You were making America safe from seagoing chicken halves...

hm... after rereading that, I think about my most recent experiences at McDonald's.
I'm always greeted at the drive through with a smile and a small discussion of my day and the employee's day (night, actually, for both of us).
When I requested a dollar menu dinner item during the time when they only served breakfast, they made my mcChicken sandwiches (with tomato) special for me.
Whenever there was a mixup or delay in my order, I was compensated. Often I've been asked if I wanted a drink, or fries, or something new on the menu with my order, and I had either forgotten part of what I'd gone there for, or decided that, yes, that *was* what I wanted. All asking did was remind me to think about what I wanted.

This is good customer service because I was a good, regular customer. If customers unionized, we'd all get the same service, which would quickly become the quality the most pain-in-the-ass, least-friendly customer rated.

If you're referring to the greed of employees offsetting the greed of employers... then there's no issue to debate.

If you're referring to labor unionizing offsetting cartels... that's like saying hockey teams offset golf courses.

No, it's not. Unions will always blackmail more for their employees than the employees contribution merits.

And, it gets back to my big gripe at Walmart; I'm a good, industrious, smart employee, yet I make less than incompetents who've been there a long time... as is the case in union shops.
The union can and will negotiate an *average* wage for workers, maybe even divided by work-type, but they will not negotiate the most money and benefits for me as an individual. Were it not for government born and influenced policies, I could and should be able to negotiate higher wages, by offering greater value to the company, than others, could or should. But, no, unions shackle thoroughbreds up to mules and think that's "fair" to everyone, when it's only fair to the mules, and not so to the thoroughbreds and employers.

This is why Galt created the strike, for crying out loud.

Yes. Get government out of business. Deregulate. Above all, encourage competition.

Wrong, Bobo... It's not Walmart and Mcdonald's who created the unions; labor unions existed long before either entity existed. In fact, labor guilds were formed in the dark ages to protect skilled craftsmen from criminals, and to ensure employers and clients had competent craftsmen.

I do not oppose the idea of collective bargaining if that's what the employees at a given employment site wish. But, it does not benefit the skilled and able employees; it benefits the lazy, the incompetent at the expense of the skilled and able. The skilled and able can command the highest wage and best benefits the market will allow, due to their value to their employers. The least skilled and abled only have their cheap price to offer. The only way they can get the unearned is to ride the coattails of the skilled and able. This is why good workers shun unions.
When one looks at Walmart with regard to unionization, the unions have virtually nothing to offer:

John Galt: "What on Earth do I need *you* for? What have you got to offer me that I couldn't get without you?"

Walmart pays even the least skilled and least abled employees above your precious minimum wage; for full-time employees, they provide healthcare benefits, profit sharing, counseling for finances, smoking, or other issues an employee may have. An employee is encouraged to go to higher management if they have a problem with lower management. After 90 days, they're eligible for a performance bonus; after a year they get the benefits package, a certain number of hours of paid vacation, certain number of paid days absence, a certain number of hours beyond that for sick leave, which add up week by week, year by year. We even get two fifteen minute breaks per day, ON the clock, a whole HOUR off the clock for lunch...
They provide training for their employees; I just finished taking the 1.5 and 2.0 safety training exercises, dealing with chemical spills and equipment malfunctions. I took them during my work hours, as required. The store is kept reasonably air-conditioned, reasonably cleaned. Procedures are in place for emergencies.

Just *exactly* what the hell can unions offer that employees can't get already? I keep imagining what Walmart could offer in straight-up pay if they didn't offer some of these benefits, if they didn't have to do some dumb-shit policies to appease the government.

Your flawed opinion. It's attributed to Ford making a quality product and not catering to its unions.
Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, and a host of other car companies did just fine, also.

I am an expert at what I've experienced.
The article and test was published in Omni magazine in the late 70s.

Nope, I tested out at 135. Story of my life.

I have no idea about books, I only know what I've experienced.

In 1974, I made 25 cents an hour handing brick to my father and being "gopher", on holidays and weekends. The minimum wage was under $3/hour.
Every time the minimum wage has been raised since then, prices have risen accordingly.

If businesses still charged what they charged in 1974, yet paid the modern minimum wage, they would take a loss on every transaction. How long could they stay in business?

The economy adjusts; always. Today McDonald's has a dollar menu. If McDonald's had only a dollar menu when it first started, they would have gone out of business because nobody would have paid a freaking dollar for a hamburger. As the minimum wage has increased, not only has what McDonald's had to pay their employees increased, but their suppliers have also had to pay *their* employees more, as well. McDonald's costs go up, their prices go up to compensate, as does everyone else's. Then, the minimum wage is suddenly insufficient, to the left. So they have it raised to $3.25... then $4... then $5... constantly adjusting it upward as each new minimum wage drives prices up.

You keep caring what the employees *feel*. Nobody cares what they feel. Feelings don't feed you: work does. Someone to flip burgers is only worth so much value to McDonald's. Not emotional value, but mathematical value. McDonald's is competing with other fast food chains... and restaurants... and home cooking. They can only make their food taste so good. The rest of their enticement for customers has to come from quality of service, speed of service, and price. It's costing them for utilities, it's costing for maintenance, it's costing for taxes and it's costing them per hour per employee. The only way for them to make money is to shove food out the door as quickly and proficiently as possible. The more they pay to have that done, the more has to be done in less time in order to cover expenses. They can only shove food out the door so fast.
Forgetting the money the shareholders demand, the massive taxes they have to pay, the expenses of keeping the doors open, those "huge" profits also go into insurance, into legal fees, into war chests to pay for future lawsuit payoffs for idiots pouring coffee on their crotch, for natural disasters, for man-made disasters, for expansion...

Bigotry? You're willing to damn a company because it will not pay more for labor than the value of that labor; yet you're unwilling to damn a government that used its power to supply businesses with a surplus labor pool and thereby provide the very sweatshops you condemn... a hundred years ago.

Nobody "gets" the "Let them eat cake" thing.

Madame Pompadour was told that the people have no bread; to which she replied, "If they have no bread, then let them eat cake".
This was a *politicial* comment, not a business one. It was "I'm rich, screw them".
It was, "The economy is doing fine, we're pulling out of the Bush recession".

It's funny, since Marie Antoinette before she was butchered had been trying to help the very people who murdered her, and history has branded her unjustly as callously indifferent.

It's not easy living on 8.00 an hour; the problem is the minimum wage that makes 8.00/hour the equivalent of 3.50/hour.

And with investors.

And folks are free to organize their labors.

One offsets the other.

If you want burger flippers to make more money, the solution is *not* to form Burger Flippers International #203... the solution is to deregulate with policies that encourage people to go into the fast food business... more business competition without a concomitant increase in the labor pool means that businesses will have to offer better pay, and/or working conditions.
As LetsShrug said... it's not rocket science.

No. There is a movement to unionize McDonald's and other fast food employees because unions are getting desperate for revenue. Because lazy, selfish, greedy low-lifes want the unearned.

Laborers can't combine skills. You combine a skilled laborer with an unskilled laborer, you get less productivity than if you kept the skilled laborer alone.

And flipping burgers at McDonald's is UNskilled labor...