Unions VS companies

It is that time of the year when nationwide and over the top unions have meetings with their company counterparts in order to set salaries for the employed.
Sadly, as usual, no-one of the involved are thinking outside the box or taking our future and our reality into account.

Unions are demanding sky-high salary increases at a time when pay should be going down.

Company chieftains and CEO’s in turn are giving themselves absurd increases by hundreds of percent on already, in most cases, too high wages. This is of course yet another idiocy that increases union demands.

And thanks to the central bank, and their kill-what’s-left-of-the-economy policy, inflation is on the rise while bubbles are forming in the economy. Meanwhile the government is doing their best to alienate as many as possible.

No-one seem to recognize that we are in a dangerous situation with very shaky fundaments comes to both our own and the world’s economy. It is not only Greece, Portugal, Spain and the Baltic States that are in trouble. UK and the US are also not yet over the hill and are far more likely to plummet down again then to actually reach a steady foundation again.

I understand both sides in the Employees VS Employer debacle. Companies have done badly, in general, lately and some of them probably see the peril we’re in. Unions only see to their own members and CEO’s divulging themselves into feasts doesn’t make things better.

This is likely a recipe of disaster, one way or the other.

So what should or can be done?

Well, firstly companies and their so called leaders need to acknowledge how bad it looks when in time of a recession and layoffs they increase their own. It looks greedy and even worse, it is very bad leadership. To lead is to be an example, not only barking out orders or look at economic graphs. To me it seems that Sweden has bad management also within companies. Maybe the unions should, in exchange for smaller or zero increases, demand that CEO’s and others elevated people cut their salaries?

Secondly we need unions to accept that private companies are not theirs to control or be masters over. They should fight for their members, sure, but that also means that sometimes they need to understand basic economics and see that too high increases may serve some, but be disastrous for many. Unions don’t really fight for their members and they certainly do not fight for their unemployed members. This need to change.

But most importantly, we need lower taxes. Pay increases is one thing, what you can buy with your salary is another. In this regard the current Swedish government has taken slight baby steps towards a better situation, but not nearly enough.

Basically we don’t have time or the resources to fight over a couple of bucks, so I do hope a agreement can be reach fast and that they are reasonable from each part.