January, 2009:

via Exxon Mobil Reports Record $45.2 Billion Profit For 2008.

HOUSTON — Exxon Mobil Corp. on Friday reported a profit of $45.2 billion for 2008, breaking its own record for a U.S. company, even as its fourth-quarter earnings fell 33 percent from a year ago.

The previous record for annual profit was $40.6 billion, which the world’s largest publicly traded oil company set in 2007.

The extraordinary full-year profit wasn’t a surprise given crude’s triple-digit price for much of 2008, peaking near an unheard of $150 a barrel in July. Since then, however, prices have fallen roughly 70 percent amid a deepening global economic crisis.

That is world record profits two years running! I wonder what the hourly wage is of their unionized oil rig workers. Let’s see. The name of the union is the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union. The oil rig workers make over $100,000 per year. If you apply Republican logic to this, the oil companies must be on the brink of collapse paying their worker such high wages.

From Rigzone.com:

Salaries for the most sought-after categories of oil workers have risen about a third over the past four years, according to Stephen Whittaker of Schlumberger Ltd., the world’s biggest oil-services company by revenue. An experienced “roughneck,” the nickname for rig workers, can make $100,000 a year, and top white-collar engineers can make as much as $500,000 a year, industry analysts and officials said.

But wait! Exxon Mobile is the biggest profiteer in the world! With union wages so high, how can this be?

Maybe the Republicans are wrong about unions. Maybe unions aren’t driving businesses in the ground. Maybe it’s something else.

What if business go under because of mismanagement? Or what if businesses go under because of piss poor prior planning? Or what if businesses go under because of bad investments by the CEOs? What if businesses go under from competition? Do you still think labor unions are the reason behind businesses failure?