The safe needle policies, changes in mandatory safety equipment, benefits; these things are just a few examples of what dues paying members paid for, or made huge lobbying contributions toward.
If not for unions working on our behalf we'd still be driving vehicles with no floorboards and sniffing deadly exhaust. There is absolutely no doubt about anything any organized labor union has done to imporve worker safety in this country. The vast majority of our current laws are present because unions were there to help make laws happen.
If not for organized labor and dues members pay, dispite the negative side, we would be so much further back that we are. Union contributions to worker welfare, safety and benefits still rings true today....and we can thank a union member. It takes billions of dollars to create national change and it was his/her dues footing the bill and representatives of the membership doing the work. To those who think they'd be better off, I suggest we go back a few decades and live amongst those for whom organization was not a luxury and dying on the job was the expected.
Rescue,
I do not doubt that unions have had a positive effect on both worker safety as well as international liberties and politics, however, those same union actions today are not required.
In the US there are a plethora of national and state safety and regulatory commisions to ensure worker and pt. safety.
Many nations have progressed past the early industrial age mentality of replacing expected workers on the job. The nations that haven't will also not be helped by a union.
Today unions are their own entities. with their own political agendas and actions that have little to do with "workers." Infact the modern world has been changing for some time from an uneducated labor force to move the economy to an educated workforce for some time. That is why more and more people like myself seem to see labor unions as self serving thugs.
They drive up the prices of goods and services disproportionately to their actual value. Which economically affects everyone. As is always the case with economic hardship, the less you have the more you are affected.
It is unions today that inhibit the ability to gain employment, whether it is the legacy credit of hiring discrimination of a fire department and the IAFF, the driving up costs of government agencies inhibiting more from being employed or raising taxes to cover costs by AFSME, the legacy costs of unions that makes american manufacturing uncompetative in the rest of the world because quality must be sacrificed to participate in a price category by the UAW, the driving up of food prices which inhibits poor people from eating because the grocery workers union (whatever it is) drives up costs at the market, or tries to stifle independant business or deprives people of a right to make a living on their own from the teamsters, these " labor 0rganizations" are nothing more than syndicates.
All the benefits they "faught for" in the promise of being paid later can be discharged in one bankruptcy hearing. What organization faced with a union action wouldn't accept "we promise to pay you in 50 years when you retire" knowing that in 10 they can declare bankruptcy or demand restructuring concessions?
How altruistic are the locals that will vote not to accept a pay cut for everyone, including the most senior members forcing the layoffs of junior members?
I have spent some time on firegrounds, I can tell you it is far safer to have 10 guys there (even if the pay sucks) than to have 4 making upwards of 70K a year. I can tell you I will never buy an American manufactured car again. The price/quality ratio just doesn't compete. When Walmart has the same goods for less than the local grocery store, I shop at walmart.
those inflated prices in the future will cost more jobs than they have saved. In today's world the value of a job is proportional to the education required to do it, not some psychomotor skill, or longevity in doing it. as technology progresses, right or wrong, it will eliminate many labor jobs.
Threaded or locktight PVC pipes are really causing problems for union plumbers who cannot hope to compete with copper piping and sauder.
I have to admit, until I couldn't get a letter of recommendation to get to into medical school for all of my hard work and extra sacrifice because the union had a contract that said an employee can only be listed as "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory" it was an insult to my efforts as well as inhibiting me to advance myself out of the mindless laborer class. Of course they bargained for that to make themselves look better, not to help the "workers," it wasn't personal. But it makes me question how many people are being harmed or held back the the same unions "looking out for their interests."