, and there’s no denying that
they still act as an important safeguard
today. However, we appear to have reached
a point in our society where unions have
gone to far. Gone are the days where union
leaders were courageous fighters, crusading
against tyrannical employers.

Now, unions have become almost as
bad as those they were originally designed
to fight. Some are more hardcore than
others, but you won’t find a better example
of this than the British Columbia Teachers
Federation (BCTF).

While most will agree that teachers
have a pretty tough job, the BCTF has
become a militant organization. Because of
them, it is now next to impossible to get a
teacher fired, barring some sort of physical
or sexual misconduct, no matter how
poor the teacher’s performance may be
(and there are a lot of crappy high school
teachers out there).

Whenever something happens that the
BCTF doesn’t agree with or support, they
immediately try to pull on the heartstrings
by buying tons of television and newspaper
ad space insulting the government and
showing young children looking sombre.

But teaching unions certainly aren’t
the only example. Auto unions are just as
bad. Despite the near total collapse of the
American auto industry over the past year
and a half, unions in major companies such
as General Motors refuse to yield an inch
to management.

One good case of over powerful
unions involves my own grandfather.
Decades ago he owned McLennan Motors

in downtown New Westminster during the
1950s and ‘60s just off of Stewardson Way
(it is now the Key West Ford dealership).
My grandfather, Archie McLennan,

was a good employer. He paid all of his
employees well and kept them happy.
Eventually however, they decided to
unionize, as was the trend at the time.

Before long a number of his
mechanics came to him demanding much
higher salaries or threatening that they
would go on strike. My grandfather really
had no say in the situation. Before long he
was forced to sell and retire early. Unions
drove my grandfather out of business.

I’m not saying that unions aren’t
vital to many average workers. In many
cases they are the only thing protecting
Joe Blow from his bosses. Without unions
we wouldn’t have a minimum wage,
pensions, guarantee of hours and tons of
other good things. However, the proverbial
pendulum has swung too far in the other
direction. Union goals have often gone
from obtaining fair and stable working
conditions to squeeze out the last dollar
possible and hammer management no
matter what the situation is.

And despite what their frequent
attempts to paint themselves as heroes,
unions are miles away from squeaky clean.
Widespread and high-level corruption go
back almost to when unions began, and
none are more prominent than the farce
that is the Teamsters union, who had
well publicized ties to the mob and were
responsible for innumerable riots and work
stoppages over the years.

Are unions needed? Yes. Are they
a good thing in principle? Absolutely.
Unfortunately, that principle has been lost
for a long time now.

Article round two

By Janina Stajic

hoshana Berman is in every single one
of my classes, so last week when she

was poking at me relentlessly to write

for the school paper, I really couldn’t escape
it. I finally gave in and spent all two hours
of my break on the day the articles were
due coming up with something. I wasn’t
completely surprised the next day when I
asked her, “How was it?” and she said, “You
forgot to attach it to the email.”

I’m flakey and do stuff like that all
the time, but I was certainly crushed. I’d
actually written the article on a school
computer and didn’t back it up. I sent
one email to only her and myself, which
was completely blank. My 300 words and
the sweat and tears I put into them were
completely gone.

Shoshana was very understanding

 

Aton

 

with me as I freaked out. She acted as

a cheerleader to re-write it, “just really
quickly please,” she added. I kept trying to
remember what I’d written the first time as
I rushed my rewrite. As it turned out, I said
roughly the same things but they sounded
better. For some reason it was coming out
way more articulate and free flowing.

Now I’ve heard of people that do this
intentionally, and I thought they were nutty.
Who wants to write something twice? But
seriously, there are writers out there that
write the first draft, print it and put it in a
drawer and refuse to look at it until they
finish the task of completely re-writing it.

I am certainly not this type of
individual. But as a recommendation, it’s
worth a try. I wonder if it would work
as effectively if the situation wasn’t a
somewhat stressful time crunch.

 

 

 

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