Little faith in unions

Re “Power in the union,” Opinion, Jan. 26

Robert B. Reich writes of unions as potential saviors for our current economic downturn.

At 64, I am old enough to remember growing up in Fairless Hills, Penn., a town constructed by U.S. Steel in the early 1950s to house workers for a new steel plant near Philadelphia. The Steelworkers Union then obtained great benefits for its members. A menial job at “the mill” for a high school graduate paid double what my father, a high school teacher, earned.

With a strike every several years, which led inevitably to greater worker benefits, it seemed the standard of living for steelworkers would never stop improving. But it did. Over time, foreign competition almost drove U.S. Steel out of business, and “the mill” soon stood idle.

If American industry lived in a bubble, as it once did, higher and higher labor costs could raise all Americans’ wages and standard of living. But 2009 is not the 1950s -- or even the 1990s -- and foreign competition is not going to go away because we wish it were so.

Robert Waterbor

Rancho Mirage

--

Reich’s piece contained so much poppycock that I found myself looking at the publication date to see if it was perhaps April Fool’s Day.

Our Big Three auto makers are on the verge of bankruptcy, largely because of the decades-long accumulation of out-sized UAW pensions and health benefits. And Reich wants us to believe that more unions would pave the way to prosperity?

Unions lead to noncompetitive companies, shrinking market share, downsizing and off-shore outsourcing. For the American middle class, more unions are a recipe for disaster, not success.

Gail S. Dubois

Beverly Hills