Spoken by someone who’s probably never been involved organizing for a union. I have seen many members of unions be screwed over so senior members can get paid better, and junior members lose their jobs. I’ve seen “inner circle” members of unions actively ignore members deemed less worthy of benefits, or even deemed unworthy to educate about benefit plans and things like how and where to vote on issues, whilst insisting the same unworthy folks be on strike and not cross picket lines to defend the union that ignores them.

Early in my career I even lost a job as the union negotiated to get their membership double the salary, which doubled mine… except it didn’t because my whole department was let go for costing too much to pay the salary for. When we went to the union for help, they delayed and ignored, then conveniently forgot about the case long enough for a statute of limitations to expire.

Unions are just another corporation. Mega-unions are mega-corporations. Except that they have a legal monopoly.

The book leads me to believe that there is not a single UAW that governs relations with all of Japan’s auto companies. Rather, each company has its own union, and jumping from union to union is difficult without substantial decreases in pay. Since bonuses are tied to performance, what Japan essentially has is a set of unions competing against each other.

The objective of a corporation is to maximize shareholder profit. The objective of a union is to maximize the well being of its members.

The structure of a corporation is tyrannical. The structure of a union is always democratic.

I’m emailing you in regards to an email I sent to you last month about a partnership, have you had a chance to think about it?

If you have any questions or would more information, please advise me and we can go from there.

Kind Regards,
Andrew Knight