I grew up in the south but worked in Rockford in the mid to late 80s. It’s in Illinois, not Wisconsin, but you knew that.
Even at that time most of the union jobs were gone. I was a white collar engineer working at Sundstrand Corp (now Hamilton Sundstrand) which was really the only going concern in town. Everything else had shut down because it had been serving the auto industry which had gotten hammered in the 80s.
Sundstrand was an aerospace company but was unionized by the UAW. Go figure. Had to deal with the union assh*les.
At that time, there was a downturn in the normally cyclical aerospace industry. When the contract was up, the union still went out on strike demanding a 10% pay increase.
The company took a skeleton crew of non-union engineers (not me - wrong specialty) and kept the assembly line running. No only running, but the skeleton crew of engineers actually cleared the backlog that the lazy union workers had created so they could get overtime.
The company realized that they could keep product coming out the door indefinitely. Eventually, the union had to come back to work w/o a contract. (cue Nelson Muntz - ha ha)
Not sure what happened after that because I’d had enough and left. This insider experience taught me everything I ever needed to know about unions.
Thank you for that report. Unions are not the only party to blame. Many management teams are/were just inept. However it is true beyond any shadow of doubt that unions are like a parasite who does not stop until the host is dead. And then the parasite also dies but is too stupid to know when to stop.
I am most fearful of the SEIU union since they are feeding at the public trough and government does not have to worry about profit. All government unions should be outlawed. They have no competition and therefore it is an issue of unrestricted monopoly.