In Canada, federal labour law and most provincial labour laws require that all employees in a bargaining group where pay and benefits are negotiated by a union pay union dues, regardless of whether they are a union member or not, under the “Rand formula”. If you have a genuine religious objection to union membership the payment can be assigned to a charity instead, but you can’t escape the payment if you get the benefit.
NM — missed the point, I think.
That was outlawed under the new Michigan law.
Heard a Canadian Auto Worker rep talking about the Michigan law on the radio. The single basic rule change is that the company cannot be forced to collect dues for the union and workers are not required to join.
The fellow made the point that if people could enjoy the benefits of society, with medical care, social security, police, interstates, health inspectors, etc - but taxes were optional - how long would the government continue in its current state?
The idea is as the union loses leverage and clout, it will eventually go away - at which point, the employer can do whatever they want.
It’s true that much of this is about weakening the unions, but quite frankly it’s starting to look like this might be a fight that needs to take place. In order to understant the situation, we need to acknowledge a couple of elephants in the room.
First of all, unions have vehimently opposed Michigan’s emergency financial manager law. This is a problem because our state has many cities and school districts that are broke or almost broke. (Detroit is expected to run out of money next month. And I mean “paychecks bouncing” broke, not “we’re in a bit of trouble.”) It’s the usual story: union contracts are too generous, there are too many employees who don’t do enough to justify their paycheck, etc. The unions like the status quo, even though everyone knows it’s totally unsustainable, and they’ve played hardball every time city/state leaders try to reach a voluntary solution.
Secondly, in the last election unions tried to pass Proposal 2. Prop. 2 would have declared that union contracts cannot be voided, even in bankruptcy, and it would have declared that provisions of labor contracts could even override state & local laws! Frighteningly, there was at least one union preparing to take advantage of this untouchablility: a teachers union was going to insist on a contract that said that teachers who showed up for work while intoxicated couldn’t be fired until their fifth offense. Basically, Prop. 2 was an incredibly blatant power-grab by the unions, and was defeated badly. I suspect that it may have turned quite a few people against unions in general.
There was also another union-sponsored proposal which would have forced all home healthcare workers into a union. It also failed. Basically, the unions around here have been increasingly thuggish in recent years, and many many people are starting to see them as more like a protection racket than anything else.
Makes no sense. If the state can pass a right-to-work law, which essentially is a slow-motion back door union-busting procedure, then logically they could pass a law stating that the government can mandate contract changes that help reduce the financial demands of unions. (See the other thread about pensions). For example, a law stating that overtime could not be calculated in pension payout amounts; or similar restrictions. Instead they seem to ahve passed a vindictive Wisconsin-style poke in the eye for unions. Claiming it’s the unions’ fault for not giving first, is a bit like a bunch of ten year olds - “he started it first”.
So simple question - if the legislature could pass right-to-work, why didn’t they pass more practical legistaion immediately limiting costs of unions?
I don’t know anything about this, but I suspect the answer is that the politicians, in typical fashion, have gutted the municipal retirement fund (if there ever was one) and now find the current cost of legitimate (i.e. not exorbitant) pensions too much because they did not put aside the money they promised their employees long ago. Of course, this is exactly what the airlines did. Now they want the bankruptcy courts to say “that’s all right, you don’t have to pay.” Maybe they should try that trick with municipal bonds and bank debt, see how far it gets them.
Oh, I’m sure a great many pension funds have been raided. Probably most of them. Problem is, most of these funds were raided years or even decades ago, by people who are long out office and maybe even dead by now. (That’s what happened to the Social Security fund. The government raided it to pay for the Vietnam War, and ever since it’s been funded by promises that the money will somehow appear to replace it.)
Yes, it’s good that it’s not on the bar exam. 
I chose my words poorly and was trying to come at it from the company’s side. Suppose, after a CBA was reached, the company said that they wouldn’t honor the contract as applied to non-union workers. The union wouldn’t complain at all. And suppose a right to work state decided to make things fair to eliminate the free rider problem by not allowing the non-union workers to sue in court for breach of contract. Or suppose the state allowed a two-tier bargaining system where the union contract only applied to union members.
You have the example provided above. The non-union workers would all join the union and increase its power: Something every company would try to avoid.
I don’t know how it fits in the discussion, but some industries are trying to put new-hires on a different scale than those with longevity. I think unions have to agree to it, to make it so. But these laws aren’t even primarily union-busting; it’s taking money away from those (unions) who might give some to Democratic nominees.
If you have a bank account, it was raided by the bank to pay for loans and is funded by promises that money will appear to replace it when you make a withdrawal.
That’s how money that isn’t a stack of cash works.
But if 20 years later the bank complaind that intitlements are costing the bank too much and you are going to have to wait longer to begin being paid back and maybe you will not be getting back as much as you were promiced. Would you say l"that’s how a stack of cash works"?
Lets distinguish between “money borrowed from fund” which is an obligation to be paid back like any other loan… vs - “I will put the needed money into the fund next year…” so the fund does not get topped up properly.
Of course the former also suffers from “loan was made below market interest rate” resulting in the latter being a bigger number.
the big problem with most funds - see thread on pensions being blamed - is that the value of any fund dollars dropped with the market and the future value dropped with the interest rates. A fund that has consistently been loaning money as long-term bonds to the municipality/school board probably escaped a lot of the problems a diversified fund with a lot of stocks suffers from.
I suspect the major problem is that the “money needed to pay obligations” becomes a much much larger installment as the worker approaches retirement. If the employer has had a hiring freeze and laid off junior staff, the average age and so the requirements of the fund are much larger, too.
The point in the Pensions thread is that defined benefit works well in a steady state; if market, interest rate, or worker demographics become “disadvantageous” then the fund will be a lot more expensive to maintain.
I suppose in a dire situation, options are limited - the municipality can cut back services, lay off, raise taxes, or reneg on pension promises. bankruptcy also allows them to reneg on outstanding bonds, thus screwing over the local banks too; and scrwing their workers.
I suppose the point is if you think the workers are grossly overpaid, then maybe bankruptcy and unilaterally altering contracts is “good”. However, if you expect your workers to do a civil service job with its responsibilities for a McDonald’s salary, eventually you will end up with workers worth what you are paying. Your tax bookkeepers, your water supply techs, your school teachers, your road repair crews will all be the sort of workers who could not get a better job elsewhere.
Screwing your workers is a poor long-term strategy.
That’s not about union-busting. Basically, the workers are overpaid, and the industry needs to cut wages, but to avoid too much grief from the workers, the wage cuts only apply to new hires. This is usually accompanied by not-at-all-subtle attempts by the industry to push current workers into early retirement, so new (cheaper) workers can be hired to replace them.