Wisconsin union holding federal funds hostage
Governor Dayton’s Baleful Influence on Labor Relations
By Paul Kersey/Mackinac Center
The Detroit Free Press is reporting that the United Auto workers is laying off 58 members of its staff. The Office and Professional Employees International Union, which represents UAW staff, is crying foul.
If collective bargaining really were the great deal for workers that its union propenents claim it to be, then layoffs would be rare and concessions would be mild when they came up at all. But collective bargaining is not magic fairy dust that makes hard economic decisions go away. As the Freep article itself notes, the UAW has lost nearly 75 percent of the membership it had from its peak in 1979, and it was just a couple of years ago that two out of the Big Three were in bankruptcy.
