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Uncooked Goose

  • By Thomas Sowell Nov 20, 2012, 12:00 am1.6k pts

    The story of killing the goose that lays the golden egg is one of those old fairy tales for children with a heavy message that a lot of adults should listen to. The labor unions that have driven the makers of Twinkies into bankruptcy, thereby potentially destroying 18,500 jobs, could have learned a lot from that old children’s fairy tale.

    Many people think of labor unions as organizations to benefit workers, and think of employers who are opposed to unions as just people who don’t want to pay their employees more money. But some employers have made it a point to pay their employees more than the union wages, just to keep them from joining a union.

    Why would they do that, if it is just a question of not wanting to pay union wages? The Twinkies bankruptcy is a classic example of costs created by labor unions that are not confined to paychecks.

    The work rules imposed in union contracts required the company that makes Twinkies, which also makes Wonder Bread, to deliver these two products to stores in separate trucks. Moreover, truck drivers were not allowed to load either of these products into their trucks. And the people who did load Twinkies into trucks were not allowed to load Wonder Bread, and vice versa.

    All of this was obviously intended to create more jobs for the unions’ members. But the needless additional costs that these make-work rules created ended up driving the company into bankruptcy, which maycost 18,500 jobs. The union is killing the goose that laid the golden egg.


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