Union Carbide and Dupont both had very large facilities along the Kanawha Valley, in and near Charleston, WV. Union Carbide was unionized. Dupont was not. I had a very close friend who worked at Dupont. He said they were better off with the union knocking at the door. To keep the union out, Dupont stayed one step ahead of worker benefits, safety, etc., than did Union Carbide. My friend was not at all anti-union. He understood very clearly that he and the other workers at Dupont were benefiting from the union presence at Carbide and WV strong pro-union bent.

My husband worked as an electrician at one of the Carbide plants where asbestos was in heavy use. He was the first to sound the alarm about asbestos. Without the protection of the union he would have been kicfked out the door promptly. Instead, the union not only protected his job, but got involved in the asbestos problems, which Carbide, predictably, was poopooing as senseless health concerns. It was the collectivebargaining power of the union that finally forced Carbide to aknowledge the very serious health risks to it's workers at that plant, and to take corrective actions to protect them.

Both Union CFarbide and Dupont, eventually moved all, or nearly all of their chemicfal operations out of Charleston and overseas, under pressure to be envirnmentally responsible. Remember Bhopal? That was an operation that was moved out of Charlestion to India.

I heard a fragment of a discussion on NPR several days ago about the US auto industry. I'm not sure what show I was listening to (maybe the Diane Rheimsshow?) or who the two speakers were as I was briefly in my car and just caught the middle of something. However, I think they were economists. One of them was attributing a portion of the financial problems of the us auto industry to the wages and benefits US companies are held to by union contracts. The other speaker disagreed. She compared the US industry to the Japanese industry, pointing out that Japanese auto workers are very well paid and have excellent benefits. She suggested the issue is simply that the Japanese desing and produce better vehicles, so the market for them is better. Shedidnot give the impression of being either for or against unions. She was simply makeingan objective observation.

Clearly, non-union employees in heavily unionized industries are much, much better off because of the labor unions.

What Amos is talking about is 'enlighted' self interest. Would God there was more of that floating around Corporations these days.

Janie