Jan. 27, 2007 - 14:08 MST

HALF AND HALF

Much like typical coffee creamer is the business news I read yesterday, in the Business Briefing section of The Rocky Mountain News yesterday morning. Two very brief articles quoted in full here, the first one:

UNION MEMBERSHIP DROPS 12 PERCENT

"The number of wage and salary workers who were union members dropped to 12 percent of the work force last year, the lowest percentage since the government started tracking that number over two decades ago."

"In 1983, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics first provided such numbers, 20.1 percent of workers were lin a union, and that percentage has been declining steadily. More than a third of American workers, abot 35 percent, were iln unions in the mid-1950s."

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And the second item in full:

WAL-MART TO PAY BACK WAGES

"Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest U.S. private employer, will pay $33 million in back wages plus interest under an agreement with the U.S. Labor Department."

"The accord covers 86,680 hourly and salaried employees who worked at the company during the past five years, the Labor Depaartment said in a statement today. The back pay relates to how the Bentonville, Ark.-based company calculated overtime pay."

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The first item indicates to me that the corporations are winning the battle against the working man and woman.

And I think much of it is the fault of the average union member, a person who pays their dues, doesn't attend meetings and when contract negotiations are under way screams for more money and cares less about employee job security and such things as that.

Union leaders, of course, heed the desires of membership.

And over the years, corporations and companies were in competition to hire labor and keep employees, so recklessly gave in.

Now we are in a bind, created and maintained by both the average union employee and the companies.

To my way of thinking, once a decent wage has been reached with a cost-of-living increase firm -- then decent grievance procedures, job descriptions, hours worked, days worked, days off and overtime pay as well as job safety, should be policed and maintained. That is my idea of what a union should do.

So I think greed of the average, lazy union worker helped get us here and now greed of the obscenely over-remunerated corporate upper echelon and stockholders is, one way and another doing away with unions.

The answer ? Damn-fino, 'twould be a huge job to fine tune that to where everybody gets a fair shake. Could be done, but will it ?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Second article comments.

So Wal-Mart admits being guilty of shorting employees. This is the company, if I remember correctly, did away with union meat-cutters in their stores by outsourcing that operation. The company that closed some stores because workers were trying to unionize.

And the pay back only covers employees who worked at the company for the last five years. Makes me wonder, why not cover all employees who worked for Wal-Mart in our country from its beginning ? Pretty much the same labor laws covered everybody, why leave out people who worked there all along.

The battle of overtime was fought for and won by unions, and enacted into law. One must remember that if it were not for unions, there would be no overtime pay, people could be required to work seven days a week, 16 or more hours a day, and companies would be free to deny employee vacations. All these things and more were fought for by unions.

Must have been a very strong case against Wal-Mart I think.

The news that Wal-Mart is giving workers back pay for what they were cheated out of is very good news. May that type of justice be rendered all over our country. The fact that unions are dying because of inattention and laziness of the "average bear," and maneuvering by corporate hog trough biggies, is so very sad and makes me wonder, whither now ?

Much like the rest of our life, news can be, like coffee creamer HALF AND HALF . . . . . . . . . . . .

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