Above-The-Line Costs

Finance allah shmoop who benefits from unions And while union

workers duh Maybe a better question is who doesn't benefit

from unions Well okay okay Union workers exist because workers

were abused at different points in our country's history Ever

read the grapes of wrath Yeah Joad family Peach picking

for like five bucks a day or less And then

there's norma rae great film should see it won the

academy award and remember the speech You love me You

love me That union in a cotton fabric mill lots

of abuse there So yes unions exist in reaction to

bad acting on the part of the man and they

collectively bargain against the man on behalf of the workers

who belong And they made the country a whole lot

more fair and square So thankyou unions for that Historically

well guess what time moved forward and corporations today frequently

don't want to deal with unions They dictated salaries and

benefits as they saw fit and well the workers pushed

back Union's got uppity and then corporations got down ity

all right And the result was that all whole bunch

of unionized shops were forced to hire a lot more

Workers than they really needed That is that the man

was required to hire thirty seven people instead of the

twenty three he actually needed And the work rules that

originally were intended to protect made it hard to train

and to fire like really talented people did not want

to be paid like the average joe with the same

career path But really untalented people loved the fact that

it was hard to get fired inside of a union

So you got all kinds conflict inside of the union

as well Got it And you know the firing thing

ever been to a d m v car place that

we get your license Wake up They're still all right

Well let's Talk to a now bankrupt newspaper company who

couldn't downsized fast enough to accommodate the assault of the

lower margin internet delivered competitors Local newspapers were highly unionized

at the time in the nineties and union rules would

not let them fire workers fast enough And then the

industry revenue model changed really fast Newspapers could not absorb

the cost changes fast enough They couldn't fire people So

they all went bankrupt And then all the workers were

out of jobs and everyone ended up being out of

work Yeah well that was a fail on the unions

part They didn't move quick enough So who doesn't benefit

from unions Well the largest union in the country the

u s government Our own g men have the largest

set of union workers in the country and they cost

taxpayers of fortune They can almost never be fired They

have spectacularly expensive benefits and the real salaries If you

do fair math are actually very high Taxpayers pay for

government unions Often the union worker has a way better

deal than the taxpayer him or herself who supports that

union worker Yet taxpayers keep voting in raises and benefits

and all kinds of rules that let the government higher

Thirty seven people for jobs that really only need fourteen

We can't figure out the rationale there either maybe the

taxpayer someday you'll wise up Police officer works thirty years

on the force from age twenty two Two fifty two

not darth vader Kind different force She can then retire

and make eighty five percent of what her average pay

wass for her last three years And of course in

those last three years she does massive overtime and extra

work toe goose up her eventual hundred seventy five grand

a year Pay Ask your folks how they feel about

a cop making one hundred seventy five grand in a

year All right well she then retires but for the

remaining thirty years that she'll live she'll get one hundred

seventy five grand a year That's her pension that's what

cops get in california Welcome to the left state here

So she might claim that she quote on ly unquote

made one hundred seventy five grand We think that's a

lot for cops getting cats out of trees But in

fact for the thirty years she worked she actually cost

the taxpayers something like double that amount plus benefits So

it isn't that joe taxpayer doesn't believe the officer has

worked really hard The question remains Does that person deserve

so much better pay And retirement and benefits and all

the other stuff then joe taxpayer who's funding her well

Police have a great union and jury's still out on

a lot of these questions But you know what they

say It's the government office who writes all the checks

Unions can't live with them Yeah that's it We're done 00:04:34.238 --> [endTime] that that's where they stopped the conversation