Practical definition: Union success

Posted by Marc Hodak on December 8, 2008 under Practical definitions | Be the First to Comment

“They made this company the success that it is.”

That is Leah Fried, spokesperson for the United Electric Workers, talking about the bankrupted-into-liquidation Republic Windows and Doors. Fried goes on to describe the effects of this success on her workers:

And on the eve of Christmas, they shouldn’t simply be thrown out on the street. And if the federal government can’t intervene to protect these workers, then I think we’re failing in our main obligation.”

The workers, who are protesting the liquidation of their company with less than 60 day’s notice, may or may not have a legal basis for their grievance–that remains for the courts to sort out. What caught my attention was the way Fried subtly transformed their personal legal struggle into a universal morality tale: “we’re failing in our main obligation.”

“We” Tonto? I, for one, would be happy to let the courts sort out what is and isn’t my obligation on this one. It’s likely from her tone that Ms. Fried really wants us to assume this obligation as a moral one regardless of what the courts decide. More to the point, she wants our obligation to her workers to be our “main” one.

You may have your own ideas of what you consider your “main” obligations, but a collectivist will reflexively assume away your preferences in favor for what she thinks your “main” obligations ought to be. If Ms. Fried did not intend that meaning with her words, it’s only because she is so sloppy with the language. The lazy MSM lets her get away with such sloppiness because it’s easier to write that way, and it’s very likely that the author and editor who got gratuitous Cs in math, unable to grasp relevant distinctions and logic, instinctively buy into all the conflations implied by “we” and “our.”

Of course, when one begins to actually think about this situation in terms of distinct individuals, “you,” “me,” “those guys over there,” “these people over here,” it’s difficult to avoid the contribution of the union to this particular mess. These workers who have been unceremoniously tossed on their butts are so screwed precisely because they have worked for above-market wages for so long. They know they are not going to be able to force another firm into paying them so much. They won’t come close to acknowledging that those above-market wages to which they felt entitled were the same costs that helped push the company into bankruptcy.

Their union doesn’t believe that, of course, because they don’t believe in this thing called ‘markets.’ They behaved as if the company’s revenue were a given, and its distribution were a zero-sum game between their workers and capitalists. The idea that the capitalists are suddenly out of both their returns and their investment, without so much as 60 day’s notice, is left out of the narrative of indignant workers with a sense of entitlement.

So, I hope that the company does what it must under our laws. But please, Ms. Fried, don’t pretend that your workers, who continued to suck off the teat of a sickly cow when it was no longer healthy enough to produce enough nourishment for its own existence, are entitled to some “obligation” from the rest of “us.”