Labor unions

Yeah, yeah, long time, no post. It's been kinda slow in the news department.

Today I have an entry in the Catholic Answers Live Monday morning quarterbacking edition. I keep meaning to do more posts on this but I don't think I've ever gotten around to it. In this feature I pontificate on a question asked on Catholic Answers Live. This one pertains to this show with Jim Blackburn aired August 19th. The question came from a very zealous union man that was upset that the attention formerly paid to unions was no longer being paid in the Catholic Church. He wanted "union priests" to return to extol the virtues of unions. Blackburn's answer was basically that different people have different views and are free to express them. My take on this is that labor unions have largely (though not completely) outlived their usefulness. (Hopefully my cousin Robert won't read this.) Used to be that unions worked to eliminate 12-hour days six days a week, dangerous conditions, abysmal safety, and all sorts of fundamentally unjust conditions. Labor unions were necessary to accomplish this. Today labor unions are about ensuring that no one is allowed to move anything in the office without getting a union laborer to do it and spending labor union dues on gay rights and abortion. Corruption is rampant and laborers are shafted more by their union leaders than they are by employers. The bottom line is the injustices that existed before have been largely reduced or eliminated altogether and labor unions are often about ensuring entitlements and extorting money out of employers.

That being said, let me re-emphasize that there are still remaining injustices (lack of health care is one example that comes to mind) and businesses still try to take their employees for a ride. But no one gets passionate about defending the rights of a worker to move all of the office furniture, or supporting a corrupt and self-serving organization. That is why I think ardor for unions has waned.