Well, that pretty well sums up conservative ideology -- interested in an adult discussion? No. Interested in a hate party? Hell yeah!
Although labor unions have been celebrated in folk songs and stories as fearless champions of the downtrodden working man, this is not how economists see them. Economists who study unions—including some who are avowedly prounion—analyze them as cartels that raise wages above competitive levels by restricting the supply of labor to various firms and industries.
Many unions have won higher wages and better working conditions for their members. In doing so, however, they have reduced the number of jobs available in unionized companies. That second effect occurs because of the basic law of demand: if unions successfully raise the price of labor, employers will purchase less of it. Thus, unions are a major anticompetitive force in labor markets. Their gains come at the expense of consumers, nonunion workers, the jobless, taxpayers, and owners of corporations.
According to Harvard economists Richard Freeman and James Medoff, who look favorably on unions, “Most, if not all, unions have monopoly power, which they can use to raise wages above competitive levels” (1984, p. 6). Unions’ power to fix high prices for their members’ labor rests on legal privileges and immunities that they get from government, both by statute and by nonenforcement of other laws. The purpose of these legal privileges is to restrict others from working for lower wages. As antiunion economist Ludwig von Mises wrote in 1922, “The long and short of trade union rights is in fact the right to proceed against the strikebreaker with primitive violence.” Interestingly, those who are expected to enforce the laws evenhandedly, the police, are themselves heavily unionized.
U.S. unions enjoy many legal privileges. Unions are immune from taxation and from antitrust laws. Companies are legally compelled to bargain with unions in “good faith.” This innocent-sounding term is interpreted by the National Labor Relations Board to suppress such practices as Boulwarism, named for a former General Electric personnel director. To shorten the collective bargaining process, Lemuel Boulware communicated the “reasonableness” of GE’s wage offer directly to employees, shareholders, and the public. Unions also can force companies to make their property available for union use.
Once the government ratifies a union’s position as representing a group of workers, it represents them exclusively, whether or not particular employees want collective representation. In 2002, unions represented about 1.7 million waged and salaried employees who were not union members. Also, union officials can force compulsory union dues from employees—members and nonmembers alike—as a condition for keeping their jobs. Unions often use these funds for political purposes—political campaigns and voter registration, for example—unrelated to collective bargaining or to employee grievances, despite the illegality of this under federal law. Unions are relatively immune from payment of tort damages for injuries inflicted in labor disputes, from federal court injunctions, and from many state laws under the “federal preemption” doctrine. Nobel laureate Friedrich A. Hayek summed it up as follows: “We have now reached a state where [unions] have become uniquely privileged institutions to which the general rules of law do not apply” (1960, p. 267).
Labor unions cannot prosper in a competitive environment. Like other successful cartels, they depend on government patronage and protection. Worker cartels grew in surges during the two world wars and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Federal laws—the Railway Act of 1926 (amended in 1934), the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932, the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, the Walsh-Healy Act of 1936, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, various war labor boards, and the Kennedy administration’s encouragement of public-sector unionism in 1962—all added to unions’ monopoly power.
Most unions in the private sector are in crafts and industries that have few companies or that are concentrated in one region of the country. This makes sense. Both factors—few employers and regionally concentrated employers—make organizing easier. Conversely, the large number of employers and the regional dispersion of employers sharply limit unionization in trade, services, and agriculture. A 2002 unionization rate of 37.5 percent in the government sector, more than four times the 8.5 percent rate in the private sector, further demonstrates that unions do best in heavily regulated, monopolistic environments. Even within the private sector, the highest unionization rates (23.8 percent) are in transportation (airlines, railroads, trucking, urban transit, etc.) and public utilities (21.8 percent), two heavily regulated industries.
...
So that makes these lists defensible?
In my sector, which is very competitive environment for workers seeking work (too many available workers per job) being a union member, which usually results from getting a good job, is a sign of success, indicates a high level of skill and the ability to be reliable and work hard.
Lets remember that workers are human beings with families and needs, not machines.
Of course it is best for an employer to find the smartest hardest working people who will work for cheap. The challenge for those who care about people, is that the even smartest hardest working people get sick, develop disabilities, have problems that may interfere with work a bit, and slow down with age a bit while at the same time they they bring the benefit of years of experience, knowledge and skills. Without union protection, good people who worked hard all their lives are treated like trash when their corporation employer finds a way to get someone faster and cheaper. As we know, that faster, cheaper person might be an illegal immigrant or the resident of an impoverished country where the corporation moves part of their operations.
Providing information, discussing, convincing, embarrassing and shunning are ethical and legal ways to influence someone who is acting irresponsibly.
Well, that pretty well sums up conservative ideology -- interested in an adult discussion? No. Interested in a hate party? Hell yeah!
Only ALEC is not a bit player, nor are they countering union influence and membership in every corner of our economy. That is fiction in your head.
No, since your post that I responded to spoke only of the one organization:
I'm sorry that your 'fact' was wrong but trying to 'fix' it now only makes your argument even more bizarre.
Nothing is as pervasive in politics as ALEC. Deny all you want but almost every single republican state politician and some dems are not only lobbied by ALEC but are actually MEMBERS of that ****ing organization that is lobbying them. Dumbass state politicians are pushing through the ALEC legislation with so much committment that they get caught not even changing the wording where they are supposed to take out "ALEC" and put in their name when submitting the legislation.
There is no equivalence no matter how much you want to spin.
The union posts where people work by department, not where they live. Only another worker would be able to easilly find the person and there are plenty of laws against workplace harassment and lawsuit opportunities for the victim.
LOL
Let's see, SEIU organizes public employees, so that union manipulation and exploitation at the state level. The NEA is the teachers unions, which means union manipulation and exploitation in public schools. The AFL-CIO organizes in the private sector, so along with it's affiliated unions, attempts to organize industry, construction, and a myriad of other industries.
So, perhaps you're right, just fiction in my mind. The fact the White House visitor record documents frequent visits from the unions and frequent attendance by the Obama Administration to Democracy Alliance meetings pretty much destroys any arguments you're trying to make.
Obviously the only fiction going on here is in your mind, not mine. As you've demonstrated quite well.
LOL. Massive FAIL again. You should have quit while you were behind. Your post attempted to suggest the Koch Bros were outspending the Democracy Alliance. They aren't even in the same league. [...]
Altho pretty far off topic, I think we can call that "fact" a rather massive fail:
"According to a June 2014 report by Politico, "The 21 groups at the core of the Democracy Alliance’s portfolio intend to spend $374 million during the [2014] midterm election cycle [...]" Democracy Alliance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"A 2013 study by the Center for Responsive Politics said that nonprofit groups backed by a donor network organized by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch raised more than $400 million in the 2011–2012 election cycle.[39]" Political activities of the Koch brothers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Doh! :doh
Your quotes don't compare the two groups' spending at the same time. The union spending you referenced was during a midterm election period while your reference for the Koch bro's groups' spending took place during a presidential election cycle. You shouldn't compare those numbers as all group spending is probably significantly higher during a presidential cycle.
It's close enough to debunk the poster's original claim:Your quotes don't compare the two groups' spending at the same time. The union spending you referenced was during a midterm election period while your reference for the Koch bro's groups' spending took place during a presidential election cycle. You shouldn't compare those numbers as all group spending is probably significantly higher during a presidential cycle.
The fact is the Democracy Alliance, the mothership of the Progressive Machine, has done more to influence legislation in Washington, draft bills, influence anti-business legislation, fund elections, and spread propaganda across the United States than ALEC or any conservative group could dream to have done. [...]
I couldn't agree more with your description of right wing debate tactics :thumbs:This thread is a perfect example of facts don't matter, it is just about what they want. They will ignore your use of facts, even though they are correct.
It's an optional organization at an optional job in an optional career path. It's all options, and they're still freeloading.
Sometimes the enemy to the working man is the corporate executive, and sometimes he's the guy next to you who's willing to undermine the battles that you've spent blood and treasure fighting. Desertion during a war can earn you a death sentence historically, I don't see how printing a name on a webpage for a similar level of selfishness is even in the same ballpark.
Slippery slope - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
No one is arguing that you must join a union.
If the company's profits don't match the wealth of society, then there's exploitation, and the people should counteract that to restore balance.
It's all relative. If we make the foreign goods less pleasant to purchase because we force them to manufacture at our own domestic levels of environmental standards and worker protections, the American worker and an American product look much more attractive.
That doesn't look level
It's overdue for a return. I'm surprised that the corporations are keeping people scared of retaliation rather than claiming a fair share.
Here's the history of defined benefit pension plans in the private sector:
Here's the history of middle class share of income over a similar period:
Those are both due for a correction, and unions are the tool to reverse those trends.
Unions aren't there to destroy a company, they're there to balance the interests of the workers with the interests of the corporation.
Exporting jobs isn't a progressive policy.
Don't want to pay for the benefits of a union job? Get a job that isn't union. If you like the job so much, pay to help maintain it and grow it for others.
All my points have been coherent and drawn from many years of direct experience. You on the other hand have none and only offer opinion base on poltical leanings.
I can back it up just fine. I just won't get into a discussion with a person who lacks the requisite knowledge to be a part of the conversation.
Like I said, you lack the requisite knowledge. I'm not talking to you like you're dung, you're the belligerent one. I just know when time would be wasted.
Like, right now for instance.
Good day!
Wrong. Based on political contributions, GE is a larger supporter of Republicans.[...] Are GE, and Apple "foreign goods"? Because I'm pretty sure that both of those companies are American, and both pretty big supporters of demo's, that took our money and shifted jobs to China to avoid high taxes... [...]
He, or you, are welcome to provide your own data proving your claims. I won't be holding my breath. In the meantime, he has clearly failed.
What "requisite knowledge" do I need to realize that you just made up words that have no meaning [...]
I can back it up just fine. I just won't get into a discussion with a person who lacks the requisite knowledge to be a part of the conversation.
Another post that makes no sense whatsoever, other than a transparent attempt to cover your a) failure, and b) inability to substantiate your claim, with an ad hominem to boot. It is stunning that one would even offer up such a retort, for it is so clearly a fail. You folks need to study up on debate at least a little bit, for what you are putting forth is quite simply embarrassing.Sometimes rational people discern that it is just not worth the effort to put in the time to prove something that is clear enough a 4th grader could see to some nameless, faceless pseudo intellectual on a discussion board...Good grief, get a life.
That's quite the assumption of me jet, which not only makes you look silly, but is quite wrong.
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