According to a recent nationwide survey conducted by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, the glory days of America's labor unions are fading. At least they're fading in the eyes of the general populace.

Speculation varies widely about the reasons for the tarnishing of organized labor's luster. However, the decline of union favor is quite real. The approval of labor unions has decreased across a very wide demographic cross section of America, including in union-oriented households.

Continue reading The Power and Glory of Labor Unions Fades

The Power and Glory of Labor Unions Fades originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

AT&T, Inc (NYSE: T) let five union contracts expire over this past weekend. With 80,000 of its U.S. workers now operating under no labor contract at all, the telecom giant is in the process of negotiating new terms before those workers are told to strike by their unions.

AT&T shares are now almost at the same level as three years ago (with a rise in '07 and '08), and investors are asking why workers are being treated like royalty. Are they?

Continue reading AT&T continues talking after five large labor contracts expire

AT&T continues talking after five large labor contracts expire originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Welcome to Way Off Wall Street, a column dedicated to providing Main Street opinions on topics of interest to investors. Each installment highlights the views of Americans who are far removed from the canyons of Wall Street -- and who often see things more clearly as a result.

Continue reading Way Off Wall Street: Can labor unions help stabilize the economy?

Way Off Wall Street: Can labor unions help stabilize the economy? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Welcome to the 74th installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

This week, I'll be taking a look at whether Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s (NYSE: WMT) attempts to fend off unions in its stores can continue succeeding. With Labor Day occurring in the U.S. tomorrow, it seemed appropriate to delve a little into Wal-Mart's potential labor union situation in its U.S. stores based on small gains being made in Canadian Wal-Mart locations.

North of the U.S. border, there has been a successful attempt to unionize Wal-Mart workers in the province of Quebec. Although the location is small, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union sees it as an entry point into unionizing more Wal-Mart Supercenters in Canada.

With critics saying that the entry of Wal-Mart into many markets (if not all) has caused wages to go down and competition to deteriorate, the heat won't go down on Wal-Mart's fending off collective unions in its Canadian stores. And, when the heat gets hot enough, the UFCW and others will set their sights on U.S. locations -- the holy grail of organized labor potential if there ever was one. Wal-Mart isn't taking those threats lying down, and has even called meetings with U.S. managers to bring the upcoming Presidential election into the fray.

Continue reading The Wal-Mart Weekly: Taking a look at unionization within Wal-Mart

The Wal-Mart Weekly: Taking a look at unionization within Wal-Mart originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 31 Aug 2008 12:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Business and labor unions facing off in renewed battle originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 14 Feb 2007 13:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

First, a history lesson: Labor practices in the newspaper industry nearly ruined that business by the 1980s. Thanks to the unions, there was so much overstaffing at printing presses, a practice known as featherbedding, that pressmen could come and go almost at will (picture eight pressmen operating a four-man press). The New York Daily News nearly had to shut down due to such practices -- until management put their feet down and said "No more."

Next consider today's automobile industry: It has almost been destroyed by the inflexibility of labor. Legacy retirement and healthcare costs are so high that the Big Three can no longer make money in North America.

And, yesterday, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) took another public relations hit by telling it's employees that they need to come to work when it snows.

Maybe it's just me, but that doesn't sound like such a tough policy -- especially for a company with virtually flat same-store sales in the U.S, a company that is struggling to get back on its feet in its home market. When people don't come to work, it hurts productivity. And someone else has to do their job. The customer experience may suffer.

Groups like union-backed WakeUpWalMart also object to the fact that employees have to call in to a toll-free number to report an absence. What would they prefer? That Wal-Mart outfit employees with carrier pigeons?

Labor organizers are going down a path that is not good for Wal-Mart's investors or its workers. The answer to less productivity in most industries is cutting the work force.

At least they won't have to call in.

Douglas McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

Since when do the employees run Wal-Mart? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 02 Nov 2006 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.