Unions - The Failure
When you start thinking about Socialism, start with Unions. The first question every young person should ask themselves is whether or not they have what it takes to become rich, to become a success? This is a critical question because Socialism and Unions have one thing in common: medocrity. Socialism is based on the concept of everyone working the same and getting the same. Liberals keep distorting socialism by bringing in the desire for free stuff like a college education or health care, but the more socialism takes hold, the more there will be less free stuff and more getting in line.
Here's the point: as much as Socialism presses for equal, unions do the same thing but in an environment of Capitalism. Unions were originally implemented to force owners to pay the employees more, and it is likely that greed on the part of the owners encouraged the payment of low wages. Unions started the concept that one group speaks for all workers in a business so that everyone gets an equal part.
But the problem then is the same as the problem now: what does a person, that wants to work harder and earn more, do in this structured equal based system? If you work harder then you don't get the benefit so what is the use. The simple fact is that unions breed contempt and mediocrity instead of instilling and demanding excellence. Only at a Teamsters Union plant will you find the workers drinking alcohol or smoking marijuana on lunch breaks and who wants to own one of these cars?
But the real problem is not just the Teamsters, the real problem is the Teachers Union. This is a group of people that have declared that their primary interest is the education of the youth but this same group of people work for providing average results instead of excellence in the classroom. In NYC, teachers can't be fired but when they are identified as incompetent they are moved to a 'Rubber Room' where they put in their time without interfacing with the students. In other words, they are spending millions to keep from firing poor teachers because that is the demand of the union dedicated to what is best for the student. Another pure and simple example of liberal two faced hypocrisy.
What we need are unions that are dedicated to making the employee better, more effective, efficient and capable of earning more through quality output. Teachers should demand that their reputations are not damaged by those teachers that are failures. Why don't we have consistent usage of teacher evaluation forms in the classroom and the results published for the parents sending their kids to these schools? Why would teachers care if a student goes to a public school or a private school? If the quality of education is the same at both then it shouldn't make a difference but it does. Testing of students should be performed at every grade level and students evaluated along with the teachers, is there one group of students that performed poorly all influenced by the same teacher?
Can you imagine the change we would see in our economy if the unions actually stepped up and required additional training for all union members hoping to get ahead of the curve on the advances in technology? Unions leaderehip mentality has been left behind and, in many cases, so have the union financial stability for promised benefits, but this is not something that should be talked about.