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>>Well, you can't blame it all on the unions. It takes two sides to agree on a contract.
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>True. Problem is when the Union is on strike, they have a union-only shop, and the courts side with the union to keep the company from hiring replacements..


Actually in most instances employers are by law allowed to hire permanent replacement workers.

I am not a firebrand pro-union guy. They have their excesses and have been slow to recognize that the Fat And Happy era of American business has passed. They have also chosen some poor business partners, meaning the Mob. Still, they arose for a reason. They have been a counterweight against the coldblooded form of capitalism in which a penny squeezed out of a manual laborer goes to the bottom line just like a penny's worth of increased productivity or a penny's worth of inspiration. If the Wal-Marts of this age or any other didn't treat their workers like serfs there would be no need for unions.