Absolutely true. Unions exist because of decades of dangerous, exploitive practices pushed by management across mining, transportation and manufacturing over one hundred years ago. Unions became less popular starting in the 1960s and 1970s after charges of “featherbedding” (artificially boosting required labor hours by narrowly defining allowed work responsibilities in contracts) circulated across many different unions and industries.
Such charges were anchored in reality but became a convenient scapegoat for management of American firms to blame workers for poor quality and demand shocks stemming from US firm’s inability to innovate, poor product engineering and outdated, innefficient manufacturing techniques. America was the only industrial power left after World War II and its businesses enjoyed nearly 20 years with little effective competition, until the mid 1960s. During that time, American management grew accustomed to large profits and became complacent in product design, manufacturing processes and quality. Once demand shocks hit in the 1970s, American firms found it easier to blame union workers for their inability to compete than revise their strategy.
Is “featherbedding” still a thing? If so, to what extent? Dunno. Anecdotally, I remember how insane it appeared to me starting to work for a telco in 1990 to find that I as a manager was not allowed to hook up a new dot matrix printer in my office, cuz that was considered “circuit work”. On the flip side…(I think I conveyed this story in the past but it disappeared with “old Fool” board content…)
Around eight months into my first job managing central office technicians in five CO buildings and some outlying facilities, a fiber repeater station in my territory had a 48v battery string that needed to be replaced with a new string. The telco contracted that type of installation / tear-out to Western Electric but at the time any gear was actually connected or disconnected, a telco union worker was required to be present to “cover” the contractor. The prep work to install the new string had been completed, the new cells had been charged up to 48v and it was now time to flash cut all of the fiber mux / amplifier gear from the old string to the new string. Prep work was scheduled for 12:30am on a Saturday morning with actual cutover at 1:00am.
As a new manager with a BSEE and actual technical interest in how this work was performed, I opted to attend the midnight ritual with my telco tech “covering” the contractor. It’s February, it’s about 20 degrees outside, and the repeater hut is in the middle of a cornfield in Hardin, Missouri. I show up along with my tech and various techs from Western Electric, including their lead, a guy nicknamed “Animal” – they were all nicknamed “Animal” for some reason.
They’re checking voltage levels, specific gravity on all of the new cells, etc and the clock is ticking towards 1:00am, the designated cutover time. There’s about 8 men in a hut that’s filled with two different strings plus a rack of NEC fiber muxes (RC28Ds, maybe?) but only about 15 feet by 10 feet. I’m talking with my tech – a brilliant guy about age 45 with a college degree with whom over my first 8 months I’ve developed a good rapport – and as we wait for the magic moment to arrive for cutover, I jokingly lean toward him and say “Pretty easy money, isn’t it?”
EXACTLY as I said those words, Animal – remember Animal, the lead tech in charge of this operatioin? – puts down the blueprint he has been staring at for the last five minutes, turns to my tech and says “Mike, can you take a look at this? Something’s not right…” People shuffle around to make room for my tech to walk over, he and Animal begin reviewing the diagram, looking up at the copper cables from the existing string to the bus bars, at the bus bars to the breakers to the cables going to the new cables, then back at the drawing — back and forth, back and forth. Finally, my tech says, “No, that drawing has been wrong from Day One. If you connect that new lead to the lug they specified, you’ll short the string out. It should be THAT lug.”
Animal thinks a bit more, agrees, checks the voltages to be sure and they modify the MOP (Method of Procedure) on the fly. My tech walked back over next to me, paused the perfect amount of time for comedic effect, then leans over to me and says “Pretty easy money, huh?” Had someone with his broad expertise at CO power engineering not been on hand, Animal might have followed the blueprint to the letter – and blown us all up. At 1:00am, in the middle of a cornfield, where no one would have even heard the explosion or reacted to it for hours.
The moral of this story is that for every inane example of “featherbedding” that seems to serve no purpose other than padding someone’s income, there are probably examples stemming from past failures caused by inexperience or arrogance that would go unchecked without a second body on hand to lend a critical eye to dangerous work. The fact that the average person (or executive or demagoguing politician) doesn’t understand the value of that “coverage” doesn’t mean there’s no value being provided.
In 2023 America, it seems that forty years of political mythmaking pushed by corporate media has succeeded at converting the perception of unions from that as a useful counterforce against exploitive management practices into a means for protecting lazy workers in brain-dead jobs that motivated people would never want . American culture has attempted to apply an entreprenurial mindset to the entire labor market so each worker is “free” to choose their own career path, “take the initiative” and advance without impediments. If you don’t become Director or VP in ten years, you don’t want it enough or aren’t willing to work hard enough or just don’t have what it takes.
We now have millions of people in positions whose day to day work experience is undistinguishable from the boring, physically exhausting, no-brain work stereotyped to “union jobs.” How many nurses work 12 hours shifts so overloaded with patients they cannot take a lunch or bathroom break. How many Amazon drivers carry an empty jar in their truck because they cannot make their productivity targets if they stop at a real gas station or restaurant to use a real bathroom? How many people are now employed as warehouse pickers, working extended shifts and suffering crippling repetitive stress injuries after just months on the job? How many arguably well paid software engineers and testers make $130,000 per year but also work 60-80 hours a week on poorly organized “death march” development projects?
There’s always going to be a struggle between abuses on the labor side and management side regarding pay, working conditions, safety and “value provided.” There are always going to be cases where each side is on point and where they are just padding the outcome in their favor. However, current coverage of these conflicts is significantly distorted and not accurately informing us all about the impacts the outcomes of these debates will have on the larger economy.
In the original point atop this post regarding local governments approving overly generous union contracts that threaten state / municipal budgets, that problem is not a “union” problem per se, that’s an economic problem stemming from corrupt politics caused by politicians attempting to buy current voter support with future voter tax obligations. The same dynamic is at work when governments attempt to privatize the operation of public infrastructure (bridges, water treatment plants, airports, etc.) to deliver perceived short-term savings while inevitably denying long-term capital investment in those assets to sustain them and maintain public safety.
WTH
