Letter: Unions don’t have a vital role anymore

It’s so encouraging to see that the workers at IBP have finally flushed their union. It’s a growing trend across the country.

With Wisconsin becoming a right to work state in 2015, the USA now has 25 states of each — 25 right to work and 25 closed shop states. The right to work trend is growing. Like Kentucky, which is is going county by county. Job growth in the past 10 years is twice as high in right to work states as in closed shop states.

Sadly, the main tools a union has are strikes, work slowdowns/stoppages, violence and quality problems. We old-timers remember the days of the grocery clerk strikes and the harassment and intimidation shoppers faced when buying groceries at their favorite neighborhood store.

In most cases, neither the company nor the employee is benefited by the average union with all its inherent bureaucracies and inefficiencies — only the union bosses. Having worked in both union and nonunion aircraft shops, I have seen the many evils and few benefits of unions firsthand.

Unions had a vital role 150 years ago against the robber barons of the late 1800s. They don’t anymore.

This story was originally published March 1, 2016 at 5:04 PM with the headline "Letter: Unions don’t have a vital role anymore."