I will not buy SK because they closed the doors and opened back up non-union. Plus, they got bought by a big company, which also killed any interest I had in them.
And Knipex is union.
Union support amongst the population is at historically low levels. If the general population used that as a sole barometer, unions would disappear in a day. It has always fascinated me that some folks will absolutely seek out union manufactured stuff that way, when most people have the opposite opinion of them.
Having been an engineer at Ford, I will say that had they closed the doors are re-opened up them as non-union, the place would have thrived. The vast majority of union members I worked with were fantastic, but the **** that was in place to prevent me from being able to do my job was insufferable (this is not to say management was much better......incompetence or bureaucracy, they both sucked). There is a reason virtually all of the foreign OEM's are setting up shops in the non-union south.....especially, ironically, the German ones (given how strong European unions are).
That's not even getting into the practices of the Carpenters Union who hires people from the unemployment office to picket outfits that hire non-union contractors. Locally, the targets included non-profits such as churches, YMCA, etc. Of course, it was pretty dang funny when some of the schleps that hired to picket outside of one of the churches turned out to be registered *** offenders (that was in Dandrige, TN).
