Unions, is it to be justice or just us?

"Retained Public Workers Paid More" states a recent headline.

In the face of increasing economic woes, workers are losing jobs and cannot find new jobs. While they lose their jobs, co-workers are getting union-demanded raises.

To me this seems unreasonable and unfair, forcing municipalities, counties and even some states into near bankruptcy.

When hard times strike so qualified workers lose, and cannot find jobs, it seems exceedingly wrong to raise the pay of some while unions force the laying off other workers. This practice aggravates an already bad situation.

It certainly is not justice.

For years I have watched unions push for raises by both fair means and foul, pushing the cost of doing business higher and higher, causing inflation as everyone tries to get more for their labor. This causes inequities, raising some workers' pay while it devalues the pay for others. Prices are forced higher as unions push for more, more, more.

This harkens back to the Daddy of the AFL, Samuel Gompers, in the mid-1800s. There are many quotes by Gompers, whose main theme in all of them was, "We want more!"

When asked his goal, he is quoted as saying, "We do want more and when it becomes more, we shall still want more, and we shall never cease to demand more until we have received the results of our labor."

In the century and a half since then, demands and costs of labor have grown tremendously creating as many, or more, problems than they have solved as they catered to greed. Increased costs have contributed to bankruptcy and financial problems for many manufacturing companies and service organizations, causing many to move out of the United States to foreign countries.

In these times it would seem the least unions should do is at least freeze wages to leave more workers on their jobs.