Magiver, it’s not psychic mind reading, it’s memory. This is the kind of thing you and certain other usual suspects say all the time.
Well duh. Same thing applies to the Union. If you want to keep jobs than be responsible to the taxpayer. Both sides of the same taxpayer dollar. But funny thing about government policy, it often caters to special interests like unions.
This is why the Tea-Party movement encompasses people from both parties. They understand waste in government spending.
You’re pulling words out of your ass which makes you full of unless you can cite that I was of this opinion. To start with, this isn’t a complaint about pay, it’s about jobs that aren’t required and it’s the city doing the complaining.
Absolutely. If you’re not, then you’re going to lose business.
Sounds like a problem with government, not a problem with unions.
No one needs to see a cite, it’s manifestly true. We know you well enough around here Magiver.
Your second sentence seems to show you haven’t understood my point. Let me try again.
When unions make things hard for people, and people complain about the unions, and unions say “fine, then go negotiate a different contract,” you focus on how difficult it is to negotiate a different contract.
When employers make things hard for people, and people complain about employers, and employers say “fine, then go negotiate a different contract,” you focus on how negotiating a different contract is in fact a legal possibility.
In the first case, you treat matters of convenience as paramount. In the latter, you treat them as immaterial. Even though the two cases are relevantly analoguous, such that convenienec should have exactly the same kind of significance in both cases.
I’d like to respond to this claim.
My arguments in this thread – and, indeed, my main gripe against unions as a whole and public sector unions in particular – has been the use of force, threats, and intimidation as negotiating tools. It is this characteristic that, in my view separates two cases you mention.
The sine qua non of a contract is consent. When an employee negotiates his contract with his employer, he may be in more desperate straits then his employer – that is, he may feel he needs a job more than his employer needs to hire him, and this creates a superior negotiating position on the part of the employer. But that reflects reality – neither society nor any given employer owes any given employee a job.
If a group of employees wishes to strengthen their position by negotiating as a group, they are welcome to do so. This allows them to say, in effect, “Sure, you can do without me, but can you do without all of us?” As long as that is the limit of their persuasive position, I think it’s fine.
But it is not. Unions ask for the protection of the law – they demand the right to leave their jobs, to strike, in order to pressure their employer to accede to their wishes, but with the legal restriction that the employer cannot fire the striking worker. They picket their employer – again, fine, as long as they stay on public property. But they don’t. They strike cars, and people, crossing picket lines. They threaten, and often commit, violence against “scabs” that take their job functions as replacements.
It is these types of tactics that lose unions any claim to legitimacy.
So in brief, that’s the difference between unions “negotiating” with employers, and employers negotiating with employees. What an employer wields in its negotiation with an employee is simply what it’s free to wield: the promise of employment. What unions wield is the threat of violence, property damage, and intimidation.
I agree with you that that characteristic could separate the two cases.
I haven’t seen any evidence in this thread that force, threats and intimidation are in any sense typical or characteristic of union activity. And if they’re not typical, characteristic of union activity, then we still haven’t got going an actual criticism of unions–only a criticism of some people who are in unions.
Here I have to say I don’t know the legalities. I’ve asked on the SDMB before what exactly legal protection of union activities amounts to, but my first search didn’t find that thread and now I have to wait two minutes. 
In any case, I have a vague recollection of not feeling I got a satisfactory answer.
Is there literally a law against hiring people to replace striking workers? Or is it rather that it has been established that such clauses in contracts with unions are enforceable?
Oh, bullshit.
Property damage and violence and all that is very rare.
Unions break the law sometimes. So does management. Their actions are still illegal, and they should be prosecuted for it. Doesn’t make the vast majority of legal actions illegitimate.
Yes, that’s all they need to do. Contracts expire. Renegotiate. It’s a basic business principle.
Yes, there was lots of corruption, in business and in unions.
It’s not the 1960s, 70s or 80s any more though.
Pride.
If there’s no pride in a union job, where you’re working for a living, there’s sure as hell no pride in taking handouts from the taxpayers, is there?
The latter doesn’t happen though.
If you don’t like your union job, quit, and find another.
Heard joke once. Man looks out of window, sees pick-up truck pull up, three guys get out with spades. Two stand and watch while one spends twenty minutes digging hole in grass verge, then two stand and watch while another spends twenty minutes taking sapling from truck and putting in hole, then two stand and watch while third man spends twenty minutes filling in hole. Truck moves twenty yards up street and process begins again. He goes out, cup of coffee in hand, offers cigarette to two guys who are watching man digging hole, asks what is going on. Man says that is Alf digging hole, he is Bert, tree planter, then Charlie fills in hole after tree planted. All according to union rules. End of day, eight saplings planted, truck goes away.
Next day man is looking out of window, sees truck pull up twenty yards past last tree, two men get out, one begins digging for twenty minutes, then they stand around for twenty minutes, then other man fills in hole. Goes out with cup of coffee and cigarettes, says hello to Alf and Charlie, asks what is happening. Is told Bert on the sick today so they have no tree planter per union rules. Man asks what Alf and Charlie are digging holes and filling in for. Men look offended, say that just because colleague is off sick is no reason they should not be able to earn their living.
Applause. Roll of drums.
I belioeve I answered that question succinctly in the next paragraph, didn’t I?
The duress portion of the latter DOES happen, as has been documented in this very thread.
I absolutely would. And I would also fight for the repeal of laws which permitted unions to exact such terrible pressure on others.
lance, your contributions to this thread puzzle me. The thread was started to explore when the narrative about unions changed in this country. Your contributions to the discussion seem to have been inspired by the Black Knight of Monty Python fame, responding to each example by denying it exists, or greatly minimizing its import. 500 workers trashing company facilities and picketing union workers slashing tires and throwing eggs at line breakers is not “just a flesh wound.”
Sure, as long as you never complain about people taking welfare. Do you?
In the long run, though, you’re not thinking this through–if you don’t have a job, union or not, you’re not paying taxes anyway.
A signed contract is not “duress.”
The point of unions is that employers already have the power to exact terrible pressure on workers. Unions even it up.
Given that there are hundreds of thousands of union contracts negotiated without violence, and millions of union workers, yes, 500 workers in one dispute is pretty damn tiny.
Have you ever seen a picket line in which people crossing the line were NOT subjecting to threats and intimidation?
No, you can hire people to replace the striking workers. But you can’t fire the striking workers. With public sector unions an exception, there’s a general prohibition against firing striking workers. Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act protects workers from being fired when they strike, assuming the strike is the result of a legitimate labor dispute. See National Labor Relations Board v. Mackay Radio.
That’s not an argument. You can’t throw that out as evidence.
But you can “permanently replace” them. This has been a common-place way to get around any no-firing laws since the early 1980s. So that complaint is moot.
The only picket lines I have seen have been on news reports on TV. The only stories of threats and intimidation I’ve heard have been on this thread. This is the sum total of the evidence currently available to me. I take it to be woefully incomplete–but that doesn’t change the fact (indeed, highlights the fact) that, thus far, I have not seen evidence that threats and intimidation are typical and characteristic of union activity.
That is interesting. It sounds counterintuitive to me, but I’d need to know the history and rationale behind it. I wonder what Lance’s take would be on the possibiltiy of meaningful union activity without a law like this in place.
Bricker, you need to Hug a Union Thug.
How can you permanently replace someone without firing them? What does “fire” mean in this context?
Exactly.
All it means is that you don’t call it firing, you call it replacing, but when the strike is over, the replacement stays. It’s a way around the law.
This is a fairly good, fairly objective explanation: