State of the Union

I’m not a fan of Unions. I think they were a good idea once upon a time, but I believe that their necessity has passed. All they do now is interfere with the Free Market by jacking costs and obstructing timely progress. People are forced to pay too much for not enough.

My company has a big trade show every year, and for the past few years, I’ve been tapped to go down early to help set up. I got to see how Unions operate up close and personal.

They’re shakedown artists.

Here’s the way it works: You are required to hire at least two Union workers to help construct your booth. Doesn’t matter if the whole thing unfolds from a bag and snaps in place, those two workers will do the unfolding and the snapping for you. You are not allowed to use any sort of hand truck or dolly to move your merchandise in from the loading bays – that’s Union territory. We were even stopped as we were bringing in cases of water for our own consumption to be told that a certain Union had sole concessionary rights to the show. I saw the Union Steward screaming at a man who had brought his own pallet jack, threatening to “shove that jack up your ass!” One of our hired hands even boasted that his brothers and he had completely surrounded a booth that had neglected to obtain their Union workers. They wouldn’t let anyone in or out of the space until the exhibitors filled out the paperwork. I’m sure the two women trapped inside this ring of testosterone cowboys enjoyed that experience.

What assholes.

The thing is, they’ve convinced themselves (or at least the only answer we ever got) is that it’s all for “safety reasons.” Like only the highly-trained Union workers know how to use a drill. In fact, we were oh-so-gently threatened by one obersteward who cruised up in his little golf cart while one of our guys was on a ladder. “Where are your workers?” he demanded. “At lunch.” “Well why don’t you let them take care of that when they get back. We don’t want any (brief pause) accidents.” What a con.

I realize that these people need the work, but you’re screwing with free enterprise, here, boys. Make the talent pool available, and we’ll pick what we need. You have an electrician? That’s great. Me and electricity have an agreement: I don’t mess with it, it doesn’t kill me. I’ll be happy to have him come down and run the splices. But to get in my face because I dared…dared…to use a hand truck to bring in a couple of cases of water? Piss off, Chico.

Our booth was built for us by a company in the UK, and we had a couple of their guys in to put it together for us. They told us that the UK has done away with unions, and the “safety issues” are handled by a number of event inspectors that cruise around and make sure none of the exhibitors are doing stupid things during construction. These inspectors have the power to shut down an exhibitor if necessary. That’s it. No extra expenses, no intimidation tactics, no confusion.

It would be slightly more tolerable if there was just one contact for all of it, but that’s not how it works. You have to see seventeen different stewards for power, concession, construction, loading, carpeting, etc. We even had to stop work at one point because we had two different Union reps arguing about which of them had the sub-clause in our secondary contract to use the left-handed pliers on the upper tier of our auxiliary light post.

I’m only slightly exaggerating, here, but it really was ridiculous. At one point, my coworkers and I were wondering aloud which Union rep we’d have to drag along to the bathroom to hold our dicks for us after drinking all that water. (Not too loudly, understand, since we were surrounded by none-too-bright gorillas sporting prison tats and power tools.) That naturally led to much juvenile, Y-chromosome influenced humor about “heavy lifting” and “pipe wrenches,” which I’ll spare you.

I really enjoyed it when the forklift drivers would get pissed at us because our crates were sticking out into the aisles. “Hmmm,” I would muse. “I wonder who put this 1000-pound crate here? I’m fairly certain it wasn’t one of us, because #1, we’re not allowed to move anything ourselves, and #2, even if we did want to move it, we don’t have a fucking forklift!”

To give credit where credit is due, two of our workers were very good. They did everything we asked, did it quickly, professionally, and well. We enjoyed working with them and talking to them. I understand that they work for the Union because there is no other choice, but I’d like to think that they could have done better in the private markets, where they wouldn’t have to pay dues into the big Ponzi scheme that is the Union hierarchy.

I’m fairly certain that introspection is not big at the glorious worker gatherings, but you have to wonder if any of them have ever contemplated: “If we are having to force people to use our services, perhaps we represent an outdated business paradigm.” Maybe the designated Thinker for the hive mind missed that meeting.

In other news of “Unions Gone Wild,” I notice that every music lover’s favorite wet blanket, the RIAA, is now considering charging radio stations for playing their songs.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/business/la-fi-radio21may21,1,1028211.story?coll=la-headlines-business-enter

I love how the RIAA blames collapsing sales entirely on downloading, and not the CDs containing one good song and 11 crappy ones. I stopped buying CDs when I found out that they cost less to make than a cassette, but cost me more than twice as much to purchase. I was making my own CDs and cassettes until I discovered that the Audio Home Recording Act mandated that the price of recorders and blank media include royalties to be paid directly to the record industry. Thank you, George H. W. Bush. You asshole.

Now I eschew the RIAA-controlled sales centers completely, and copy music off the web with some freeware I downloaded. It has a feature that lets me record anything played through my speakers. I can watch a music video online and record the song if I want. If I find a groovy new band, I’ll see them in concert or buy the album directly from their web site. I think most people know that the artists make most of their money by touring rather than through record sales. (Remember records, kids?).

This may be the final push to get radio stations to switch to an all-talk format, and if those public serpents in Congress restore the “Fairness Doctrine,” we’ll have nothing but dead air. But that’s another rant for another day.

I just hope that the radio stations respond to this by charging the RIAA advertising rates for promoting their product. It would be good if those rates equaled the royalty payments. It would be better if they were higher.

For much fun, go here: http://www.dontdownloadthissong.com/