Thanks for the holiday, organized labour. Now bugger off.

Today is Labour Day, the day we're supposed to reflect on organized labour and all it has done for us.
So, after some serious reflection, I have this to say:
I hate unions. Hate hate hate them. I find it extremely difficult to come up with anything positive to say about them.
Okay, yes, in certain instances, like where a company decided to lay you off for no good reason after you've worked for them for forty years, a union could come in handy. I guess. But then so could government legislation banning such treatment.
What do unions do? Well, they come in to your minimum wage environment and excite workers with the prospect of making $14 or $23 an hour for what remains a minimum wage job. They never let you know that instead of 32 hours a week, you'll get three.
What else do unions do? They interfere with the free market economy and drive jobs away. They negotiate absolutely ridiculous 'benefits' for their workers--like the right to take sick days with no questions asked until you've taken more than three in a row, or the right to get paid double time for working a Saturday, or the right to have three hour lunches every day, or the right to show up for work completely shitfaced. (All of these 'rights' are either explicitly given in a union-negotiated contract somewhere, or implied by the outcome of 'grievance' resolution.)

Moreover, unions tend to establish a culture of entitlement and a slavish devotion to job descriptions that is detrimental to any sense of corporate morale. A union almost always acts like a drag on productivity.

In other words, in an attempt to address 'abuse' of workers by management, they insist that the workers be allowed to abuse management. Something doesn't seem right here.

Even worse, the standard tactic of negotiation is to hold the general public hostage. I'm referring here to strikes.
Ever notice that teachers never strike in July?
Ever notice that 'sanitation engineers' always strike in July?
In my world, strikes would be illegal. All of them. Contracts would be negotiated in their final month, by impartial moderators if necessary, and if employees couldn't agree to terms, employers would be free to find employees who would. You know what? I don't imagine it would be a problem very often.
By withholding services from the public, unions are not doing their workers any favours. How does a welfare recipient feel when she can't use public transit due to a strike? I don't imagine 'solidarity' is high on her list of concerns.
And unions and their members often have no grasp whatsoever of basic mathematics. Let's consider a worker making $10 an hour. His union is striking for $15. The company holds out for three months before capitulating. Has the worker won anything? Well, he will, in two years and two months. That's how long it will take him to make up the wages he lost during the strike and start making, in effect, his full $15 an hour.
Tell me that makes sense.
I'm not saying workers shouldn't have rights. They should, and legitimate abuse of power by management should be dealt with. But workers shouldn't have to pay out-of-pocket for the privilege, now, should they?

Unions were invaluable institutions a hundred years or more ago, back when everyone worked 14 hour days, six days a week, safety be damned. But they've largely outgrown their usefulness in this modern era.

And that's how I feel about that...