Trade unions as job killers?

http://www.examiner.com/x-2547-Watchdog-Politics-Examiner~y2009m3d12-Trade-unions-as-job-killers

March 12, 11:55 AM · 2 comments
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As the Employees Free Choice Act is debated in Congress, some wonder why it is only in government that unionization is growing stronger.

According to a study of unions and the American workplace by Professor Barry Hirsch, unionized companies not only suffer lower profits but lower investment in physical and tangible capital and slower growth. As a result, unionized firms lose market shre to nonunionized firms, both domestic and foreign. This is borne out by the fact that in manufacturing virtually all the job losses between 1973 and 2006 occurred among unionized workers.

During the recent recession, the companies with the most serious trouble is found in those having the most heavily unionized work forces. Two examples are the Big Three automakers and big city newspapers. For the automakers, the cost of labor has been 50% higher than costs for


nonunion, foreign-owned auto companies. The unions have literally priced the employers out of the market.

One U.S. state facing high unemployment rates is California in which there are 1,088 locals and statewide union branches. It is a political force with billions of dollars to support candidates that are in bed with them.

The corruption and graft in many labor unions is ignored by the politicians who look to them for campaign contributions. There have been caught giving the spouses of UAW staffers million dollar contracts, pension funds mismanagement and recently the Service Employees International Union officials in Illinois were named in a federal criminal complain after being caught on tape with the now indicted Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

So while millions of American are losing their union-related jobs due to competition in the U.S. and abroad, President Barack Obama, who wrote in his autobiography,


I owe those unions

is still pledging to support their top priority of 2009, the end of the secret ballot.

Government employment seems to be the only place that unionization is growing as American workers jobs are killed by foreign competition while the politicians continue to rake in tainted campaign contributions that keep the union bosses in power.