Pushing back against labor union rhetoric from KSN's Labor Day reporting

With the passing of Labor Day, many people, especially on the left, came out in support of labor unions, including, not surprisingly, Kansas Dems who posted the following on X (formerly known as Twitter):

We stand with our unions and appreciate their efforts to creating safer workplaces and things like negotiated holidays (Labor Day), a reality. We're proud to have Shaun Junkins, of IAMA District 70, as our State Party Vice Chair.https://t.co/OocgQeUyod

— Kansas Dems (@KansasDems) September 5, 2023

The article they shared came from KSN which was highlighting local unions.

“When we’re strong, the community is strong, and that raises the boat for everybody, not just the union people,” Tony Spicer, Kansas State AFL-CIO president, said. “It’s about working families, but unions are the ones that drive that forward.”

In just two sentences, Spicer has said many things that are just factually incorrect. When unions are strong, communities are worse off, not strong as well. Unions have no interest in benefiting communities because benefiting communities doesn’t benefit unions. In fact, things like new businesses coming in that could benefit communities could actively hurt unions, and so unions often fight to try to make sure this doesn’t happen.

A famous example of this would be the startup known as Uber. When that business started, taxi unions started calling the lower prices that Uber was able to provide customers “predatory pricing.” There wasn’t anything actually “predatory” about these prices, of course. They were just competitive in a market saturated by taxi unions that had controlled the price of transportation for years, allowing the unions to inflate the prices which in turn was more hurtful to the wallets of community members, than the so-called “predatory pricing” that came with competition from a new business entering the market.

It’s also important to note that unions don’t actually care about protecting people, including those in the union. Unions care about protecting the unions, even at the detriment of the union workers. This is because unions are anti-progress. Any technology that gets created or new method of doing something that would make work faster and more efficient is thrown to the wayside as unions fear that being more efficient and providing better customer service would mean job loss. While it may be true that certain jobs may get replaced with new technology, often times, new jobs get created in the faster paced world, meaning unions actually slow down the economy and keep new jobs from opening in the name of protecting themselves. However, as the world around them moves on with new technologies and new ways of doing things, unions have a tendency to advocate themselves out of existence.

We can look to elevator operator unions as an example. Elevators are not as hard to operate as they used to be. You just press a button and you’re done. However, this archaic job, which seems like it would belong in the 1900s had a puff piece published as recently as 2016 in support of them. Oh, and incase you’re wondering, these jobs to press a button still exist, and here in the U.S. pay on average $17.76 an hour. A job this simple is not worth this kind of pay, but is inflated to an absurd amount due to unions. Employers then have a decision to either pay for new technology that will do the union worker’s job, or continue to pay more and more outrageous wages to union workers that far exceed the actual market value. When this happens, the unions only serve to accelerate the ending of their position, as, much like how unions care about unions, businesses care about businesses, and will go with the option that provides them with the most profit.

“Think about the people before us that stood on the picket lines for the issues that were created for an eight-hour day, overtime, pension, vacation pay,” John Nave, Kansas AFL-CIO executive vice president, said.

One thing that drives me crazy about unions is their efforts to continuously fight against capitalism. As someone who works in the gig economy (meaning I don’t get paid by the hour, I get paid by the gig) I am absolutely hated by unions, because I can do their job quicker at a cheaper price, and I do it on my time, not on an eight-hour work schedule. I can choose to work as much or as little as I want and with the development of technology, this reality is only becoming more and more frequent. In fact, gig work is becoming so common, President Joe Biden actually tried to attack the gig economy in favor of unions, throttling private businesses, the economy, progress, and people who want to make money and have zero interest in eight-hour days, overtime, pensions, or vacation pay. This isn’t the flex that Nave thinks it is, and while it may be a common way of doing business now, the reality is businesses that provide these things are getting replaced by independent contractors who want to take control of their time and have a healthier work/life balance.

Conclusion

Unions are created by the lazy and protect the worst employees while holding the best employees back. They are often weaponized for political means and anti-capitalist purposes that can hurt the economy, the business, employees, and consumers. They can cause monopolies and overinflated prices that serve to help no one in the long run. This is because unions are not created for longevity. They are created to serve the now with no thoughts of future implications.