The Right to Work for less money

They did a wonderful job of growing the middle class in Detroit, didn't they?
Detroit is a good example of bad union management. That is a fact I saw for myself back in the sixties when I bought a 1964 Pontiac Catalina that had a bad smell in it throughout the first summer. When the driver's side window came off the track and the door panel was removed to fix it they found an empty Pepsi can and the remains of a partially finished sandwich of some kind, which accounts for the smell.

What this revealed was a decline in quality due to increasing prevalence of low-life employees whom management was unable to purge due to the wrongful application of union power. While this is definitely wrong it is by no means typical of all unions and it should not be allowed to foster a prejudice against all unions.

And it should be kept in mind that unions are democracies. Leadership is elected and policies are adopted and controlled by membership. Obviously the UAW became infested with low-lifes and the result was the near failure of the U.S. auto industry because of the gradual decrease in quality of U.S. cars compared with the Japanese and Germans.

By all means drastic action must be taken by union membership to weed out the cause of this problem. But by no means should the baby be tossed out with the bathwater. What happened in Detroit is something which can be fixed -- and a properly managed union can fix it. Union leaders know who the problem workers are and they should not be protected.

I have never met a union member I had a problem with. I have, however, met quite a few union bosses that I would cross the street to avoid pissing on if they were on fire. Generally, when I complain about unions, I am talking about the decisions of the management, like the recent strike that put Hostess out of work. Even other unions criticized them for that strike.
 
It isn't about the right to work for less money. It's about the right to work and not being forced to join a union. Let's cut the bullshit. And there's at least 2 if not 3 other threads on this.

Gee, okay, let's cut the bullshit. There are about 500 threads on "Obama's a Marxist, racist, socialist, globalist, statist and not an American; it's the Obama Great Recession and he hates white people, is a Muslim and want's to take everyone's gun away, raise taxes on eveyone, stole the election and cheated his way into college, law school the state and US Senate, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc."

There should be more threads on the effort of the GOP leadership and there efforts to remake America into a Fascist Plutocracy, for there is evidence to support such a conclusion - Walker, Snyder, Scott, Bachmann, Norquist, Limbaugh, Hannity, Fox & Friends, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, Cheney, Libby, Wolfowitz - shall I go on?

You seem like the perfect idiot left wing hack to start them.
 
But what you are contending we should do simply doesn't work that way. The value of something can not be set arbitrarily. For the guy that claims to have studied economics I would think you would understand this concept. The value of anything is determined by scarcity and demand. Something's value, labor in this case, can't arbitrarily jump from $10/hr to $15/hr without one of those other factors changing as well. This is basic supply and demand curve stuff, which they teach in basic econ which you claimed to have studied. And even if some law were passed that made that happen it wouldn't have the outcome you think it would. Wage increases to that extent across such so much of labor force don't happen in a vacuum. The costs of goods and services are going to go up accordingly. In short raising minimum wages is a) immoral because you don't have the right to be the only person in the transaction that gets a say in what you make and b) it's impossible because you can't raise the cost of something in vacuum and expect that all other market conditions are going to remain where they were before you arbitrarily raised wages.

Sure it can, and is, frequently, by companies, governments, people, organizations (OPEC) etc.

But it is not arbitrary. We can set targets based on past times (1950 the FMW went up 87.5%). Unemployment at the same time, went from 6.5% in 1950, to 2.7% just 24 months later. Consider within the context of other factors, and you can predict certain benefits from broad-based wage increasing.

Next, ask where you want to go: 4% GDP increase; eliminate 2 or 3 percentage points on unemployment? Then look at times that happened, or nearly did, and what the economic impact was. And of course experiment: if bad shit happens, course correct. Or if good things happen, debrief, and add if needed, or save it in the quiver for times the economy needs the boost.

Be strategic, and NOT ARBITRARY!!!

Or if you want to make more money, do something that's worth more money.

Look up attribution error / bias. Learn about environment's roll in all our success.
 
Wages are lower in RTW states.



That right exists in all 50 states. Its called IF YOU DON'T WANT A UNION JOB DON'T APPLY FOR ONE AT A UNION SHOP. Take PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, and quite WHINING.

Beyond that, union shops are already illegal.

No they aren't. CLOSED shops are illegal. Union shops are legal in non-RTgetfired states.

That's not accurate. Union shops (join the union or be fired) are illegal under the Taft-Hartley Act. What you're thinking of is an agency shop, which says workers can join the union or pay a fee to the union for their share of collective bargaining costs.
 
Question: Is there anything that says non union employees must be compensated the same as union employees in a RTW state? In other words, if an employer wants to pay his union employees a higher overall compensation than his non union employees, is he not free to do so?

The union has a legally enforceable duty to represent all workers. There's a Supreme Court case on the topic (International Ass'n of Machinists v. Street).
 
Question: Is there anything that says non union employees must be compensated the same as union employees in a RTW state? In other words, if an employer wants to pay his union employees a higher overall compensation than his non union employees, is he not free to do so?

I beleive union shops pay all workers on the the same scale, vis a vis the union contract.

Why would the union put into place a contract in a RTW state that guarantees non members get the same compensation and benefits as their members do. That seems illogical.

What I'm wondering is, are employers in RTW states required by law to pay union members and non union members the same?

They do it because they're required by law to do so.
 
Why would the union put into place a contract in a RTW state that guarantees non members get the same compensation and benefits as their members do. That seems illogical.

What I'm wondering is, are employers in RTW states required by law to pay union members and non union members the same?

So that their members are not priced out of the job. Non union folks can be brought in, temporarily, but at the same cost. (no economic benefit to employer for hiring non-members). RTW merely remove the provision that non union can only be temporary. The idea, and all it accomplishes, is to starve unions of funds, by lowering dues they collect.

Republicans got on the union-hate bandwagon, largely because teachers unions sided with Dems and became a huge force of motivated volunteers for getting out the vote on election day. And it's kinda short sighted, since union johnny lunchbuckets were Reagan Dems and Reps, by a large margin. Hell; Alaska is a Red State and has the highest level of unionization of all 50 states. Kinda stupid, but something we've come to expect from Republicans, whose stupidity never ceases to amaze.

The only stupidity here is the notion that this is somehow a bad thing. Now a person gets to work for an employer that is mostly unionized with the confidence that they will succeed or fail on their own merits. The fact that you wouldn't reply to my earlier post suggest your running out of legs to stand on in this debate.

This assumes the worker has some specialized set of skills. Absent that, it just means the employer will fire them and bring it someone cheaper.
 
They did a wonderful job of growing the middle class in Detroit, didn't they?
Detroit is a good example of bad union management. That is a fact I saw for myself back in the sixties when I bought a 1964 Pontiac Catalina that had a bad smell in it throughout the first summer. When the driver's side window came off the track and the door panel was removed to fix it they found an empty Pepsi can and the remains of a partially finished sandwich of some kind, which accounts for the smell.

What this revealed was a decline in quality due to increasing prevalence of low-life employees whom management was unable to purge due to the wrongful application of union power. While this is definitely wrong it is by no means typical of all unions and it should not be allowed to foster a prejudice against all unions.

And it should be kept in mind that unions are democracies. Leadership is elected and policies are adopted and controlled by membership. Obviously the UAW became infested with low-lifes and the result was the near failure of the U.S. auto industry because of the gradual decrease in quality of U.S. cars compared with the Japanese and Germans.

By all means drastic action must be taken by union membership to weed out the cause of this problem. But by no means should the baby be tossed out with the bathwater. What happened in Detroit is something which can be fixed -- and a properly managed union can fix it. Union leaders know who the problem workers are and they should not be protected.

I have never met a union member I had a problem with. I have, however, met quite a few union bosses that I would cross the street to avoid pissing on if they were on fire. Generally, when I complain about unions, I am talking about the decisions of the management, like the recent strike that put Hostess out of work. Even other unions criticized them for that strike.
Only one other union was critical of the Hostess bakers union and that was the Teamsters local which also represented Hostess employees -- the delivery drivers.

In this conflict the bakers' union was way ahead of the Teamsters in terms of awareness of what the company was up to, which included looting the pension fund in advance of a planned bankruptcy and shut-down. Hostess Loots Pension Funds For Operations, Deemed ‘Betrayal Without Remedy’ It seems bad publicity about the negative health effects of Hostess' flagship products was taking the company down and the board was planning to cash in as big as possible before shutting down by giving the employees as little as possible.

This conflict is a textbook example of why having two unions in the same company is like a man having two wives in the same house. In this example the Teamsters were concerned only with wages and benefits and chose to not support the bakers whose analyst was warning of the company executive board's secret intention -- which turned out to be true.
 
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you lost me, dismissing and violating deriding what? the right not to be forced to act against what one considers or perceives as their own interests?

Yeah.. sorry. I'm clearly doing a piss-poor job of communicating here.

What I'm getting at is Obama, and opponents of right-to-work legislation, are clearly mocking it when they say it's "really" about the "right to work for less money". But I kept thinking about that phrase "the right to work for less money" and realized that really is what it's all about. That's the core question at the heart of the labor movement: Do non-union members have a right to compete for jobs by agreeing to work for less money? Or fewer benefits? Or any other concessions they wish to make?

Or, should they respect the union's "turf"?

As I've said, if a union negotiates in good faith for an exclusive labor contract with an employer, more power to them. But there's a legitimate question over whether negotiations conducted via current labor law represent "good faith". I don't think they do. My understanding of the gist of those laws is that employees can force a union contract on an employer by simply voting to make it so. That's not negotiation.
 
So that their members are not priced out of the job. Non union folks can be brought in, temporarily, but at the same cost. (no economic benefit to employer for hiring non-members). RTW merely remove the provision that non union can only be temporary. The idea, and all it accomplishes, is to starve unions of funds, by lowering dues they collect.

Republicans got on the union-hate bandwagon, largely because teachers unions sided with Dems and became a huge force of motivated volunteers for getting out the vote on election day. And it's kinda short sighted, since union johnny lunchbuckets were Reagan Dems and Reps, by a large margin. Hell; Alaska is a Red State and has the highest level of unionization of all 50 states. Kinda stupid, but something we've come to expect from Republicans, whose stupidity never ceases to amaze.

The only stupidity here is the notion that this is somehow a bad thing. Now a person gets to work for an employer that is mostly unionized with the confidence that they will succeed or fail on their own merits. The fact that you wouldn't reply to my earlier post suggest your running out of legs to stand on in this debate.

This assumes the worker has some specialized set of skills. Absent that, it just means the employer will fire them and bring it someone cheaper.

When you need a washer and dryer and decide on the exact brand and model you want what do you do?
Pay $150 more for one of them?
Employers DO THE SAME DAMN THING that YOU do every day.
Making decisions for the benefit of the company JUST LIKE YOU DO in your financial decisions.
Damn, why is this so hard to understand?
 
Detroit is a good example of bad union management. That is a fact I saw for myself back in the sixties when I bought a 1964 Pontiac Catalina that had a bad smell in it throughout the first summer. When the driver's side window came off the track and the door panel was removed to fix it they found an empty Pepsi can and the remains of a partially finished sandwich of some kind, which accounts for the smell.

What this revealed was a decline in quality due to increasing prevalence of low-life employees whom management was unable to purge due to the wrongful application of union power. While this is definitely wrong it is by no means typical of all unions and it should not be allowed to foster a prejudice against all unions.

And it should be kept in mind that unions are democracies. Leadership is elected and policies are adopted and controlled by membership. Obviously the UAW became infested with low-lifes and the result was the near failure of the U.S. auto industry because of the gradual decrease in quality of U.S. cars compared with the Japanese and Germans.

By all means drastic action must be taken by union membership to weed out the cause of this problem. But by no means should the baby be tossed out with the bathwater. What happened in Detroit is something which can be fixed -- and a properly managed union can fix it. Union leaders know who the problem workers are and they should not be protected.

I have never met a union member I had a problem with. I have, however, met quite a few union bosses that I would cross the street to avoid pissing on if they were on fire. Generally, when I complain about unions, I am talking about the decisions of the management, like the recent strike that put Hostess out of work. Even other unions criticized them for that strike.
Only one other union was critical of the Hostess bakers union and that was the Teamsters local which also represented Hostess employees -- the delivery drivers.

In this conflict the bakers' union was way ahead of the Teamsters in terms of awareness of what the company was up to, which included looting the pension fund in advance of a planned bankruptcy and shut-down. Hostess Loots Pension Funds For Operations, Deemed ‘Betrayal Without Remedy’ It seems bad publicity about the negative health effects of Hostess' flagship products was taking the company down and the board was planning to cash in as big as possible before shutting down by giving the employees as little as possible.

This conflict is a textbook example of why having two unions in the same company is like a man having two wives in the same house. In this example the Teamsters were concerned only with wages and benefits and chose to not support the bakers whose analyst was warning of the company executive board's secret intention -- which turned out to be true.

If the union leadership was right why didn't they hold an election and explain their position to the members?
 
you lost me, dismissing and violating deriding what? the right not to be forced to act against what one considers or perceives as their own interests?

Yeah.. sorry. I'm clearly doing a piss-poor job of communicating here.

What I'm getting at is Obama, and opponents of right-to-work legislation, are clearly mocking it when they say it's "really" about the "right to work for less money". But I kept thinking about that phrase "the right to work for less money" and realized that really is what it's all about. That's the core question at the heart of the labor movement: Do non-union members have a right to compete for jobs by agreeing to work for less money? Or fewer benefits? Or any other concessions they wish to make?

Or, should they respect the union's "turf"?

As I've said, if a union negotiates in good faith for an exclusive labor contract with an employer, more power to them. But there's a legitimate question over whether negotiations conducted via current labor law represent "good faith". I don't think they do. My understanding of the gist of those laws is that employees can force a union contract on an employer by simply voting to make it so. That's not negotiation.

The problem is that by giving non-members that "right", you're making the decision for everyone.

Current law doesn't force a union contract on the employer. It forces them having to recognize the union as the representative of the workers. And even that law is paper thin and employers routinely flout it.
 
The only stupidity here is the notion that this is somehow a bad thing. Now a person gets to work for an employer that is mostly unionized with the confidence that they will succeed or fail on their own merits. The fact that you wouldn't reply to my earlier post suggest your running out of legs to stand on in this debate.

This assumes the worker has some specialized set of skills. Absent that, it just means the employer will fire them and bring it someone cheaper.

When you need a washer and dryer and decide on the exact brand and model you want what do you do?
Pay $150 more for one of them?
Employers DO THE SAME DAMN THING that YOU do every day.
Making decisions for the benefit of the company JUST LIKE YOU DO in your financial decisions.
Damn, why is this so hard to understand?

That's exactly what employers are doing, but you guys don't seem to get that. You guys think your boss sees you as some special little butterfly.
 
you lost me, dismissing and violating deriding what? the right not to be forced to act against what one considers or perceives as their own interests?

Yeah.. sorry. I'm clearly doing a piss-poor job of communicating here.

What I'm getting at is Obama, and opponents of right-to-work legislation, are clearly mocking it when they say it's "really" about the "right to work for less money". But I kept thinking about that phrase "the right to work for less money" and realized that really is what it's all about. That's the core question at the heart of the labor movement: Do non-union members have a right to compete for jobs by agreeing to work for less money? Or fewer benefits? Or any other concessions they wish to make?

Or, should they respect the union's "turf"?

As I've said, if a union negotiates in good faith for an exclusive labor contract with an employer, more power to them. But there's a legitimate question over whether negotiations conducted via current labor law represent "good faith". I don't think they do. My understanding of the gist of those laws is that employees can force a union contract on an employer by simply voting to make it so. That's not negotiation.

The problem is that by giving non-members that "right", you're making the decision for everyone.

It's not a right that needs to "given". It's an inalienable right. The question is whether we allow government to violate that right on behalf of union privilege.

Current law doesn't force a union contract on the employer. It forces them having to recognize the union as the representative of the workers. And even that law is paper thin and employers routinely flout it.

Same difference. Once that representation is established, an employer faces significant limitations on who they can hire and fire, how they can respond to strikes etc..
 
Yeah.. sorry. I'm clearly doing a piss-poor job of communicating here.

What I'm getting at is Obama, and opponents of right-to-work legislation, are clearly mocking it when they say it's "really" about the "right to work for less money". But I kept thinking about that phrase "the right to work for less money" and realized that really is what it's all about. That's the core question at the heart of the labor movement: Do non-union members have a right to compete for jobs by agreeing to work for less money? Or fewer benefits? Or any other concessions they wish to make?

Or, should they respect the union's "turf"?

As I've said, if a union negotiates in good faith for an exclusive labor contract with an employer, more power to them. But there's a legitimate question over whether negotiations conducted via current labor law represent "good faith". I don't think they do. My understanding of the gist of those laws is that employees can force a union contract on an employer by simply voting to make it so. That's not negotiation.

The problem is that by giving non-members that "right", you're making the decision for everyone.

It's not a right that needs to "given". It's an inalienable right. The question is whether we allow government to violate that right on behalf of union privilege.

Current law doesn't force a union contract on the employer. It forces them having to recognize the union as the representative of the workers. And even that law is paper thin and employers routinely flout it.

Same difference. Once that representation is established, an employer faces significant limitations on who they can hire and fire, how they can respond to strikes etc..

The employer is not bound by law. They can hire scabs. But if they want the workers, and agree to a contract, then they need to abide by the agreement.
 
Which rides upon the assumption that all of the people making less money will stay there and will become government dependents because according to your argument they would have to be too stupid for any other outcome to be possible.

Teachers and firefighters aren't stupid people. And yet conservatives want to do everything in their power to make those people work for less, within their professions.

No they don't. I completely agree with a person being able to make as much they can. I simply think that should be based on merit, as opposed to lefties like you who thinks people ought to paid based on what they need.

Why then would you want to take away the right of workers to collectively negotiate what payment they receive for their labor?
 
Sure it can, and is, frequently, by companies, governments, people, organizations (OPEC) etc.

But it is not arbitrary. We can set targets based on past times (1950 the FMW went up 87.5%). Unemployment at the same time, went from 6.5% in 1950, to 2.7% just 24 months later. Consider within the context of other factors, and you can predict certain benefits from broad-based wage increasing.

Next, ask where you want to go: 4% GDP increase; eliminate 2 or 3 percentage points on unemployment? Then look at times that happened, or nearly did, and what the economic impact was. And of course experiment: if bad shit happens, course correct. Or if good things happen, debrief, and add if needed, or save it in the quiver for times the economy needs the boost.

Be strategic, and NOT ARBITRARY!!!

Or if you want to make more money, do something that's worth more money.

Look up attribution error / bias. Learn about environment's roll in all our success.

Look up convenient excuses for lack of success.
 
Teachers and firefighters aren't stupid people. And yet conservatives want to do everything in their power to make those people work for less, within their professions.

No they don't. I completely agree with a person being able to make as much they can. I simply think that should be based on merit, as opposed to lefties like you who thinks people ought to paid based on what they need.

Why then would you want to take away the right of workers to collectively negotiate what payment they receive for their labor?

Did you read the second part of what I said? Cause that would be the answer to your question.
 
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This assumes the worker has some specialized set of skills. Absent that, it just means the employer will fire them and bring it someone cheaper.

When you need a washer and dryer and decide on the exact brand and model you want what do you do?
Pay $150 more for one of them?
Employers DO THE SAME DAMN THING that YOU do every day.
Making decisions for the benefit of the company JUST LIKE YOU DO in your financial decisions.
Damn, why is this so hard to understand?

That's exactly what employers are doing, but you guys don't seem to get that. You guys think your boss sees you as some special little butterfly.

I am the boss, own the company.
When you go buy something and see the exact same item in 2 stores, 1 is $4 and the other is $6.

Which do YOU buy? The $6 one that is exactly the same as the $4 item?
No you don't.
We do the same thing with employees. Exact same thing. Employees made EACH of the items that one goes for $4 and the other $6.
Called CHOICE.
Employers should always have a choice.
You always do.
CAPITALISM AND THE FREE MARKET
 
Employees get to collectively negotiate their wages and that is called fairness and good.
Companies do that and they are arrested for breaking the law banning monopolies.
Companies are evil and the workers are Gods.
No wonder business left and went overseas.
Smart move.
 

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