Tuesday 25 May 2004

Pic of the day: The Union Man, superhero from City of Heroes. In real life, of course, labor unions haven't exactly been protectors of the weak for some time, at least not mainly. (Guess it happens sometimes.)

Strike over

I completely forgot to mention this yesterday, but the transport strike is over. And: The good guys won! The workers got approximately the same pay rise as the rest of the industry, and they will still have to accept the same pay for unionized and nonunionized workers. A crushing defeat in principle, even though they still got more money; they could have had that without the strike. Serves them right. Go home, red socialists! Go back to the sidetrack of history, where you belong, together with the dinosaurs and the Neanderthals. Boo, hiss!

Seriously, labor union is an idea whose time has gone. The very idea that you should have more pay for making trouble for other people is disgusting and indecent. While these transport workers were hanging around making sure that no one else did their work, common people had to drive from shop to shop looking for everyday goods, while food was being destroyed at farms and processing plants because it could not be brought out to the shops and the waiting customers. As a reward for this, the union members wanted higher wages than others. On the contrary, the only decent thing to do would be to send them the bill for all the extra costs they have incurred. Garner it from their paycheck.

I don't really think these people are evil retarded sickos, although they are probably not the brightest bulbs either. It is the system, the concept of labor unions, which leads them astray. The desperate measures may have been justified 100 years ago when workers lived in poverty and tried to feed their large, hungry families. Today we have a market economy. These people expect to be able to go where they want, to buy what they want, to sell what they want (except some drugs and stuff). They also take for granted the right to quit their job and apply for another. In such a society, wages and salaries should be negotiated with the same civility and the same relaxed attitude: If the price isn't right, I'm just going elsewhere. This is the way workers do it in the new economy. You get a better offer and your employer is not willing to bid over it, you pack your things and leave; no hard feelings on either side. None of these socialists would take a baseball bat and trash a shop because the price wasn't right. But when working as a unit, a labor union, they basically do just that. Except they are trashing another shop, which has done nothing wrong to them except trading with their employer. Dudes and dudettes, by rights these guys should go to jail!

But let us be merciful. At least, the good guys won this one. And as the average intelligence in the population grows (due to the Flynn effect), this kind of retarded behavior is bound to eventually disappear.