Quote:I think that you might misunderstand how the decision is made for a company to accept or bargain with a union. No company "feels the need" for a union. Basically, all a company "needs" is employees to do whatever task (work) that they need done. The company owner/CEO/Board of Directors already have a certain budget in place for how much they are willing to pay for each employee. Within that budget the cost of pay, overtime, health insurance and/or a retirement plan is considered.
So let's just create a company that is starting up and is going to make "widgets". The founder/owner/CEO (whatever you want to call them) of the company has a budget of $100 an hour to pay a worker to make a widget. So starting pay for someone to go work at this company will be $100 per hour period. No health plan, no retirement plan, just straight pay. It is determined that it takes one employee say 1 hour to make one widget, and the company can sell the widget for $150. So the company is going to pay an individual $100 to make a widget in an hour, then they are going to sell the widget for $150 so they make a $50 profit.
So the company isn't attracting people because they don't offer any "benefits" such as a health plan. The company finds a health plan that would end up costing $50 per hour that they are paying their employee. Guess what? In order to attract a worker the company offers a wage of $50 per hour plus a "free" medical plan. The company is still within their budget of $100 per employee, but now rather than pay it in salary they pay it in salary + "free" health insurance. It goes on and on. The bottom line is, unions don't "get more benefits", they only get them rearranged to make it look like it's such a "good deal".
Every "benefit" or "extra" that you see on your paycheck is paid for out of the budget that the employer has for each employee. When a union enters, all they do is siphon off of the budget one way or another, and it's usually through gaining funds from the employee's final salary.
I think you might be overstepping your assumption of a companies needs...You can't possibly believe that you know every company's needs...You certainly can't believe that you speak for every single company in the world, or even the United States when you assert that no company needs a Union...
what I was trying to get at, is no one other than a company knows what the company needs or doesn't need...my company feels like it needs the Union,and we Unionized employees feel we need the Union as well...The "need" for a Union can't be decided by you or anyone other than a company and it's employees...YOU may feel there is no need for Unions, but apparently companies do not share your idealism...If all companies agreed with your idealism, no company would use them...
Benefits are not all coming from the company...My vision and dental insurance is paid through my union health and welfare fund with no financial help from my employer...My short and long term disability plan(s) are Union funded with no financial help from the company, My life insurance is paid by my Union with no financial help from my company, so your example above isn't all together a correct assumption
That "free" health insurance you keep talking about, comes from a reply I made to a poster who said he gets free health insurance...It used to be commonplace for execs to have company paid health insurance which in essence labeled as "free" by the consumer because the consumer of the health insurance, doesn't pay for it, not because the health care industry is giving health care away...someone pays for everything, nothing is absolutely free, but if someone puts $15 of gas in my truck, I got $15 of "free" gas
