>I don't think it's right to blame it on unions. They exist for a reason. Workers were exploited ruthlessly, Are they guilty of excesses and sometimes corruption? Sure. But I wouldn't want to see it go back to the time when ownership had absolute power.
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>I am pretty sure that Bill was being sarcastic. However, to your point: unions once had a place but today they have outlived their usefulness and have become parasitic. These days we have so many government regulations that we could never go back to the days of 10 year olds working in coal mines or any of the other abuses that gave rise to the unions in the first place. Aside from that, in 2014 the private-sector union participation rate was only 6.6%. But public-sector workers had a union membership rate of 35.7 %, more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers. The biggest problem is with the public-sector unions.


Yes, I was being sarcastic.

>>Aside from that, in 2014 the private-sector union participation rate was only 6.6%. But public-sector workers had a union membership rate of 35.7 %, more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers. The biggest problem is with the public-sector unions.

General views toward union membership have changed dramatically since the 1970's.

Constant hammering by politicians, beginning with Ronald Reagan, have persuaded a lot of people to accept the idea that unions are awful, but CEO's who make hundreds of millions while workers make minimum wage are OK.
It not just the repubs. Clinton was behind NAFTA - one of the most anti-worker treaties in the country's history.

I don't think that it's a coincidence that the middle class in the US began to shrink at the same time that that change in perception of unions began to take hold.

Of course, it's nonsense. No union ever signed a contract unilaterally. Any excessive monies or privileges garnered by union members were agreed to by someone on the other side of the table.
If public sector union members have excessive privileges - and I agree that many do - they were granted by some elected official.

My point was that the kind of corruption that we are seeing in states like New Jersey and New York at all levels of government has yet to get the kind of scrutiny that unions got and we need to address that.

Can you imagine what Fox would say if the Teamsters had 240 people making over $200K/year?
Well the Port Authority of NY/NJ does and the tolls on the bridges are rising by leaps and bounds.
We should be hearing about that