Forum Post: How Labor got Sucker Punched.

The Labor movement in the U.S. probably reached its peak in the 1970's. One of the most important issues the Labor Movement had to deal with was pensions.

One problem that always seems to face the labor movement is that management is very agile. Management can change course quickly, whereas the labor movement is about fighting for the best wage now, and retirement, at the same time.

But what made sense in the 70's may no longer make sense 20 or 30 years later when the pensions actually come home to roost and suddenly the U.S. has much stiffer competition from all over the world.

And those huge union pension funds many times were invested in international stocks. In essence, union pension fund managers inadvertently helped accelerate competition from around the world that would boomerang against the U.S. and actually make it more difficult to pay those pre-agreed to pensions as competition increased.

I have no solutions, just pointing out that the very nature of unions to fight for the best wage now and the most security later is a sort of oxymoron. It's like, choose one of those two, but nobody will admit to that.