Except that most unions don't have that much power these days. Unions are often used as a kind of straw man argument to counter when the over powering influences of corporate entities on our political process is mentioned. The money that unions have been able put into the elections is a tiny, tiny drop in the bucket compared to the vast sums that corporations have been pouring into them this time.audiodane wrote:Well to play devil's advocate, I wonder what kind of powers the unions had (and gave up) over all of this. I wonder if the unions there previously had way too much power and this just brings them back into the fray? After all, the IDEA of unions, much like the IDEA of socialism, is a good one. In practice, however, I don't think either traditionally work as well as expected. To that end I will admit that unions do still have their place even today. But I don't think that all unions are beneficial. My brother-in-law works in the hollywood industry doing lighting design.... Some places are so bad that when he wants a box of cables moved from one area to another he has to seek out a union worker, ask them to move the box, and then proceed to wait until the union worker decides to go move the box. One extreme case I think he had to wait like 2 hours for something that he could have done in 2 minutes (it wasn't even a heavy box). But had he touched the box his contract on that job would have been terminated..
Unions, like most things, can and have been abused. To cite the old saying "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" and some, but not all, unions in times past have had too much power. However, we have seen the kinds of abuses that employees have been subjected to with the lack of unions. Laws that protect workers safety would have never been passed if it weren't for the ascendancy of unions. Working conditions prior to their existence were absolutely appalling with deaths and mutilations in work places fairly common.
