Changes for America’s shrinking unions
By John E. Guiniven
Quick, name a union leader.
This is the 130th anniversary of the first Labor Day parade — Sept. 5, 1882 — so there’s a good chance Bob King of the United Auto Workers, Leo Gerard of the United Steelworkers, Cecil Roberts of the United Mine Workers and Mike Futhey, international president of the United Transportation Union, will be out and about.
 Guiniven retired last month from James Madison University, where he taught corporate communication and public issues management.
September 3, 2012 - 8:40 AM
In Virginia, a union can give you, or get you, nothing the company isn’t willing to give. If a business decides it can do without you, you are gone. They don’t have to give you a reason…it’s their company, not yours. In the 1980′s a major guitar manufacturer went through an attempt to unionize their workers. They clolsed their plant, and imported high quality guitars from Japan…packaged them, and sold them to their customers. The company did this for many months, and one by one the luthiers returned to the company without a union. Of all the American guitar makers of that time, they are the only ones to survive, and thrive. None of the original manufacturers that went union, are around today. Some employees started their own companies, and have been reasonably successful. None of them are union shops.