A labor union or trade union is an organization formed for the purpose of collectively representing the interests of a group of workers. Unions often interfere with free enterprise, as in opposing entrepreneurship that creates competition.
Labor unions can include collectively bargaining with employers in order to agree on rates of pay and other conditions of employment. Conservatives tolerate the right of workers to form unions but oppose compelled union membership, as required by law in most states, and mandatory dues that are spent on liberal projects.
Liberals, Democrats, and RINOs are big supporters of unions, and count on their influence to reelect them. In effect, public employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democrat Party. Many attribute some of the negative aspects of public schools to the National Education Association and other teachers' unions. School support personnel unions oppose outsourcing of school support services, sometimes even when it would be beneficial for the support employees. Teachers' unions and school support employee unions are often very active in school board elections.
Wal-Mart has been so successful by opposing the formation of unions among its workers, and has closed a profitable store down before allowing any union to exist in it.
There are generally two types of unions: private sector unions and public sector unions; some unions have members in both the private and public sectors.
For decades, labor unions have frequently been infiltrated by Communists, which have used unions for the purposes of advancing Communism. Organized crime has also infiltrated and corrupted labor unions over time. Under the combined influence of Communism and organized crime, labor unions and their members have often resorted in cowardly fashion to threats (including death threats), intimidation and illegal acts of thuggery and violence to get their way during strike actions and other labor disputes, as well as when their corruption, inefficiency, and deliberate incompetence is exposed and attempts to oppose and purge their radical positions and either reform the unions or rid them from businesses and public institutions are made. Such actions by unions have served as an argument by their opponents for the abolition of labor unions entirely, not only as being outdated and unnecessary in today's society, but also because unions are seen as excuses for extortion (through forced union dues and taxes), corruption (including through forced compulsory membership and denial of work to anyone who refuses to join a union, as well as high labor prices charged for deliberately shoddy and substandard work) and political manipulation (through the Democrats and the Communist Party USA) and as havens for thugs, criminals and Communists.
Union boss hypocrisy
Despite their criticism of high salaries for CEOs (the average CEO salary is not as high as they claim) and their stated support for workers, union bosses have very high salaries.
- Labor unions and Communism at the Washington Times
- RED UNIONS: How & Why Big Labor Leaders Betray Their Nation
- Crime and Corruption
- Organized Crime and the Labor Unions
- Examples of Union Threats, Violence and Intimidation
- Labor Union Violence in America: A Brief History
- A Liberal History of Union Thuggery and Civil Rights Perversion
- Congress Should Outlaw All Unions and Eventually Abolish Them
- Chiaramonte, Perry (May 12, 2017). AFL-CIO 'Paywatch' report slams CEO pay but not the high pay of its own execs. Fox News. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
- Studies on Current Effects of Unions Heritage Foundation