GOOD NEWS FOR UNION  TRUE BELIEVERS

Thanks to the Washington Post for an article Sunday about how the thousands of temporary employees Microsoft hires through contractors, to avoid giving them the Microsoft benefits, have unionized and just won the right to a couple weeks of paid leave each year.  It is an encouraging story for those of us who understand what effective unions can do for this country as well as a revealing one that reaffirms some of our strong suspicions about how to run unions.  If you take the time to read the story, stop when you get to the part about how a law firm won millions and millions in back pay for these temporary employees before the employees organized and try to imagine what could have been done if a union had sponsored that lawsuit and used it to launch the union.  Also don’t dismiss the importance of the union keeping dues at $2.00 a month.  Unions may be almost immune to competition from other unions thanks to no raid pacts, but they have to compete just as hard as any merchant or company for a share of employees’ take home pay.  In other words, why should a prospective member give $19.00 a pay period to a union when s/he can instead use those dollars to buy five cable movies, a very nice bottle of wine, or take 19 chances at a Powerball fortune?  You will hear more about this from us soon because we believe keeping union dues low is critical to union survival.