The parable of the chicken factory

Once there was a chicken-killing factory.

Industrial scale chicken killing is a nasty business.

You're in chicken guts and egg yolks up to your ankles. And you know all that stuff that's up to your ankles will be scooped up, mashed up, dehydrated, freeze-dried, deep-fried, and presented on some fast-food menu as "chicken strips".

The workers in the chicken-killing factory all hated their jobs. But they showed up on time every day because they needed the paycheck.

After all, it's not that many kids sit around in grade school, ignoring the math lesson so they can focus on their life's dream of killing chickens.

One day one of the chicken kill-line guys says to me he paid twenty bucks that month in union dues. For what?

That got me started.

You don't have to dig too deep to find the most odious examples of union corruption. That seems to be the fall-back position for a lot of anti-union folks.

On the other hand, look at my chicken-killing friend here.

Killing chickens is not rocket science. You don't need a graduate degree to kill chickens. In fact, you don't even need a high school diploma.

So Buddy doesn't bother with the education, drops out of school half way through grade ten, and lands a job on the kill line at two and a half times the minimum wage.

The reason that job on the kill line pays more than minimum wage is because the chicken factory is unionized.

Otherwise the low bidder would be the dude hired for every job, and every job would be bid down to the minimum wage level. Contract says $15 an hour? Surely someone will do the job for 14... oh here comes someone who just arrived in the country and needs a start; they're in for 12....oh, there's a guy who's been out of work so long his children are starving, he'll work for minimum wage.

Thank God for the minimum wage!

Without unions there would be no minimum wage. Without unions there would be no forty hour week. Without unions it would be a free-for-all.

Eventually some poor guy will come along and work for free, as long as he can take a chicken home to feed his family.