The Relevance of Unions in Today’s Society

The strikes over the last month at Canada Post and Air Canada have brought up the queries regarding the purpose of unions. Unions were originally created before labour laws existed to ensure that workers were paid fairly and worked in a safe environment. Now, there are laws to ensure that people are safe at work as well as legislation to ensure everyone makes enough money to live adequately. Why, then, do we still have unions? The answer to that is mostly greed. People just never seem to receive enough raises, have enough vacation days or receive enough benefits. These unionized-workers should be happy that they have a steady income which is most likely higher than minimum wage. Also, what about pension benefits? Get yourself an RRSP! If your corporation has a pension plan, then that’s great. If not, deal with it like most people do every day.

Unions hamper the economy and stall the creation of new jobs. Companies cannot employ more people if they spend so much of their money on wages and pensions. This starts to create an economy with fewer jobs that pay significantly higher wages instead of more jobs that pay enough for people to live on. Think about the boost to our economy if there were no unions at all; it would increase the amount of jobs, reduce the cost of goods, and stop industries’ revenue losses associated with strikes.

Unskilled worker unions are nonsensical. Unions with skilled workers are rational and logical. The skilled workers realize that if they strike, they cannot be easily replaced; hence, the corporation has to bargain and deal with the union to reach a compromise suitable for both parties. This makes sense because a skilled union worker has something to offer to a company unlike unskilled workers (like post office workers and Air Canada customer service agents who have no special skills or training). Therefore, they can easily be replaced by the thousands of people still desperately looking for well-paid jobs. It is easy to say that there are many people who would gladly take the job of said union worker and get paid substantially less.

Unions also cause normal, hard-working citizens to lose their jobs to union workers. Corporations, especially the government, are forced to give jobs to union members which cause their unrepresented counterpart to get laid off or not have their contracts not renewed. A hard-working employee can get replaced by a union member who gets paid more and, sometimes, works much less because they feel their job is secure no matter what they do. Think about all the taxpayer money that can be saved if government offices hired only non-union employees.

Overall, unions are definitely obsolete in today’s society due to labour laws and, although skilled unions are preferable to unskilled unions, they are still illogical. Just look at the teachers’ union! This group prevents standardized testing and allows teachers to do anything short of sexual harassment without any fear of dismissal. If the teachers didn’t have a union, they would still be paid well and treated well, however, they would also be held accountable for their actions like all adults should be. Basically, Ronald Reagan knew what he was doing when he fired all the air traffic controllers when they went on strike. I hope the Conservative government learns a thing or two from Reagan when dealing with Canada Post and Air Canada.