Everyone stand up and applaud Larry, Curly, and Moe.
Hey, Chuck. Stand up, Chuck.
Oh god Bless you, Chuck. What was I saying.
What! The Devil you say! Someone took a sick day and was not, in fact, actually sick! I reel, I stagger, the infamy! Don’t they realize this could go on their Permanent Record?
Here’s where I think union supporters got it massively wrong. It has nothing to do with the public things lowly of unions, just that they don’t give them some sort of special dispensation. Let’s say I (non-union) want a raise from my boss at the restaurant. He’s very reluctant to give me the raise I want, so I go on “strike”. Let’s also say you need a job and learn of a potential opening. I see absolutely nothing wrong with you going to the restaurant and saying the you hear there may be an opening. Now my boss 1) has a right to stay in business and 2) can assess my value. If you have a relevant resume and can arrive at what you both think is a fair deal, more power to both of you. If my value was what I had envisioned, he would have given me the raise when I asked, or will after he sees my value compared to yours.
I think this is fine and see now need for anyone to “think low” of anyone. The best man should get the job, no?
I see zero reason for that thinking to change just because an employee, or employees, is a member of a union. If they truly are worth what they are asking for, they’ll get it. And should. If an employer thinks he can get more or pay less for someone else, he has every right to do that, too.
Allowing for the rights of employers to freely replace any person who does not show up for work, without interference or intimidation from the union people, let them collectively bargain if they want. Personally, I think it’s demeaning, but let them do it if they want. For the private sector. Not for the public.
No big deal when the imaginary tax generator is footing the bill, eh?
Right. Like companies don’t interfere or intimidate private sector employees who want to unionize.
Public employees should have the right to organize and even strike when their government employer unilaterally changes the terms of employment. “Yeah, I know we promised you those benefits in exchange for a lower salary, but we changed our mind.” “Oh and by the way, 2 furlough Fridays this month.”
All this because certain political interests will not permit government to accrue sufficient rainy day funds to compensate for future revenue shortfalls. They deliberately undermine the system for political ends.
How have your enemies done?
Luci, I see you’ve (once again) ignored my response to your “there is no free market” canard. Ans no dount you’ll soon repeat it in some other thread (with or without the added tantrum). It’s taking longer than we thought indeed.
Wow! I mean WOW. :smack: :smack:
This message is 27 hours old and has probably been thoroughly debunked in the sequel, but upon seeing it I just had to Click “Reply.”
Since this is BBQ Pit, it’s fair to remind that the modern American right-wing has been compared with other advocates of the Big Lie™. Bookmark the quoted post and link to it the next time asked for evidence of ignorance or prevarication.
Wow.
One doesn’t need intelligence too far above the imbecile level to grasp that labor unions are more appropriate for unskilled commodity-type labor than highly skilled IT work.
(There’s a fun oxymoron here, but I won’t bother, despite that this is BBQ Pit.)
Thank you, elucidator. No, you’re not alone. I’m just reading this thread now, clicking “Reply” as I go ( 
). I’m rooting for you, but worry that even here at SDMB, a rare bastion of relative sanity in a nation now wallowing in its own ignorance, you’ll draw negative criticism.
You do understand the whole point of unions, right? Any given employer is perfectly free to fire all his union employees who he’s not contractually obligated to. His risk in doing so is that the union membership DOES include literally everyone willing to do those specific tasks at that specific skill and salary level.
In other words, in your example, if you’re a member of a restaurant workers union, and so am I, we’ve essentially contracted between ourselves that we won’t accept less than $x in the hope of starving the labor market in order to put pressure on the restaurant owner, who wants to pay 0.5x. In the real world most of the time, the union rate ends up at 0.75x or whatever, and everything’s fine. Neither the owner’s rights (to hire/fire whoever he wants within the terms of their contracts) nor the employee’s rights (to freely enter into agreements with each other for their mutual benefit) are impeded. It’s only when stupid shit happens in the real world that we hear about it, on either side.
And why should public employees be disallowed from doing this? And how do you square denying the right to unionize and act collectively with the First Amendment right to free association and free speech?
As for “demeaning”, that’s when I was working 90-hour weeks during the tech recession because no one was hiring my job specialty and IT doesn’t have labor unions to force the issue. Yeah, I got hired by another company in the middle of it for a much better rate and workload, but it still took me six months of applying and putting up with abuse (family to feed) to get to that point. I WISH I had a union.
I’d agree. Most people I know have been inconvenienced by strikes and walk-outs and yet very few belong to a union or can suggest any benefit they get from them.
That being the case it is not surprising that unions are not thought of as particularly useful.
So don’t be surprised if the reaction of the general public to any given dispute is…“meh!”
Do we have stats on union attrition? It would be instructive to know that during the last 10 years;
W% of union jobs lost were due to a local decertifying their union
X% of union jobs lost were due to company going out of business
Y% of union jobs lost were negotiated away during contract talks
Z% of union jobs lost were due to out sourcing
Once we understand the cause for attrition, an enlightened pro-union constituency could focus their efforts appropriately.
For me, that just points to the moral failing of unions. Let’s say there are no unions. I go knock on some guy’s door and ask for a job. I share me experience and we arrive on a mutually agreeable price. The world is fine. If we do not agree on a price, neither of us is forced into an arrangement that we are not happy with. In your example, you want the union to “own” all the labor of a particular stripe, so that the employer is essentially forced to hire a union person and to accept a financial arrangement that he believes unfair. His only option at that point is to not have that job done.
Any job has a fair market wage attached to it. It’s the wage that a willing worker and a willing employer would arrive it. And there is a range. More experience, greater skills, etc. build in a range, even if it is a small one. Fro a person to receive the upper end of that salary range he has to do a better job. and a better job to the guy next to him. I see this as a beautiful thing, as people are nudged to be better and better.
As I said earlier, if a group of people choose to band together (as they are free to do, call it a union or whatever else you’d like) and act in unison to strike, I think that is their right, even if I would not want to be part of it. BUT, if they do strike, they should expect their value to be tested by other people coming in and attempting to do their jobs as well as they do. If the people in the union are right, and they are worth that extra money, the employer will come crawling back to them. If not, then an immoral arrangement has been averted. By “immoral” I mean one where an employer is forced to pay more for a job than it’s worth.
Those two have very little to do with each other. Even if unions were outlawed tomorrow, no one’s free speech rights would be infringed upon. Not one. And there is nothing in the constitution that gives people the right to speak collectively. There is nothing preventing them from banding together and doing so, but there is nothing that enshrines it as a “right”.
The reason public employees are different than private ones that with a private firm, a union and a company have competing interests. The company wants to keep costs as low as it realistically can, while employees (rightly) are interested in making as much as they can. That’s a tension that can be balanced out. But if the company is so stupid as to squeeze too hard, their product or service can suffer. They could even go out of business. If the unions squeeze too hard, the company will go under. With public employees, the company can’t go out if business. The municipality still has to operate. Also, the public employees are paid by the taxpayers. The taxpayers cannot raise prices on a customer in order to cover higher wages and benefits. The only thing they can do is raise taxes. But town services should be kept to as low a price as possible. Allowing collective bargaining gives the workers too much power. The wages should be as low as possible. If someone is unhappy with that wage, he or she can seek a job in the private sector.
It’s not that unions don’t have benefits. I wish I was part of a union when a bunch of people got laid off and they included me—while I was in the hospital for two weeks having an operation. And this was after I got a glowing review and nice raise a month and a half earlier. But while unions do definitely improve things for workers in some ways, personally I prefer having my career arc be dependent on my talents and efforts, not determined by a chart that places me in a box.
New poster Assi banned already, presumably for his sockitude.
Color me shocked.
I wonder how many other argyles they’re going to find from this most recent influx of Right Blight.
Sock of whom? Or socking who?
And if times are hard and jobs few and far between, employers should be allowed to lower wages and benefits to below a living wage just because they can?
Sure. In fantasy land, there wouldn’t need to be any unions. In fantasy land, employers would always pay the worth of the employee, making a fair evaluation of the appropriate wage for the job and the experience and individual added value of the employee.
Do you really not understand that employers typically don’t act that way in reality? That employers can and often do act “iimmoral” in their own ways? I think you are severely myopic if you really see the world as one might infer from your post.
Sure. Why not? There is a legally mandated minimum wage, but except in a few instances there is no legally mandated “living wage”. If you want companies to always pay a living wage for every job, you’ll need to convince the majority of voters that that makes good economic sense, and then get them to vote for representatives who support that action. Good luck. Congresscritters are notoriously bad at economics, but not that bad. At least most of them aren’t.
They lack your expertise, John. Many of us lesser minds suffer that way, we fail to understand the essential principles of the Free Market. Which, by some metaphysical miracle, doesn’t actually exist but nonetheless has essential principles which must be understood and obeyed.
What this does to the whole “existence precedes essence” question is too much for a country boy like me, I’ll just defer to your judgement on that one. With all due awe.