Yes, I was a Union Man, Reluctantly

Someone wanted to know if I had ever been in a union.  Here is an excerpt from a letter I wrote on that subject last week.

In 1966, I belonged to a union in a state that lacked right to work.

I was a part time bag boy in a grocery store. The union negotiated a wage for me that was exactly five cents an hour over the minimum wage. Five cents doesn't sound like much, but the minimum wage at the time was $1.25, meaning that I was making four percent more than the minimum wage.

It turned out that the union dues were five cents an hour. Without thinking it through, you might say that I wasn't any worse off, but you wouldn't have thought it through. I had to pay income taxes, social security taxes, and medicare on that 5 cents an hour. Who was freeloading off whom?

When the chain agreed to "pay" bag boys an extra 5 cents an hour, it had to cut hours to make that money up. You can correctly assume that I would have been much happier to get to work an extra hour of work a week at minimum wage than see that money go into some union boss' pocket.

Oh, lest you claim that I didn't pay income taxes because I earned so little, let me tell you that when I began working in the early 1960's, I got to pay income taxes one year when I only made $400 in the whole year.

Comments

[Irene]

Unions! How about some of their shenanigans when people try to vote at work?
Ever meet someone like the guy in this excellent, brief video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LX0pyVwG94&eurl=http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2008/10/bill_the_union.html