Unions

Last month, a group of Health Care workers in California went on strike. In order to meet the needs of the customers, the provider brought in 500 temporary workers. Unfortunately, one of these workers gave a woman a lethal dose by accident. That worker undoubtedly will punish him/her self for as long as he/she lives. This is the greatest fear of all health care providers. (One of my sisters is a nurse) This issue is not about pay. It is not about having more vacation time. Unions are very good at issues of pay and benefits for workers. As this incident demonstrates, quality of work is not at the top of the union priority list.

This incident brings up a question. Should temps have been brought in at all? Or should the providers even be allowed to walk out on their job like that? I suppose that allowing non-essential personnel the right to walk off the job may be a compromise, but who is to say a person is non-essential?

Another question is do we really want government run health care? After all, this type of incident would become much more common. Don’t think so? OK, lets see what the fall out from this is. The Heath Care provider (A private company) is liable and the relatives can easily (And probably will) sue for compensation. As they are probably entitled. Compare this with attempting to sue the Federal government. If you have any question as to how well that would work, go to Canada or England to see how well mistakes are handled. You should not have to look all that hard.

We have teachers call in sick in Wisconsin in order to travel to Madison so that they can protest about the governors’ policies. Yet that same organization talks about how important it is for students to not skip school. I guess that getting better pay and benefits are more important than doing one of the most important jobs in the country. OK, one day is not a big deal. Schools already have a ton of days off without counting the summer. On top of this, you should hear the president of the teachers union talking about the ‘ruling class’ and how important it is to fight them. “If teacher unions want to be strong and well supported, it is essential that they not only be teacher unionists, but teachers of unionism. We need to create a generation of students who support teachers and the movement for workers rights, oppressed peoples’ rights. That’s our responsibility.” Ruling class? Oppressed people? Sounds like class warfare. And also sounds Communist or Marxist to me. Not exactly the ideas that American was founded upon.

OK, I am against unions in general anyway. This is only a couple of examples of where I feel that unions are not good. I have an idea: Let’s unionize the military. Just think about how much better off we will all be if our soldiers have the ‘right’ to not go off and fight the dumb wars that our political leaders foolishly get us into. We could save so much money that we could afford to pay them all much more than what we pay them today. Talk about stupidity.

Unions may have had their purpose in the past. My personal experience has been as negative as the examples that I have talked about here. (The two times that I have worked in unions, I did not have a choice) I don’t work in a union, I don’t want to ever work in a union again and I certainly don’t want union ideology taught to my children.