Carter Wood over at the NAM website spotted some interesting quotes on the decline of unions.

Gary Becker and Richard Posner on Labor Unions

From the University of Chicago, economist Gary Becker and legal scholar Richard Posner on the decline of labor unions in America, reacting to the UAW-GM settlement. Becker makes a point new to us:

Becker says:

Not that long ago, there was strong support for unions in American academia and among American intellectuals, as well as among blue-collar workers. Scholars who emphasized the negative side of unions, such as Chicago economists Henry Simons, H. Gregg Lewis, and Milton Friedman, were looked upon as crackpot reactionaries. Academics and intellectuals are still generally pro-union, but with little enthusiasm. They have seen that strong unions promote the earnings, and health and retirement benefits of their members who tend to be well paid-production workers at GM start at close to $30 per hour- without doing anything for workers who earn much less. As a result, no current union leader has the prestige, name recognition, or media attention that Walter Reuther, John L. Lewis, and Jimmy Hoffa did several decades ago.

Posner comments:

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A Federal judge has refused to dismiss charges against an Iowa UF&CW union rep who was arrested and accused of helping illegal workers keep from being detected by Federal immigration officials.

The DesMoines Register reports that Braulio Pereyra-Gabino will stand trial for, “advising workers in the United States illegally of how to avoid detection and arrest,” and that “prosecutors say he did so in orientation speeches he gave to new Spanish-speaking employees.”

An immigration agent recorded a version of the speech Aug. 22, 2006, according to court documents.

Pereyra-Gabino is charged with a single count of shielding from detection and attempting to shield from detection undocumented immigrants at the Marshalltown meatpacking plant from June 2003 until he was arrested.

This story goes to show that Unions are not only out to defraud American business, but that they are aiding and abetting illegal immigrants in order to gain more members. And it is not a leap to realize that these additional members will be paying millions to aid the Democrat Party with their dues and that unions are materially supporting the Democrat Party with illicit money stolen from illegal immigrants.

Welcome to the post American world of the left.

Well, here is an interesting tale. Apparently IBM workers in Italy have started walking a picket line for workers upset over job benefits. Not unusual, you say? Well this picket line is being walked by animated, virtual characters in an on-line game called “Second Life.”

It’s a pretty silly exercise that won’t get much notice by anyone in the real world, of course. After all, the whole point of a picket line is an in-your-face, annoyance to regular folk who just happen to be inconvenienced by union thugs walking the streets. On the internet, all one need do to avoid them is just not click there!

That being said, it is an interesting thing to see. A virtual protest! Certainly a new experience.

Now here is the hilarious part. UnionFacts.com added their own character to the picket line intruding on the socialists and whiners picketing their company!

For those of you unaware, UnionFacts.com is an anti-union organization that informs the public on a daily basis of the evils unions do.

So, the folks at UnionFacts.com on their LaborPains.org blog crashed the picket line and went in with their giant sign advertising UnionFacts.com and exhorting all the slackers to get back to work and quit whining!

Absolutely hilarious!