Union Thugs - Making Life Interesting

I received the e-mail alert below yesterday at work.  Names and locations have been altered to protect the innocent.

Picketers on [Company's Name] Road

We are aware that Glazier’s Local Union 751 is picketing today on public property along [Company Name] Road, near the entrances to Building 1, 2 & 3 and 4, 5 & 6.  Our understanding is the union is protesting a subcontractor's use of nonunion personnel to renovate some buildings on campus.  We respect the union’s right to gather and picket on public property.  [Company Name] is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate in employment and personnel practices on the basis of race, sex, age, handicap, religion, national origin or any other basis prohibited by applicable law.

Please refrain from engaging with picketers, and exercise caution as you enter and exit onto [Company Name] Road, as always.
Any safety or security concerns should be reported immediately to [Company Name] Security  at xxx-xxx-xxxx.

So, here I am, a lowly office drone when I see this e-mail.  My initial thought when I saw the headline was that someone was protesting some product or other that we manufacture.  Then I realized it's picketers, not protesters.   So when I read it, and realized it's a union thing, I couldn't help but laugh.  My company didn't not hire unions (intentional double negative), they hired a subcontractor who did not hire unions.  This is so that they could compete with other offers, and actually get the work done at an affordable price to us.

The part that really boggles my mind, however, is that a local union group would come protest that.  If your unions didn't artificially raise the cost of doing business the way they do, and understood the importance of a free market, you would have actual work to do, perhaps even here on our campus.  Instead, you get to go hold signs outside a business that couldn't care less about your petty squabbles, making yourselves look like nitwits who have nothing better to do than...well...stand around holding signs, annoying people. 

When will the unions realize that they have outlived their usefulness, and at this point are merely just digging their own graves deeper?  I absolutely understand the importance for the unions to have been formed when they were, and that they served a wonderful purpose.  However, laws in America have been changed, and there is such a foundation of precedent in court for employees rights that I would say the effort and intent of unions was a success long ago.  Since that has been the case, they have done nothing to better the system, and have begun to have a negative impact instead. 

Maybe we should all picket union shops, and demand that they go away.    Oh, right, the rest of us have jobs we have to do.