They just don't get it.

The Obama Administration has said that we should strengthen the unions so the economy will grow. I got news for him -- strengthening the unions will not help the economy. In fact, the unions have a great deal to do with what's wrong with the state of our nation right now.

As an example, the U.S. Post Office, an institution since the time of Benjamin Franklin, is going bankrupt. You want to know what a large part of the problem is? The postal union. They have a contract that says the Post Office cannot lay them off. They get health benefits far above what the average worker does. Post Office labor costs are 80% of agency expenses compared with 53% for labor for UPS and 32% for FedEx. And they get standby time. The USPS spent $4.3 million on employees who did nothing in the first half of the year because of requirements in union agreements. The agreements mandate that postal employees have a certain number of guaranteed work hours, which means that they cannot be laid off during periods of low mail volume or unplanned events like the breakdown of equipment. This leads to “standby time,” in which employees spend the day doing nothing — for example, waiting in a cafeteria or breakroom. In fiscal 2009, the Postal Service logged over 1.2 million hours in standby time. To add insult to injury, an audit found that at least some of the time, it's not logged properly as standby time, so that if the employee puts in additional hours, they get paid overtime. So what is the Post Office to do? For one thing, they'll suspend Saturday delivery. That won't cut labor costs any, because they'll still have to pay employees to not deliver the mail on Saturdays. I guess the saving will come in the form of fuel costs.

So think about that next time you're urged to "Look for the union label." I do. But I don't look for it for the reason they want me to.

"Official: U.S. Postal Service on brink of default." The Dallas Morning News; September 5, 2011; p. 7A.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/62233.html#ixzz1XIidhMSA