Michigan Gives Workers the Right to Choose

[train]

Hat's off to Michigan for giving the workers the right to choose. This can only help to make Big Labour more accountable to their members if they no longer have a legislated monopoly.
One assumes Woody is spitting nails over this.

 

[Rockslinger]

Isn't right to work unAmerican? This means the American economy will be more competitive, unshackled from unions.

 

[onthebottom]

Isn't right to work unAmerican? This means the American economy will be more competitive, unshackled from unions.

Clearly these guys would agree: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_F3oev06i0&feature=player_embedded

 

[groggy]

Hat's off to Michigan for giving the workers the right to choose. This can only help to make Big Labour more accountable to their members if they no longer have a legislated monopoly.
One assumes Woody is spitting nails over this.

As posted in another thread, its a 'right to work for less'.
Stats show that workers in states where this kind of legislation has been enacted make an average of $5,000 less per year.
How is that better for workers?

 

[onthebottom]

As posted in another thread, its a 'right to work for less'.
Stats show that workers in states where this kind of legislation has been enacted make an average of $5,000 less per year.
How is that better for workers?

Posted twice in the same thread actually....

And unemployment in right to work states is 6.9% vs 8.7% in the other states...

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi..._right-to-work_an_adjustment_to_reality_.html

OTB

 

[groggy]

Posted twice in the same thread actually....

And unemployment in right to work states is 6.9% vs 8.7% in the other states...

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi..._right-to-work_an_adjustment_to_reality_.html

OTB

I'd make it a fourth time if you'd read it.

But that unemployment number that you roll around is a bit dicey. The real numbers aren't quite as clear if you look at the full economic picture.
http://econopolitics.com/2012/06/20/stronger-economy-blue-states-or-red-states/

 

[Scarey]

"Right to chose".Can you imagine a Walmart worker walking into his supervisors office and saying he has a "right to chose" to be in a union after 10 years of service? Or making it his right to choose to form a union?

In the 1940's they hired goons with Billy clubs and bought politicians.The billy clubs are gone now...........the influence peddling is not.I think it's a good thing.Obama won this last election because unions came home for him.This gives them a reason to hate ...and I mean HATE Republicans.

 

[basketcase]

I wonder how things would work in practice if an employer had union and non-union employees. All for the sake of a few hundred dollars in saved union dues, what would the workers lose out on compared to their colleagues?

 

[CapitalGuy]

I wonder how things would work in practice if an employer had union and non-union employees. All for the sake of a few hundred dollars in saved union dues, what would the workers lose out on compared to their colleagues?

Potentially, their jobs. See post #5 in this very thread.

 

[groggy]

Potentially, their jobs. See post #5 in this very thread.

The stats aren't that clear if you really look at them.
But its all about cheap labour.

Take a look at the situation here.
Harper changed the rules to allow companies to hire foreign workers for 15% less then Canadians.
How does that help employment here?
The only benefit is for the companies and the occasional worker that wants to use the opportunity to emigrate here.

And the result, poor wages, no protections and bad treatment, as Tim Horton's has been found doing:

employers, ranging from fast-food outlets to skilled trades, turn to temporary foreign workers like Flores, questions are being raised over who is making sure the immigrants are treated fairly while they're in the country.

"Many of these migrant workers who are coming in for work, who are often desperate for work, are put in incredibly vulnerable situations where exploitation, abuse, dangerous, unsafe working conditions are actually too often the norm for their situation," says Karl Flecker, national director of anti-racism and human rights for the Canadian Labour Congress.

"I think that most Canadians would be really disturbed to find out the kinds of working conditions people from so many countries are finding themselves in despite promises that they had heard from labour brokers and recruiters."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/12/11/f-temporary-foreign-worker-program-tim-hortons-canada.html

What good will that do the country?

 

[Rockslinger]

Here is an indisputable fact. Unions raise the cost of goods and services and taxes. How are higher taxes and higher cost for goods and services good for the economy?

 

[Aardvark154]

Unions have done this to themselves. If representation fees were clearly used for activities that benefited those represented say day care for workers families, or after school activities, discount's for services members often used etc. . . there wouldn't be the type discontent there is. Rather these fees have typically been put into general union funds which then the union uses to contribute to political campaigns which not infrequently the person forced to pay a representation fee bitterly opposes.

 

[groggy]

Unions have done this to themselves. If representation fees were clearly used for activities that benefited those represented say day care for workers families, or after school activities, discount's for services members often used etc. . . there wouldn't be the type discontent there is. Rather these fees have typically been put into general union funds which then the union uses to contribute to political campaigns which not infrequently the person forced to pay a representation fee bitterly opposes.

The unions didn't put out this legislation:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1301209--thomas-mulcair-says-tories-union-bill-will-be-overturned-by-courts

 

[Moviefan-2]

I support the right to choose.

It makes no sense to me why governments have legislation forcing people to join unions against their will. The onus should be on unions to convince workers that there is value in belonging to a union.

 

[Moviefan-2]

In the Toronto Star today, Thomas Walkom argues the unions are to blame for the fact that so many workers see them as irrelevant:

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/...not-the-political-right-that-s-killing-unions

 

[groggy]

I support the right to choose.

It makes no sense to me why governments have legislation forcing people to join unions against their will. The onus should be on unions to convince workers that there is value in belonging to a union.

This isn't about worker choices, its about the companies ability to hire non-union workers.
Framing it about worker choice is just wrong.

More news about Hostess.
Apparently the CEO's took the workers pension money and funneled it into their own bonuses.
How's that 'blame the union' thing going?

Despite considerable evidence to the contrary, the unions-killed-the-Twinkie trope is still very much alive.
Never mind that Hostess completely failed to adapt to changing tastes or update its brand, that it went through seven CEOs in a decade, that it had already obtained deep concessions from workers while its top executives received pay increases and bonuses, and so on. If only the union workers hadn't selfishly refused to agree to draconian pay and benefit cuts, the company would still be afloat.

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported on yet another example of Hostess workers' shameless greed: they expected the money they had contributed to their pensions to actually go to their pensions. (h/t Dallas Business Journal via CultureMap)

That didn't happen. Hostess' $125,000-per-month CEO Gregory Rayburn, who wasn't around at the time, admitted to the Journal that the snack maker had taken pension contributions -- those deducted from Bakery & Confectionary Union & Industry International workers' wages, not added by the company as matching funds -- and used them to fund day-to-day operations as the company slid into bankruptcy.

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2012/12/hostess_used_workers_pension_c.php

 

[onthebottom]

I waiting for fuji to join in and agree with groggy... that will be a TERB Christmas moment....

LOL

Unemployment in right-to-work states < unemployment in other states.... it's a FACT

OTB

 

[groggy]

I waiting for fuji to join in and agree with groggy... that will be a TERB Christmas moment....

LOL

Unemployment in right-to-work states < unemployment in other states.... it's a FACT

OTB

Its not a fact, the stats are very unclear if you look at them closely.
Repeating that its a fact won't make your point.

There are plenty of analysis that come out with views like this:

It seems clear that majority Republican states are not better-off than majority Democratic states. But… Both the Republican and Democratic candidates could have gotten away with claiming that their states were better off than (some of) the purple states!

http://www.researchpipeline.com/wordpress/2011/04/21/economic-recovery-in-red-vs-blue-states/

 

[onthebottom]

Its not a fact, the stats are very unclear if you look at them closely.
Repeating that its a fact won't make your point.

There are plenty of analysis that come out with views like this:

http://www.researchpipeline.com/wordpress/2011/04/21/economic-recovery-in-red-vs-blue-states/

Listen you moron, this isn't about Republican states or Democratic states (Michigan is a GOP state?), it's about the 24 states that have right to work laws and what the unemployment rate in is those states vs the unemployment rate is in the 26 that don't have that type of law... and that my stupid friend, is a fact.

OTB

 

[oldjones]

Here is an indisputable fact. Unions raise the cost of goods and services and taxes. How are higher taxes and higher cost for goods and services good for the economy?

Perhaps you could offer just a shred of proof for that assertion. Higher taxes certainly often mean a better managed and provided for body politic. Before we had roads, schools, police, a system of justice, any concept of public health or social services there were practically no taxes at all. Of course anyone not one of the rulers was little better than a slave with almost no rights at all. Is that what you call good for the economy? What benefit does a serf derive from even the lowest cost goods she cannot afford, and what's wrong with continuing the investment in such stuff as effective communications and transportation networks, an educated, healthy and orderly workforce and a system of laws aimed at ensuring all have confidence in fair and honest treatment in the marketplace and elsewhere. Do you really imagine we could get that for nothing?

Taxes bought us that. And we united together to decide on, earn and enjoy those benefits, whether we call the coming together a country, city, corporation, union, or any other kind of club or gang, it's all much the same. It's a fool's thinking to imagine it can be stopped, or that the 'other guys' club is worse than yours.

But before you say a fact is indisputable, you must establish that it is indeed a fact and not just an ignorant prejudice. How many factory workers could afford to buy a family car before unions and how many after? In truly meaningful terms, raising workers' wages (which unions had a little to do with over the years) actually lowered costs for such goods by expanding markets and sales. But that's getting into technical economics where neither of us should go, even if some will want to argue definitions of 'cost' vs 'price' or 'affordable' or '20's dollars vs. today's.

It is indisputable that a union that won better pay in a new contract has altered the cost side of the ledger, although only with the agreement of managers, never by themselves. Anything beyond that tautologous oversimplification of reality you must give some evidence for, especially if if you're going to generalize.

And as always allow for the role and responsibility of the other signatory to every contract. The one whose task is to manage costs. Don't their inflated and unjustifiable bonuses and salaries show on the same side of the ledger as the wages of workers still turning out unsellable cars their masters ordered up? Who cost GM more, the bad decision-makers in the Ren-Cen or the windshield installers in Oshawa? How would beggaring the Oshawa workers have made the cars better or their managers less blind to their own market?

We could go back to serfs, and I'll guarantee some would be so stupid as to want to (it was part of the official German plan for the Slavs) but to turn your question back. How would a population of serfs be good for the economy?

By the way: Union members who make better money also pay more in taxes. Pushing things the other way makes the 1% have to pick up even more of the tab. Just imagine: MicroSoft Regiment of Foot, Duke Stronach of Magna's Fusiliers and the Canadian Tire Mounted Artillery going off to war in some distant land. Maybe some primitive place where where they measure wealth with gold. Makes you think how far we've come since the bad old days doesn't it?