[Vision2020] Did Wenders and Harkins Enjoy Their Tenure?

[Phil Nisbet]

Nick

Heff was not saying that a Union was not a good thing to have, just that 
free association needs to be the law.  The closed shop of many places 
actually is loaded with corruption and nepotism and examples of National 
Unions sticking it to the guys on the shop floor for the sake of politics 
abound.

One of my favorite examples was back in the 1980's when the guys in the 
Steelworkers local at the Bunker Hill voted to accept lower wages to keep 
the mine and their jobs going, but the cal by the local was negated by the 
International which lead to mine closure and all of them losing their jobs.

I still remember in the early 1990's guys lobbying for the International 
working a deal with Jolene Unsold that ended up closing the doors on all the 
mill workers from Forks to Vancouver.  The lobbyist for AFL-CIO sat in a bar 
in DC telling a bunch of Union mill guys that they should be happy with the 
Unions call since it would mean better jobs for their Union brothers back 
East, as it was a trade off for Unsold's supporting an AFL-CIO bill on 
health care benefits.  Bother that the guys were losing their jobs and would 
not get any benefits or a salary for that matter.

Nothing in Idaho law makes a union illegal.  You have a union and that is 
why you are bringing the suits you do in court for teachers.  But I would 
point out that yours is just one union.  Technically, in a closed shop 
state, the IEA could close your smaller union down and shut it out.  You 
habe the right of free association and to join what ever union or no union 
at all here, so IEA does not have the right to try to close the doors on 
your union.

You noted just how effective your AFT has been even in an open shop 
environment.  The reason it can be effective is that the Union has to be 
responsive to its members or its members will quit the Union.  That does not 
allow room for feather bedding by top Union brass or for the nepotism and 
cronyism that closed shop areas have in abundance.  Instead, the Union has 
to work for its keep and get members by doing the job its supposed to do.

Phil Nisbet

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