Don’t pretend like the market isn’t manipulated in all kinds of ways. Of course it is. No market is completely free, and none should be. The manipulation, or lack of it, should be based on how it benefits the public at large.
The issue really isn’t an attempt to curb the employer from selecting the best man for the job, though it not infrequently turns out that way. Rather it’s to prevent the employer choosing somebody they like who may be less qualified over someone they don’t who is more. Including not liking someone because they are in a protected class ( because that it is not always easy to prove ). So the union seeks what they consider the lesser of evils - assume everyone is equally competent at base because of equality of training ( again, guaranteed by union contract ) and therefore ipso facto the person with the most experience automatically is the best person for the job.
Of course the real world doesn’t work like that. In reality some people are idiots and no amount of experience and training will alter that fact. But again it’s a question of lesser evils and for the union letting the employer choose who they like for what could be arbitrary reasons is worse than the occasional senior person being less suited for a particular job. Obviously many employers would weight those evils differently :).
And certainly the degree to which seniority counts will vary. In my job it has nothing to do with promotions to a new job category. That’s done by exam and interview, may the best man win. Nor does it affect pay rates. But it does, for example, have some ( but not absolute ) bearing on choosing work stations within a job category. And first choice on overtime ( but it will just rotate with the senior person being called first, then it has to cycle all the way through the list before getting back to him ).
Note: Just to make my biases clear, I am a member of a public sector union and am pro-public sector union.
I don’t know why contracts don’t do that. I think they are legally forbidden.
OSHA exists, and does its job, BECAUSE unions lobbied for it.
How do you measure, objectively, how good a pipefitter is?
Does management do it? They could conveniently find that all the best-paid pipefitters are incompetent and fire them.
Actually I should add that come to think of it, seniority does affect pay rates. But only in sense that there is a mandated step system, which was insisted upon by the employer and vociferously fought by the union ( they lost ) in the 1980’s. So a new hire does make less than an established employee, but that’s employer-imposed, not a union-created issue.
Where ever did you get the notion that market manipulation isn’t allowed for other things?
To take one obvious example, there are folks in quite a few nations who would pay quite handsomely for equipment useful in separating U235 from U238. Alas, anyone in the US who seeks to exploit this market opportunity is likely to be visted forthwith by unfriendly men with guns. Apologies in advance for causing you agitation and indigestion by pointing out just how severely the Free Market has been cast into bondage, but facts is facts.
Yes, a two-tier system.
Isn’t it disturbing that there is a long-term trend of wages going down, compared to in the 1980s? Not just short-term concessions in bad times and raises in good times, but just plain “this job now pays less, permanently”?
No wonder we have had almost no wage growth, after inflation, for the bottom 90%. No wonder our wealth gap is growing.
If we go back to looking at the Air Traffic Controller thing/era, they were only the most public major union issue. In the same time frame we had grat chunks of our steel industry closing it’s doors and moving to Korea and other nations. And in the midst of their industry dying because of labor costs, we had steel workers striking for higher wages and benefits! Wages and benefits that were absurdly generous in the eyes of most Americans. The idea of striking and demanding more when 90% of your industry is closing up shop over costs was ludicrously short sighted and counter-productive.
Likewise with the Auto workers. Industry closing plants, moving production overseas, getting their asses handed to them by foreign workers, and here are a bunch of idiots demanding ever sweeter contracts and ludicrous anti-productivity contract conditions.
In short, the narative changed when the Unions lost sight of the changing world and the fact that their entire industries were drying up and continued to demand ever more and more.
The particulars actually make the union look a lot worse, but I’d rather not get into it.
Flat rate? Huh? No, there’s a graduated rate (not actual numbers, but close enough)…
30-40,000 yearly: $18 per pay period
40-50,000 yearly: $18.25 per pay period
50-60,000 yearly: $18.50 per pay period
60-70,000 yearly: $18.75 per pay period
70,000+ yearly: $19 per pay period
That is so far from fair that it is, IMO, criminal.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg for the union’s questionable monetary practices.
I wonder what government market manipulation a conservative would agree is necessary.
You ought to.
You are abusing the word “criminal.”
If you don’t like it, go complain to your union officers and get others to.
Again, complain to your officers, or to the Dept. of Labor.
I can. No documentation unfortunately, but I saw it with my own eyes, not friend of a friend.
About 20 years ago, I was a postal clerk. We were trying to move a large stack of bulk mail using a pallet jack. The pallet jack broke. My supervisor told me and a senior clerk to fix the jack (which we could do).
We started to do it when one of the mechanics came over - (the postal service employs mechanics who mostly kept the fleet in service, but who also had the responsibility to fix other equipment that broke in the facility). He saw us working on the jack and immediately threatened a grievance. “Fine”, said my supervisor - “you fix it then”.
Mechanic said that he needed a written work request to fix it. It took several days to get the damn thing fixed.
In the meantime, I was stuck moving dozens of pallets of bulk mail by hand piece by piece.
When unions started there were legitimate reasons for them. Kids worked in factories, people worked 12+ hours a day, safety was non-existent, and employers generally treat their employees like replaceable machines. Today we have all sorts of labor laws, worker safety is emphasized, and employers must treat their employees decently. In short, the days of death trap factories with workers being worked to the death is over.
Today, unions have basically two primary roles left:
(1) Protect their members’ jobs and
(2) Get the highest salary possible
For public sector unions people don’t like that because it means higher taxes, lower benefits, or some combination of those two. Why should you be paid above market wages or have increased job security simply because you work for the government?
For private sector unions, the simple law of supply and demand means that unions reduce the number of jobs available. If you strike and get 10% above market wages the employer isn’t simply going to hire the same amount of people. They are going to cut the workforce as much as possible and try to relocate the factory. That means people not in the union have a more difficult time getting work and management types might lose their job because the factory went to China. Why shouldn’t I resent unions for reducing my opportunity to find work or the quality of my job?
The bottom line is that unions are good for people in the unions and crappy for people outside of them. That’s why people don’t like them.
Causation equals correlation?
Or are you not saying this, only that it is the perception of many?
When exactly do you think unions outlived their usefulness? I think employers still exploit their workers’ labor and would do it more if unions weren’t around.
The solution then seems obvious: more unions so there are less non-union workers to be jealous of union workers.
People here are saying that overpaid union employees are responsible for American businesses leaving this country for manufacturing overseas. However, many (other?) people also decry that American companies ranging from Apple to Nike and tons more companies that are located in America and make most of their profits by doing business here have no problem moving their manufacturing to places that not only don’t have unions, they also have no labor laws which means that children can be forced to work 12 hours a day, six days a week, for a pittance compared to their own country’s standards of living, let alone that of the US.
Hell, lost in the furor of abortion without exception in the latest GOP platform was this small item that hasn’t got a lot of ink:
You can listen to the issue on NPR’s Fresh Air from several years ago the situation there:
Forgetting for a minute that one of two major political parties has no problems with American territories operating sweatshops (and proudly putting jingoistic “Made In America” labels on them) - it seems to me that even if some unions might have too much power (something I think is more dubious every passing year, but we’ll assume it so for the sake of argument) and even if some union members have it “too good” compared to non-union workers. The fact is that labor laws in this country will always make it cheaper to manufacture in foreign sweatshops than here.
Why is it the fault of unions that this happens? Does anyone really think that all of those companies even had to deal with unions? Would they really keep dealing with us if only there was non-union labor here - even though wages and work standards here for non-union employees in even the most rigidly rigged for the employer states still pale in comparison to the paradise of labor for pennies on the dollar?
Is there a line between “overpaid, overly powerful union workers” and “foreign sweatshop” that US corporations would agree to? They haven’t in many, many cases and many politicians will go to the wall to ensure that remains even in US territories.
Are you going to address the meat of what I posted?
This is obviously a silly solution. More unions = Higher wages for worker = Lower demand for workers = more unemployment. It’s a basic concept of supply and demand. Having more unions will simply sharpen the divide between the haves and the have nots.
How about this equation:
Higher Wages for Workers = More Disposable Income for Workers = More Spending from Workers = More Spending on stuff made by workers = More Employees needed to make more stuff.
Isn’t that a basic concept of supply and demand? You know, the demand part?
Henry Ford seemed to think so:
Bolding for emphasis mine.
No, it doesn’t work that way. Workers don’t magically get more productive when they join a union, so we don’t have more stuff to go around. The only way this would work is if it meant workers worked more hours per year, but that’s not the case with unions.
This is such a ridiculously stupid story. Obviously it is good PR for Ford, but I can’t imagine why anyone actually believes it. The reality is that Ford had trouble retaining workers, so he paid them more. Again, simple supply and demand:
http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,1607,7-153-54463_18670_18793-53441--,00.html
More here:
[QUOTE=treis]
Today, unions have basically two primary roles left:
For private sector unions, the simple law of supply and demand means that unions reduce the number of jobs available. If you strike and get 10% above market wages the employer isn’t simply going to hire the same amount of people. They are going to cut the workforce as much as possible and try to relocate the factory. That means people not in the union have a more difficult time getting work and management types might lose their job because the factory went to China. Why shouldn’t I resent unions for reducing my opportunity to find work or the quality of my job?
The bottom line is that unions are good for people in the unions and crappy for people outside of them. That’s why people don’t like them.
[/QUOTE]
Indeed, it is a race to the bottom in wages for the U.S. worker, why has the top 10% had their wages quadruple? According to many in this thread the problem is workers making too much money, no one ever cares about the top 10% making too much, the sky’s the limit. Well the dream of all supply sliders is coming true the middles class is dieing and the majority think the overpaid American worker is to blame. People set against each other trying to cut each others wages while people like Limbaugh and Romney laugh all the way to the bank with their 100s of millions. Such a tragedy that the American dream has to die like this. One of the best propaganda victories of all time.
So who the hell decided working in a factory was the American dream? That’s the bullshit propaganda from yesteryear that has to die. America was around for at least a hundred years before the industrial revolution. If there is such a thing, the “American dream” has nothing to do with Ford or GM.
There is a recent trend for people to be freelancers, consultants, small businesses, startup founders and other kinds of entrepeneurs that I think really embodies the American dream. Working for yourself and doing what you want while earning a living. It’s taking the trend of “Professionals have autonomy and don’t need unions to look after them” to an extreme. And ultimately I see our entire economy moving to that level.
I see the shift to the “service” economy as an awkward transition period. You can learn a lot about hustle and salesmanship as a waiter or clerk. Learn some technology skills in your spare time and you’ve got a decent shot at a sustainable internet business. It may not be the next Facebook, but lots of people make a living online. I see the way forward as providing some minimal sort of safety net to manage that transition and allow people to risk time off work to start a business or acquire new skills.
Now that 's just wild speculation on my part, but I really think pining for the automobile plants of yesteryear is equivalent to the Luddites or Amish demanding that we all go back to an agrarian economy. That boat has sailed.