Obama Administration sues truck company for firing alcoholic driver

Let management start a factory and work it themselves.

 

Let management and workers settle their own labor conditions and keep government out of it. Is that what you meant by this:

Good idea, but if the company is legally bound by some "closed shop" regulation to allow a union, it sort of takes the issue out of private hands, doesn't it?

 

Red, I am curious. What do you think the minimum number of employees should be for the purposes of forming a union?

 

I have no idea, but there is an optimum number out there which can be found. That number may change over time, too.

To me, a small business where the owner knows all of the employees and they know him probably needs no collective bargaining. There is communication up and down the organization. Everybody knows what is going on. SB Owners tend to treat employees as business assets.

But corporations large enough that the executives (who get paid 20-30x what a worker gets paid, plus bonuses) know nothing of the workers, their conditions, their pay equity, etc. a union is needed so that the workers can have a voice that will be listened to by management. History shows us that otherwise, employees tend to be treated as chattel.

Again, the Japanese have found a middle path that works very well and accounts for why they kick US businesses asses. The executives make 8-10x worker pay, receive bonuses only when everyone does, and all spend some time on the factory floors where they engage rank-and-file employees every day. There is company esprit de corps because employees are rarely laid off in hard times and executives and employees work as a team and not in a adversarial manner. Such employees see no need for a union because they are enfranchised by their companies, who don't see them as chattel, and they have a voice.