Here come $80 games that take 6 years to make.
That's too much of a stereotype as is the stereotype that Unions are always good.
Unions aren't necessarily bad and they aren't necessarily good. Take the Teamsters of America. On a national level I'd say they do more harm than they do good. However, on a local level depending on the local chapter and how it is run it's either incredibly good for the workers and the clients of the workers (homeowners, businesses, etc.) or bad for the workers and clients of those workers.
My uncle has been a Union guy his whole life and still believes that despite there being some really bad Union chapters that it's overall a good thing ... even though he wishes the overarching national leadership of the Union he belongs too would root out the corruption and nepotism that exists in some of the chapters he's worked at. Of course, that's kind of hard since he's also sure that corruption and nepotism exists at the highest level of that union.
The worst was one chapter he was at in WA where the chapter boss' son was paid as much as any of the other workers but didn't really ever do any work and when a new foreman made him do work he did really shoddy work that would have been a danger to the homeowner if noone had noticed and reported it to the foreman so that he could assign someone to undo the work and redo it to city code. That foreman got a dressing down from the union boss of that chapter (for making his son do something his son didn't want to do) and then was never seen again (not killed, just had to leave and go to another chapter) and his son resumed not doing anything while getting paid for it.
But that said, he's also been at really great chapters where the chapter boss actively sought out competent foremen and allowed them to appropriately discipline wayward workers and if the regional or national bosses stepped in to tell him he couldn't do that with Union workers, he would have them transferred to another union chapter. Once a union guy it's almost impossible to get removed from the union even for gross negligence as long as you keep paying those $$$ to the union. Again, that can be great (a shitty boss can't get rid of you just because he doesn't like you) or not so great (a bad worker doing shoddy work gets to keep his job and pay).
The biggest problem is that in most states in the US, if you want to work at a Unionized jobsite you
have to join that union chapter and you
have to tithe (pay union dues) to them regardless of whether it's a good chapter or not. There are a few states, however with worker rights that allow a worker to choose whether they want to join the union or not. And then it's up to the businesses where unions are setup to determine if they want union negotiated bonuses to apply to non-union employees or not. Obviously, they usually apply those bonuses to non-union employees as well, but not all do.
Overall, Unions are good. It a local union chapter is run great and say construction workers in that area are part of that union you can be assured that any work done on your home will probably be top quality. If the local union chapter isn't? Well, you're better off hiring a contractor off of Craigslist as the work might be great or it might be dangerous.
However, since only unions govern themselves, there is also huge potential for corruption and nepotism. And since they are a major political voting block, politicians won't step in even if there is corruption in a local chapter in the area that they represent.
Regards,
SB
www.windowscentral.com
