[QUOTE=Happy Lendervedder]
You don’t want a union? Decertify. It is possible to do so; you could probably even get a nice wealthy right-wing sponsor to fund it. Or organize against it during an organizing drive. But why should the government legislate a negotiable term? If people really didn’t want a closed shop, they could negotiate it out of the next contract and then vote for that contract. That’s democracy, that’s choice. Having Lansing tell workers what they can and can not negotiate for is not freedom or choice. It’s government overreach, and I thought you conservatives wanted government out of your lives. Or is it only when it suits your causes?
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Couldn’t simply be that I see it exactly opposite to you, could it? That to me this is breaking a government mandated protection of unions and opening things up to a real choice? I mean, if people REALLY want unions, how does this legislature prevent them from having the things? This is a non-snarky question…explain to me how what is being proposed prevents unions from either existing or new ones being formed in Michigan. I really don’t see it, so instead of telling me it’s about suiting my causes, explain the finer points to me so I can understand where you are coming from. I’ve explained where I’m coming from after all.
Government intervention to prevent collusion that negatively impacts my ability to get a job is a-ok in my book, although I don’t think I fall in the “you conservatives” camp.
I do get a bad taste about how this whole thing is being ninja’d at the last minute. The legislature count that I see in wikipedia is for the current session. I’m assuming that will change (you mentioned this is a lame duck session), but I don’t see the numbers in the article. Know off the top of your head? Or shall I dig?
I have been trying to figure that out myself. My Personal experience guess is that most people support RTW, but really, really, really don’t want to fight about it now and wish the Gov would veto for that reason.
It a hard issue to get a handle on. My go-to for fairly objective analysis on Michigan issues is the Mackinac Center, which is pretty good and proving both sides for most issues.
Except this particular issue, The are very free-market and have been huge cheerleaders for RTW for years.
Show me where I am (or anyone is) arguing that this law outlaws unions?
But why should the government pass a law that steps in between two parties negotiating a contract and tell them what they can or can not negotiate on? It’s stacking the deck in favor of one of the two parties. You happen to support the side that the stack is being stack in favor of, but that doesn’t make it right.
If the poor oppressed workers really didn’t want to be forced to join the union, let them negotiate it out of the contract. If there was enough support from open shop members, let them run a candidate who would negotiate such a contract, raise funds if necessary for his or her campaign, negotiate a contract that opens the shop and go from there. That’s the democracy of a union. The workers have a say. Now, in Michigan, despite all the right-wing clamor, workers have just lost a right. The government just took away one of their rights, and now the unions will still, by law, have to represent everyone that falls in the bargaining unit, but now some people will be allowed to freeload, and there’s nothing the labor side of the negotiating table can do about it.
Not much, since they are so weak. And more and more of what they fought for is being taken away, which of course is much of the reason for breaking unions; so we can go back to the “good old days” of the Gilded Age.
:dubious: Sorry, I find this argument (especially coupled with your hyperbole about slavery) to be ridiculous. I realize that to you we are on the verge of going back to being a theocratic slave state, but you are never going to get the genies back in the bottles that were unleashed by labor reform that has been with us over a century now. It’s not going to happen.
Point of fact: 11.4% of American workers belong to a labor union, as of 2010. Are the rest of us working in sweatshops?
What we are working backward towards is free labor. The National Industrial Recovery Act was passed in 1933. It guaranteed the right of workers to form unions, which should have settled the labor issue.
Unfortunately, the heart NIRA were wildly unconstitutional provisions organizing industries into cartels, and it was overturned by the Supreme Court. In its place, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. This law swung the “pendulum” of power, set at about 50-50 under NIRA, firmly over to the labor side. It established the largest labor unions as cartels in their own right. Disputes under the NLRA were handled by the National Labor Relations Board, which during the Great Depression held that hiring replacement workers during strikes was an “unfair labor practice.” The NLRA provided that if 30 percent of employees signed a petition for a certification election, to determine whether a union would negotiate on behalf of all the workers, it must be held. But the act did not require periodic elections to determine whether workers wanted to remain with the first union or choose to be represented by another union or no union at all. Company unions were made illegal, as were wildcat strikes. This is not free labor, this is a cartel system that uses force and political connections to funnel inflated wages to union members, at the expense not only of employers but of non-union labor.
Right-to-work laws, first allowed under the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, were a reaction to this union excess, which swiftly wrecked the industries (such as Michigan’s own auto industry) most dependent on union labor, as cartels are wont to do.
The argument presented against such laws in this thread has hinged on this claim:
The employer is free to offer one level of wages to union employees and another to non-union ones. Some businesses in Kentucky do just that. The non-union hire does not automatically benefit from the union’s bargaining. Thus, where is the infringement on free labor? If the union workers are actually worth more, they will be paid more. If not, so be it.
In summary, unions benefited from a non-free labor market for decades. Now that unionized industries are in such rough shape, a return to a free market is desirable.
I stumbled upon this website while looking for numbers for private sector union membership by state. It’s 6.9% nationwide in 2011. http://www.unionstats.com/
I haven’t poked around much yet, but I don’t see anything that makes me :dubious:.
Bear in mind that the deck was stacked for labor decades ago. Look at the list of America’s largest labor unions. You’ll see that it is dominated by two type of industry: Government employees (the NEA, AFSSME, and AFT), and old manufacturing and distribution industries:
Service Employees International Union - formed 1921
International Brotherhood of Teamsters - formed 1903
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union = formed as a merger between a union from 1897 and one from 1890
United Steelworkers of America - formed 1942
These unions benefited from decades of non-free labor. Much like Affirmative Action, in order to correct for this historic imbalance, it is necessary to prohibit closed shops. Not prohibit unions, or higher union pay, but the closed shop.
Note the lack of the industries the US now depends on most. The fact the the pharmaceutical and electronics industries weren’t unionized might be one of the greatest lucky breaks in American history.
This is true, but much of what they fought for was harmful to the U.S., coercive, and morally wrong. You seem to have an idealized picture of the labor union movement, but after 1935 or so, what they were fighting for was not laudable.
They fought to keep jobs in the hands of white males. After passage of the NIRA, Roosevelt created the National Recovery Administration to enforce its provisions. Among other things, the NRA allowed labor unions to draft the labor code for their industry. The white-dominated unions used the chance to either set wages high enough to exclude African-American unskilled labor (which northern whites feared as competition), or just prohibit African-American union membership altogether. Similar tactics were used against female workers.
They fought to restrict union membership, to keep the labor supply smaller than demand and thus keep wages artificially high. That sounds fine, if you’re in the union. If you’re not, you are subsidizing wealthier union laborers against your will, at no benefit to yourself whatsoever.
They fought to eliminate competition from within. Wildcat strikes are illegal because they represented a threat to entrenched union power, a way for union members to take their own action when the union represented its own interests instead of the workers’.
Workers have a right to organize, and collectively bargain. Anything beyond that is coercive and destructive.
A state passing a law mandating a “union shop” would probably be seen as unfair. Right?
How is a state passing a law mandating an “open shop” not seen as equally unfair?
How about on this issue, the workers and employer negotiate a contract that is suitable to both parties? If enough workers want an open shop, and the ability to opt out of dues, they can fight for that at the negotiating table. Or take the union shop off the table altogether. Or decertify. Or elect local leadership who will make an open shop a priority.
If you don’t like the health plan your union agreed to in negotiations, would it make sense to take it up with the legislature? To lobby for a law making it illegal for unions to negotiate for health insurance? No, work to change the health plan from within your local at the negotiating table.
Why should the government be allowed to mandate a negotiable term one way or the other, especially when it stacks the deck against one of the two parties?
I cannot speak for any state of the US, nor can I for the US federally, but in the interests of fighting ignorance, the question of “not joining a union while enjoying all the benefits” was addressed back in 1946 in Canada. What came of it was the Rand formula. From the link:
What this means is that closed shops are illegal in Canada, and workers who do not wish to join the union do not have to. But they will still have the equivalent of union dues deducted from their paycheques. (To the best of my knowledge, these funds are returned to the employer.) It may not be a perfect solution, but it addresses the problem of what happens when closed shops are not permitted.
What people (who have never belonged to a union) do not understand, is that wages are not the biggest problem. Its the insane work rules imposed by unions, that make American industry uncompetitive. For example, take the union that did in Hostess-they were able to make the company have TWO deliveries per customer-a truck delivering bread could NOT deliver ho-hos and twinkys. So Hostess had to pay two people to do the work of one-and wast twice the gas, twice the expenses. Or the UAW-that union makes you (the employer) pay wages to people who do no work (“shop stewards”). These guys do nothing productive.
In general, that is why new automakers avoid Michigan-the foreign transplants are all in states where sch insane work rules are not allowed. Why is Detroit a disaster? Largely because of the UAW.
I am just curious to see if the people in Michigan go bananas or not. Maybe they were convinced that the auto companies failed/needed to be bailed out because of the unions. Maybe that is why so many of them voted Republican in the first place (though a lot of Snyder’s supporters are turning on him and pointing out he promised not to do exactly this.)
Will we get cheaper cars? Will the auto industry get more competitive in Michigan and need to hire lots of workers, even if for lower pay and worse benefits? Does Obamacare reduce the need for unions to guarantee benefits?
Dunno. Overall the way it is being done looks rather undemocratic to me. I guess we’ll see how people in Michigan react, and whether something is being imposed on them or allowed by them.
I’m curious–what American union rules are uncompetitive?
Note that I’ll probably agree with you on some, but on others–well, I dunno. Can you give us specific cites?
Can we get a cite for this, please? IME as a (past) union member (of the UFCW), it is my understanding that shop stewards are workers like any other; they are simply the union representatives on the floor, and often the first point of contact for any disgruntled union members. But they work, like everybody else. IME, I never saw a shop steward sit back and watch, as you imply.
Note that I am off the floor now, and I went back to school, and am now a lawyer. But I have a particular interest in employment and labour law. I guess I’m looking at this from two points of view. Can you help clarify your point of view?
My objection stems from allowing two business entities, A and B, to collude and force a third entity to do business with A if it does business with B.
If I don’t like the insurance options I opt out. I have done this before. My company and the health insurance company cannot negotiate that I must give my money to the health insurance company as a term of my employment.
Because it is wrong for you to negotiate my wages to yourself, and the government should be allowed to protect me from cartels.
Again, Affirmative Action is a close analogy here. We have a historic imbalance of power. It could be left to resolve on its own, perhaps. This process has been underway for some time. But the legislature taking steps to clear the path for free labor with a semi-coercive measure is understandable. It may be a bit unfair in the moment, but it’s aimed at rolling back much worse abuses of power.
Look, for instance at the Flint sit-down strike that turned General Motors into a union shop.
The tactics used by the UAW were illegal, and would be soundly rejected by the public if they were used today. In the political climate of the 1930s, however, such abuses were embraced by the Roosevelt administration, so as to secure the union vote. The largest, most powerful unions today are still benefiting from the results of actions like the Flint strike. Open-shop laws are a way to correct this.
One easy example is the “jobs bank” at the Big Three automakers, a practice that finally ended in the last few years. Under the program, UAW members were paid between 95 and 72 percent of their annual salary (varying by year) while laid off. This meant that as the automobile manufacturing industry became more efficient and automated, requiring fewer laborers, those who were laid off were paid anyway, prevented the Big Three from benefiting from their gains in efficiency. These costs were passed along to car buyers, and were a major factor (though not the only one) in the Big Three losing ground to non-union foreign car makers, and the bankruptcies of Chrysler and GM.