My Experience with Unions

By Brad Sherman

My father was born in 1930 and grew up in a nation trying to recover from the great depression. His father traveled around the nation as a heavy equipment operator working pipelines and other construction projects. Grandpa eventually saved enough to purchase a piece of land in Southeast Missouri and a small dragline excavator and made his living doing custom drainage work for farmers in the area.

By necessity, my father learned that you get to eat if you work hard, save, and live on what you make. He followed my grandfather’s profession as a heavy equipment operator and worked for different contractors until I was about 10 years old. I vividly remember the discussions he and my mother had about unions. My father was not a union member and did not approve of some of their practices.  On some of the jobs he was threatened and feared for his physical safety. I remember him carrying a hammer in the seat of his pickup for protection as he crossed union picket lines.

I remember the day he came home with a defeated look on his face, looked at the ground, and said to my mother, “Well, they got me.” He then took off his cap and displayed the union button that was now pinned to its side.  The union won that battle through threat and intimidation and my father was forced to join and pay dues if he wanted to have a job.

My father eventually saved enough to buy a piece of equipment and started his own excavation business working primarily for farmers and union membership was no longer required to for him to feed us. I grew up learning the business and worked for my father.

Circumstances eventually caused me to go to work for a large construction company working in their equipment repair shop. As a result, I was also forced to join and pay dues to the same operators and mechanics union.  During my time at this company, I learned firsthand how the unions operate.

The construction company that employed me was, at one time, one of the largest in the world, building a lot of roads and bridges.  But at the time I worked there, it had declined and was not nearly as large or successful as it once had been. The company was downsizing to stay in business yet the unions seemed to ignore that fact.

I remember a visit by a union steward who held a meeting with the 10 or so employees who worked in our particular shop.  He was a smooth talking agitator who portrayed our employer as a group of rich stingy money grubbers who had no regard for our situation. He told us that if we stuck together, we could force the company to pay us a higher wages and give us better benefits.

But even as a young man of 23 years, I remember thinking, “But if the company can’t afford it, then what? If they go under or have to downsize more, we might not have a job at all!” We got past that particular point and life was pretty normal at the shop. I was rewarded with a raise, not because the union forced it, but because my employer recognized my hard work.

It was about that time that I felt the call to begin ministry on a full-time basis and my departure from the company was on good terms. But a short time later, I learned that the union had stirred up the remaining workers at the shop and convinced them to go on strike for better benefits and wages.  I remember driving by and seeing my friends picketing. Long story short, the company had been pushed too far and simply closed the shop and all the workers lost their jobs.

This seems to be the case with many unions and union workers today. If there are good unions that negotiate with common sense, then they can have a legitimate function. But it seems that many of them have become groups of short-sighted thugs, who continue to demonize employers and drive them into the ground.

The problem is that such people want what they want, care for nothing else, and are willing to fight to get it — even if the result is that no one wins. It is self-destructive behavior based in gross ignorance and borders on insanity. It is also based in that undesirable part of human nature that each of us has to recognize and resist in our own lives.  The Bible speaks of this in the book of James:

Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war.  Yet you do not have because you do not ask  — James 4:1-2 (NKJV)

Though referring to God, the above passage ends making the point that we don’t have because we don’t ask. There is nothing wrong with asking and negotiating. But when negotiation becomes illogical coercion, it ceases to be a good thing.
What will it take to bring people to reality, to teach them to curtail their pleasure-seeking desires, work hard, live on what they have and appreciate it? Will employers, including the government, have to go completely broke and thousands more people lose their jobs?  Will it take another great depression to teach people to live on what they make and be thankful even to have a job? Maybe so.

I hope not.

To read my previous article related to this topic (Wisconsin: Similarities to 1934) click here.
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