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Thursday, 01 May 2008 |
Letter from Kevin Murch
West Fargo, N.D.
Recently, employees at a large manufacturing plant contacted a labor organization in order to find out what a union could do for them. The answer they got was a union is a group of employees banding together to collectively bargain a legal, binding contract for their labor. Really, no different than an employer requiring a vendor to sign a contract for parts needed to produce a product, only with a union contract, the product the company secures is labor. Unfortunately, once the company found out about its employees wanting to better their wages, benefits and working conditions by having a contract, they pulled out all stops, including violating federal labor law, to convince their employees that "the union" wasn't good for them. What they didn't tell their employees is that if workers have better wages that are secured through a contract, that workers will spend more money, thus, increasing the tax base.
Workers who are secure with their work future, through a labor contract, will have a tendency to settle down in the communities where these jobs are. Increasing population is something we, as citizens, are constantly striving for.
Someday, hopefully sooner rather than later, people who are against workers organizing in order to better themselves and their communities will wake up and realize that “a union” is a positive promoter of a better standard of living and not a demonized monster so many of us have been raised to believe it is.
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