Grace Collier on union culture and corruption

Here's a really good article by Grace Collier on union culture which has some useful insights. She says that many unionists have a war mentality and therefore believe that pretty much any action can be justified as long as it can be seen to benefit the tribe. She also likens the atmosphere of many unions to that of a cult. If you keep in mind these characteristics you can see how easily corruption can flourish.

There's another aspect of unionism that increases this tendency. That is that you don't actually have to produce anything of market value when you're in a union. The money flows into its cofffers in a steady stream from the pay packets of employees no matter what. It's like taxes being used to pay government employees. It's pretty much guaranteed.

That's the opposite of being in a business -- particularly a small to middling one. In that environment, if you don't make sales, you go belly up. So all or most of your attention is directed towards that goal. You don't have anywhere near as much time to play politics.

But in a union, it's all politics. You're playing politics with the employer to increase the benefits to members. And you're playing politics with your fellow unionists to get to the top of the power structure. 

If you think of these three factors together you start to understand what a strange world these people live and work in, day in and day out. Behaviour that most people would find dodgy as is often seen as pretty much par for the course and therefore totally acceptable. It only worries them if they feel they might eventually get sprung for it.

Flyers used to frighten "scabs" in Fremantle

I've long been amused by the disconnect between rhetoric and reality in left-leaning cultures. Take unionism, for example. Unionists love to see themselves as tough but fair, big-hearted "salt of the earth" types. But they often get their way through abuse, intimidation and sometimes even outright violence.

Here's an illustration of their tactics in action:

Fremantle wharf workers accused of refusing to strike have been publicly branded scabs and "treacherous low-lifes" in intimidating flyers posted in the port city.

Flyers that name the five workers and accuse them of turning on their colleagues were posted anonymously in Fremantle late last week after vessel traffic operators and pilot boat crew took protected industrial action over a new enterprise agreement.

Truly nasty stuff. And cowardly to boot.

Still, it must be said that whoever made up the flyers does have an appreciation for literature: 

The poster quotes social activist Jack London's 1915 definition of a scab as a two-legged animal with a "corkscrew soul" and "a tumour of rotten principles" instead of a heart.

Lefties were forever accusing John Howard of wanting to "take us back to the fifties". But these guys are clearly stuck in a mindset several decades before that. 

Quoting a diatribe widely attributed to socialist writer Jack London is also a tad unwise considering the guy was a known racist.

Still, they're probably pretty safe on that score. The view of most MEAA-card carrying Aussie meeja workers is that London was the duck's nuts -- if they've even heard of him, that is.

But just imagine the squitterati's outrage if an eeevil employer were to quote another writer associated with the same odious attitudes.