Unions are anachronistic and counterproductive

I think it's time to accept that unions, as they exist right now, no longer deserve a place in the modern workplace.

This strike by Ottawa bus drivers has the whole city in an uproar.

On the one hand, you have several hundred thousand people in this city who are effectively shackled to their homes and offices (if they can get to their offices!), unable to go about their daily lives, do their shopping, run errands, visit friends, without the help of people willing to shuttle them around. I've heard of people who have lost their jobs or are at risk of losing their jobs because they can't get to work on time, or at all, because of this strike.

On the other hand, you have a cold-hearted union that doesn't give a rat's patootie about the community it serves, that has a fuck-you attitude about all the trouble it's causing people, that doesn't seem to be even the slightest bit willing to compromise on its demands so they can get back to work and continue doing the jobs they were hired to do.

And all I can think of is "where the HELL do they get off??" Goddam unions. I HATE them. They have no place in the modern workplace, at least not as they're set up now. They may have had a place at one time, when there was little oversight of how companies treated their employees, in a time before regulations, safety and otherwise, ensured a minimum amount of respect for the welfare of employees. In those days, unscrupulous employers would overwork and underpay as a rule, and nothing could be done about it...until unions came along.

I'm sure there are still companies that would take advantage of employees if they could get away with it, so there's still a place for unions...but in my opinion they should be very different than they are now, with far less power to disrupt the workings of their employers and NO power to disrupt public services, like mail, transit and the like.

I've been full time in the workforce since graduating from college in 1980...28 years. I've only ever been in one union - when I worked part-time for a school board for six months. The union did bupkis for me except take my union dues off of every paycheque. If I'd been unlucky enough to have worked there during a strike, I would have had no choice but to remain home from work and would have been reviled as a scab had I decided to work anyway, as my conscience and work ethic would have wanted me to.

People who are pro-union are quick to point out all the ways that companies can abuse their employees, how they can underpay and overwork, how they can expect people to work weird hours or not guarantee them a minimum number of hours per work or ...the list goes on and on and on.

What do I say to people who make those arguments? Get a fucking life. If you don't like the terms of your employment, quit whining and get a different job. There's no law that says you have to stay at the same company for 40 years. Most union members make a LOT more money than the average non-union worker, usually for unskilled work they didn't have to spend years in college or university learning how to do.

If I hear one more union worker say they can't feed their family or send their kids to school on their exorbitant wages, I'll puke. In their face. I'd like to force them to spend a few days living with a single mother who makes a fraction what the union whiner earns, and still manages to feed and clothe her kids and send them to college when the time comes.

I'm not saying we should all accept minimum wage for what we do. What I'm saying is, EARN what you make, don't EXPECT it. And if you feel like you're being taken advantage of, find a better job. If you think you deserve to earn twice as much as I do after a year on the job, for doing something a trained monkey could do, when I've been working my ass off for almost thirty years, practicing a trade I spent three years in college training for and have decades of experience in...well, you tell me to my face why you think that's fair. And don't expect me to EVER agree with you.

Unions just make it possible for people to take advantage of their employers and force those employers into ridiculous agreements that have no reflection on reality. Why do you think so many North American jobs are being sent overseas to places like India where beggars off the street will (and can) do, for a fraction of the wages, what a Canadian is doing (when he's not on strike, that is). If it wasn't for unions, those jobs would still be in Canada.

I was married to a union man. He and his cronies at work considered their employer, PetroCanada, with disdain and disrespect, literally thieving from them at every opportunity. Most of them had huge collections of very expensive tools stolen from work, they took naps in quiet corners of the refinery when they were supposed to be working. They looked at PetroCanada with the same gleam in their eyes that a pickpocket has for the man in the expensive suit. They took advantage of their employer at every opportunity and then they still went on strike when that wasn't enough.

It makes me sick.

Unions create workers with a sense of entitlement, a lousy work ethic, a bad attitude towards management and customers and a greedy, lazy, me-only point of view that has NO place in the modern workplace. Put any one of those lazy union babies in the real world and they wouldn't last a month before they'd be out on their asses (and rightfully so) for slacking off and creating a bad atmosphere in the workplace.

Unions, as they exist right now, have no place in the world anymore. They need to be replaced with bodies that protect workers from REAL abuses, but expect them to go to work every day and do their jobs for a wage that is fair in the market.