I know a former construction company CEO(the recession destroyed him and he drives a 10 year old Buick and lives in a 2 bedroom apartment...he's 80 and is happy enough) who told me an interesting story one day. His company usually built gas stations, office buildings, and some other commercial buildings. He stated that from his observations that the non-union labor, concentrated mostly in the Heartland(Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, etc..), in comparison to the unionized labor in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania, was far, far superior in overall worksmanship as well as being a lot cheaper.
I guess you can compare that the non-unionized labor in the US that cranks out Toyotas, BMWs, and Hondas have far better quality than the dogshit that Ford, GM, and Chrysler puts out with their stupidly grossly overinflated Union pay and benefits packages.
Unions...a resounding Con.
I think your theory might be suffering from "incorrect association"
If i understand your conclusions right:
1. Products with non unionized labor such as Toyotas, BMW's and Hondas are better
2. Product made with unionized labor such as GM, Dodge, Ford etc are not as good
Therefore unionized products are of poorer quality.
However, there are many other things that factor into the overall quality of a product for example in cars:
- The quality of parts and materials used to keep the costs at a specific level to produce the product and price competitively in a particular market
- The overall retail cost compared to the profit margin considering the cost of materials and workmanship
- The decision made by the company execs to produce a much inferior product (workmanship and materials) knowing that there will always be a market for cheaper American cars compared to more expensive imports
- The decision by execs to use cheaper poor quality parts to increase profit
Many times whats happens is, execs tell engineers to make a product that cost "x" to manufacture and that anything over that is unexceptionable.
To simply say union workers produce inferior products is a false because too many other things factor into how a product is produce.
I agree UAW does not benefit the industry as it should. But Unions in principle are necessary, without them workers fall prey to an employment monopoly.
Also, there are many companies that don't have Unions that work just fine as they treat their workers well for fear of unionization.