The unions have been defining "the Middle Class" as themselves - so what happens when members become UMINOs? - Granite Grok

The unions have been defining “the Middle Class” as themselves – so what happens when members become UMINOs?

UMINOs – Union Members in Name Only (e.g., still belonging to the Union, but no longer paying the dues?)

I saw this a couple of days ago and didn’t blog it then because I got distracted.  However, I think it is a very important turning point in the Union political battles and that it shows a major chink in the vaunted “Solidarity Forever!” that is constantly blasted out in the political and cultural realms.  Frankly, this gives lie to the union yell of “Mighty, Mighty Union!” we hear at protests – the only takeaway from this news is now going to be “Mighty, Mighty Poorer!”.

I think this is rather amusing myself – after all the trouble and money spent by Unions all over the country as Right To Work efforts have become law in several states (alas, not here in NH because of some squishy Republicans not understanding that they were actually keeping their political foes strong and flush with political funds from their members’ dues by not following Gov. Scott Walker’s example in this).  And of course, the most well known state is that of Wisconsin where the Left is going all in AGAIN to try to stop “the destruction of the unions by Republicans!”.

This is just laughable – as they have a much more serious problem (as reported by the Wall Street Journal (paywall) via American Thinker).  Solidarity?  Not so much – given the chance, given the Freedom to Choose (after all, what IS freedom but the ability to choose among alternatives and letting someone choose something that satisfies their own needs and self-interests?), union members are choosing to not pay their union bills (emphasis mine):

Wisconsin membership in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees-the state’s second-largest public-sector union after the National Education Association, which represents teachers-fell to 28,745 in February from 62,818 in March 2011, according to a person who has viewed AFSCME’s figures. A spokesman for AFSCME declined to comment.

Much of that decline came from AFSCMECouncil 24, which represents Wisconsin state workers, whose membership plunged by two-thirds to 7,100 from 22,300 last year.

A provision of the Walker law that eliminated automatic dues collection hurt union membership. When a public-sector contract expires the state now stops collecting dues from the affected workers’ paychecks unless they say they want the dues taken out, said Peter Davis, general counsel of the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission.

In many cases, AFSCME dropped members from its rolls after it failed to get them to affirm they want dues collected, said a labor official familiar with AFSCME’s figures. In a smaller number of cases, membership losses were due to worker layoffs.

Tina Pocernich, a researcher at Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College, was a dues-paying union member for 15 years. But after the Walker law went into effect she told the American Federation of Teachers she wanted out.

“It was a hard decision for me to make,” said Ms. Pocernich, a 44-year-old mother of five, who left the union in March. “But there’s nothing the union can do anymore.”

But economic factors also played a role. Mr. Walker required public-sector employees to shoulder a greater share of pension and health-care costs, which ate up an added $300 of Ms. Pocernich’s monthly salary of less than $3,100. She and her husband, a floor supervisor at a machine shop, cut back on their satellite-TV package and stopped going to weekly dinners at Applebee’s.

Essentially what has happened is that the Unions became stultified and just were no longer meeting the needs of their members.  Those members made a decision – what had the union leadership been concentrating their efforts on, where was the union money being spent, and what was the benefit (the real benefits vs propagandized ones) to the individual rank and file member?  Did they make the connection between the high salaries of the leadership that their dues were funding?  Or was it spending on stuff that had no connection to the members?  When it comes right down to it, the members saw that unions were flunking the Value Proposition – over promising and under-delivering at too high of a cost.  In a free-market society, the unions might have caught on faster IF members were not locked into the unions via contracts.

The unions are now facing what the domestic car manufacturers faced back in the 70s – competition and a perceived lack of value.  There is a reason why private union membership is down to about 6-7%; most people think they are better workers and can get a better compensation package than by being in a union.  The unionistas can scream that without them, it is a free fall to the bottom – seemingly, they are merely yowling into the wind as people, if given their druthers, aren’t buying the message.  What the above story shows, again, is that given the freedom to choose, workers are not choosing the unions.  The major question for the unions is – what can they do about it?  Sure, they can continue to go the legislative route to try to make it harder NOT to be unionized, but how are they going to argue with this story?

The OccupyWall Street movement tried the meme of “We’re the 99%” and this rag-tag bag of retread 60s radicals and other disillusioned folks really believed that organically, all the rest of us were going to swallow their re-baked slogans of tired hippie-dom and socialism while most of us went “er, *I* didn’t say you could speak for me!”.  The unions have tried to do the same by starting the meme of “Republicans hate the Middle Class!” – with the underlying proposition that Unions had the right to assert that they could speak for ALL of the Middle Class (back to “er, *I* didn’t say you could speak for me!”).

In both cases, with radical leadership in charge, they went back to their Master (no, not Karl Marx this time – Saul Alinksy)

RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a plentiful supply. Government and corporations always have a difficult time appealing to people, and usually do so almost exclusively with economic arguments.)

Problem is, both Occupy and the Unions tried to paraphrase that into “We need to convince people we have the power that we really don’t have” – and that hasn’t worked out to well, has it?  It’s one thing when the other side already believes it, but when they don’t and you have to tell them you do, well, not so much power.  At all.

Sidenote: Essentially, Occupy is kaput (I hear they are going to try for more stunts over the summer culminating in yet another Sept 17 Anniversary something-or-other, but I’m not holding my breath given that the Black Bloc (Anarchists, nihlists, and ultra-Left wing socialists and communists) has usurped the movement for all intents and purposes).

If Tuesday’s recall of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker fails, the unions are in big trouble.  The unions are only as strong as their cash flow – and I am sure that as more states remove the mandatory and automatic taking of union dues, their political activities will decrease.  Which might actually be a good thing for the members, in that in going back to the Value Proposition, the unions will have to work harder to meet the REAL needs of their workers – making sure that they actually have jobs first by working with companies to grow and not attempt to strangle those companies or so enfeeble them via work rules that they go out of business.

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