You Just Can't Get Good Goons Nowadays

Via Glenn Reynolds, although Kenny Gladney might quibble on the efficacy of union beatings, historical comparisons aside.

At Washington Examiner, “Sunday Reflection: Hard to get good goons these days“:

So the public employee unions have been on the defensive across the nation, and they’ve been losing battles in state capitols from Wisconsin, to Ohio, to Tennessee.

Although there have been some violent incidents and death threats, overall, despite the talk from many right-leaning pundits about “union goons,” the actual danger posed by the union members appears to have been very small by labor-historical standards. Apparently, you just can’t get good goons nowadays.

And that makes sense. In the old days of the labor movement, the unionized industries were, you know, actual industries, involving miners, steelworkers and the like. And those are trades that foster exactly the qualities you need in good goons.

Why? Because they’re very dangerous activities that put a premium on teamwork. (Even in totalitarian countries, people know that it’s dangerous to get the miners upset.)

Those kinds of work foster a mind-set that’s not entirely different from what you find in successful combat troops: team spirit, the sense that you have to rely on your peers to cover your back, and you’d better do the same for them. (Also, in those lines of work it’s easy for those suspected of shaky loyalty to have “accidents.”)

When people who are used to dealing with cave-ins, or ladles of molten metal, hit the streets, they’re putting those traits to work in an environment that’s probably less dangerous than the one they work in every day. That makes them pretty formidable.

In fact, it made them so formidable that they were able to put together unions solid enough to send the industries they depended on overseas, where labor was more tractable, because the bosses weren’t willing to face the headache of trying to get rid of the unions, and couldn’t afford to pay the wages the unions, with their toughness, had managed to extract.

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