Challenge to Union Thinking

["Vic Thorpe" <just.solutions@pandora.be>]

Steve Nieman's second item decrying union attitudes regarding the practice
of worker ownership deserves a response from some of you union dues-payers
out there!  It raises many inter-related issues: not all of them so clear as
Steve would have us believe.

For example, is it true that paying a decent wage drives the company to
bankruptcy?

If it is the case that the company cannot survive without paying its
employees sub-standard wages, should it not be up to the employees to decide
what they prefer - their existing job with a low wage, or take a risk of
finding a better paying job when the company goes down?  What else has their
company got to offer that makes it worthwhile to maintain their existing
work community?  If it had a good relationship to its union and so to its
total work community, that might be a good place to start.

Should promoters of worker ownership have to accept that regular wages must
be traded against a share of the stock anyway?
In that view, is worker stock ownership just a way to minimize company fixed
costs and hedge personnel costs against a down-turn?

Those would be some of the questions arising in my mind following the logic
described in some of Steve's diatribe.

Anyone from the beleaguered airline industry any comments?  Anyone from
United out there???

Vic Thorpe