They Just Don't Get It!

Here is a quiz, of sorts.

Picture yourself as a small business owner, with several hundred employees. You make a good profit, and as a good businessman you build a contingency fund to help get you through the bad times that always eventually come. You establish a line of credit to pay for inventory and supplies.

Along comes a union, and infests your business. They tell the workers that YOU are making too much. They require you to pay your employees more than the average wage, and demand you provide better-than-average benefits. Well, there go those extra profits for building a buffer for bad times, and for expansion.

Now the economy starts to sag. Orders drop by 20%, so you are short of cash. This shortage results in paying the bank a little late for the inventory and supplies because the union has taken your "buffer" contingency fund. So now the bank cuts off your line of credit.

Now you have a business to run, but a) your business is down 20% so you do not need as many employeees, since you cannot afford to pay people to NOT produce, and b) your credit has been cut off because you no longer have a contingency fund. Your inventory and productioon costs must be limited to available cash on hand - and in a recession, that can be scarce.

So, you have no choice - you have to lay off employees. The unions put you in a precarious position, and the banks took away your ability to buy supplies.

Along come a bunch of powerful, bleeding heart liberals who tell you that if you lay those workers off, you have to give them all "golden parachutes" - a huge severance pay, plus continue paying for their benefit packages. In other words, you are now being put in the position of having to lay off even more people, because you simply cannot provide welfare to those people you already laid off (pay them to NOT work).

These people, and the high powered politicians supporting them are making YOU the bad guy, even though it was the union and the bank that caused the problem. The union took your "excess profits", and when the economy faltered, the bank walked out on you. But YOU are held up as the bad guy.

Well, that is happening all over the country. And in the case of one Chicago business, Obama, Jesse Jackson and other "rabble rousers" are supporting the laid off workers, and blaming the business for laying them off. If they were HONEST, they would put the blame where it belongs - on the unions and the banks.

We all know that unions are famous for getting their members higher than normal pay, and better than normal benefits. They have no qualms about milking the employer to the max. But when the economy sours and the employer no longer has anything that can be milked, the unions cry foul, and go on strike, hurting the very business that has been supporting families very well for years.

The poroblem lies in the simple fact that people like Obama and Jackson don't have a clue, but like to think they are God's gift. Neither has ever run a production shop. Neither has ever had employees depending upon them. Neither has ever been forced to pay homage to a union. And neither has ever been dependent upon a line of credit for inventory. So, neither of them has a clue what the problem is. So, they make the business owner the scapegoat, because they owe too much to the unions and banks..

I suggest that they refrain from taking sides until they have tried running a job shop. Until then, they are merely ignorant fools trying to play bigshot.

But the problem runs deeper - Obama and many other powerful democratic leaders owe their positions of power to the unions and the banks. So there is little hope that those "leaders" will ever place the blame where it belongs.

But short of putting blame where it is due, the least Obama and his minions can do is to simply refrain from putting their weight behind those who are wrong. Stay out of it. Leave the business owner alone - he has done nothing wrong. Like the rest of us, he is just trying to survive until the good times return. If you keep kicking him when he is down, he will stay down longer - and so will the economy.

By the way - the bank that pulled the credit line? You guessed it - our old nemesis, Bank of America. What is really outrageous is that Bank of America was the recipient of a HUGE amount of bailout money, provided by the taxpayers. And this is how they repay us for our help. Once more - if you are doing business with Bank of America, you should be ashamed. Yes, the bank will likely backtrack, because of public outcry, and because the Governor of Illinois has hammered them. But if they give in, it's not because they are a "good bank". It's only because they are trying to avoid a really bad PR moment.

As a side note, one of those laid off workers, unable to even speak English, was complaining because she could no longer afford her $1800 per month mortgage. Imagine how much her employer must have been paying her if her home, alone, was costing over $20,000 per year! I'm well off, and a business owner and my mortgage is less than that! You can see how the union was bleeding the employer if his employees could all have such expensive homes. For years those employees were all too willing to take, take, and take. More pay! More benefits! Longer vacations! And now that it's time to pay the piper, they cry foul, and blame the guy who supported them very well all those years (35 years). They sound like a bunch of spoiled ingrates. Bt in any case, they are punishing the wrong person - they should be venting their anger at the union that weakened the company, and the bank that pulled the rug out from under them.

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