And why isn’t the wage determined by collective bargaining NOT a fair market wage?
Well, I thoguht you said its a problem with politicans not being willing to put their foot down and stand up to public unions. I thought THAT was how you thought there was a systemic problem. This is not really the case.
When my federal employee friends complain about dead wood in the federal government, the dead wood isn’t there because the federal employee unions have CREATED job security, the job security was already there as a mechanism to prevent the politicization of the bureaucracy.
Like I said, other than getting the federal government to pay for free train passes so that people don’t drive into work, and trying to get the federal government to match civilian pay raises to the military pay raises, I don’t see what the union does for federal employees. The union lacks the ability to play hardball with teh federal government.
I used to run the family business which included a sewing factory. I routinely fired anyone who asked me for a raise. I got 50 new job applications every day and I could afford to fire individuals. They never unionized but they sometimes got together to ask for stuff as a group. I took those requests more seriously. In the end, I ended up moving to the Dominican republic but it wasn’t because of collective action on the aprt of the employees, it was because the minimum hourly wage here was $3.25 and that was about what I paid for a day’s worth of labor in the Dominican Republic (with cheaper rent too).
And you don’t think that there was jsut as much if not more stup*dity on the part of management?
You think that the unions could have given back enough to make up for the wage gap between Japan and the US?
You think that the Japanese ate GMs lunch based on price alone?
People have already addressed your characterization fo closed shops as “forcing you to join a union in order to work” (as if tehre was no other choice). It seems like you are getting half the story and forming your opinions on that basis.
The problem a lot of people have with teacher’s unions is that their first priority is its membership first and the students second. People become vocal about it because thet teacher’s unions like to portray their interests as aligned with the interests of the parents and students. In some cases this is true, in a lot of cases this isn’t true.
My mother worked for the NYC dept of Education after she retired and she thought the teachers were fine but she counted one union employee and one Dept. of Ed. “administrator” for every 3 classroom teachers. What really chapped her hide was that these administrators and union reps were invariably better paid than the front line dues paying classroom teachers.
I think that unions are going to be replaced by employee shareholder models.
federalizing the education labor contracts would probably not be a good idea right now because right now we need to try so many different ideas to figure out which ones work. hard to do with one system.
Well, if you believe that the student population was shrinking enough that fewer teachers were needed and you are out there criticizing a plan to reduce the number of teachers (through attrition) because its bad for the kids, then you’ve got to tell me why not hiring a teacher every time another teacher retires is “bad for teh kids”
If the teacher’s unions just came out and said, “we want more money because we are one of the most underpaid professions in the galaxy” I might go along with it but when they try to insinuate that they only want whats good for the kids and if i don’t support them then taht means i don’t like kids then they lose my support.
the right wing just holds the door open for them.
Outsourcing is not something anyone wants. It’s an option that either makes sense financially (not that that’s the only criterion) or it doesn’t. Both a higher tax rate and unions play a huge role in that calculation. We see the same thing happening on a smaller scale within the U.S. Companies in states like CA are tempted more and more to move over the border to NV. A few years ago there was an interview on the radio with the owner of a company that had been manufacturing knives in CA for like 75 years or more. They got to the point that the cost of doing business was so high that they moved the entire operation to Nevada.
While no one actually wants our jobs to be outsourced, Im tickled when those on the left try to lay the problem at the feet of the Reps and people like Carly Fiorina. Don’t people understand that she has a fiduciary responsibility to the company and its shareholders to keep the ship sailing. The fact is, sometimes, outsourcing is the wisest thing to do in that it best benefits the company. Enabling it to grow and creating jobs, many of which will be right here in the U.S.
Look, you make some excellent logical points as to why these things should not happen. Things that I would say myself before seeing these, as you call them, lunatics, in action. You’re right on one part - it doesn’t make sense. But lots of behavior that doesn’t make sense happens in the business world.
That guy who owns (or owned?) David Simonini Custom Homes is a solid example of a business owner with big gambling debts. I bet he robbed his own till to cover that. He sure did fleece other people to cover it.
BTW having no employees at all is a HOLY GRAIL for most business owners. Zero labor costs, they’d love to do that if it were possible. Un/fortunately (depending on your perspective) today’s technology still makes that almost 100% impossible.
Everybody (not just business owners) wants to minimize the # employees. This includes you.
Do you have real musicians on standby, living with you, to perform whenever you want to hear music? Or do you play a CD or iPod?
Do you have servants waving fans to keep you cool or do you adjust the thermostat on your air conditioner?
Did you dictate your post on StraightDope to a secretary?
If you have none of those on your payroll to maintain your house, you’re as immoral as the business owners, right?
I think we’re wasting our time, here. Let’s give ourselves an “E” for effort and call it a day.
Pretty much what Damuri Ajashi said. Because the universal argument of the teacher’s union is, “we’re doing it for the kids!” It is the argument they use to justify almost every policy stance. When it is clear that a) VT has one of the best student/teacher ratios in the country (#1 I believe), b) that ratio is growing due to shrinking youth population, c) our towns and schools are struggling under increasingly expensive and unaffordable school budgets, refusing to consider what amounts to a temporary freeze on hiring is, in my opinion, barely a step up from robbery. And the bargaining chip the union has is to strike and shut down the schools, always for the good of the kids, they say. Bullshit.
I don’t expect the union to have an opinion on budget issues necessarily, but the interviewer was very rightly asking, in not so many words, if the hiring freeze isn’t acceptable, then what is, because it is universally acknowledged that there is an imminent school budget/funding crisis across the state. What the union rep’s answer translates to is, “I don’t care if there isn’t money, we’re not budging on anything.”
Anyway, that’s the story on local politics in VT. 
Ah, I’d love to have someone who’d carry me on one of those sedans. It would be challenging for them to walk through all the holes in your argument. Oh no wait, no it wouldn’t. Not even if they were drunk.*
Your analogy of servants and fans is flawed because waving fans does diddly at 100 degrees. You need a bit of freon to deal with that. A thousand servants couldn’t keep you cool in that situation. Similar flaws with music; bands still MAKE the music. Not having a secretary at home posting to the SDMB is a privacy issue. Even if her labor were free I would not go for it.
On the other hand I hired a US citizen maid to help out around the house since we’ve got 3 kids and perhaps a 4th (adoption #2) coming. And we’ll probably hire a cook, too, to maximize our free time. And I’ll be DAMNED if I’ll ever upgrade that to a robot if one ever comes along. (Not wanting a robot to go berzerk on me, and all that.)
The other giant flaw in your “reasoning” is when too many employers minimize like crazy, you have exactly the situation America is in now: not enough workers with cash to spend. It’s happening right now. You’ve got TV prices being slashed to the bone and no one clamoring to buy… because they’ve been “downsized” and cannot afford it.
Stop for a minute and look at the consequences of all this automation and offshoring and downsizing. Stop living in denial and look. The entire country is shifting toward austerity in family budgets and it’s taking a monstrous hit on economic growth and causing tons of businesses to close.
Who’s growing right now? Not so much Wal Mart as… DOLLAR TREE.
The point is, if you ever achieved that holy grail of no workers, you would also have no profits. What would be the point of going into business? Your comparison of that to not having a secretary dictate my Straight Dope posts is, to be generous, a case of comparing apples to oranges.
- Allow me to HELP your floundering argument by offering you better examples. I drive a car instead of having someone carry me in a rickshaw. I used Priceline back in 2005 to arrange my honeymoon instead of going with a travel agent because just that few years ago I was many tax brackets below where I am now.
Inflating your own grade? That’s a new one… NOT.
Then I will ask the same question as before - if closed shops are OK with you, in the sense that you must join the union in order to work there, is it also OK if management imposes the opposite rule?
That is to say, if you join or try to organize a union while you work here, you will be fired. Would you agree that this is just as un-coercive as being compelled to join a union in order to work somewhere is un-coercive?
Regards,
Shodan
Why would a national system be any less susceptible to the teacher’s unions? Teahcer’s unions are in retreat around the country as parents realise that the teacher’s unions don’t actually put their children first as they have been led to bhelieve, they put the administraers and unions officials first, teachers second and children third. The only people lower on the totem pole for teacher’s unions are the taxpayers.
I don’t believe this si true of teachers but I believe this is true of many (not all) teacher’s unions.
Here in DC, the teachers union is an active impediment to improving one of the worst school systems in the country. I would love to send my kids to DC public schools but the schools suck. Obama said as much himself recently after Fenty lost the re-election bid.
Did you also hire a philosophy graduate to tutor your children similar to how Alexander the Great’s father hired Aristotle? Are you also going to a hire a tailor to sew all the clothes for your children? They are growing of course so they’ll need bigger clothes every year. There are an infinite number of tasks you can hire people to do for your family.
Here’s the key point: did you have children so you’d have a reason to hire employees such as a maid and cook?
Do you buy a house because you want to create work for bank loan officers, real estate agents, and plumbers?
Do you buy a car because you want to pay for a mechanic?
Do you wear glasses because it would be immoral not to tap the services of an optometrist and optician?
Did you get married so that the clerks at court houses recording and notarizing such unions have something to do?
The point of going into business is to create something of value and hopefully turn a profit. People do not go into business so that they can hire employees. It’s just that sometimes, you can get more profits if you hire extra people. Hiring employees is a side effect of going into a business; it’s not the reason for starting a business.
I think you are being waaay too easy on the republicans on this issue.
Yes, I understand that outsourcing is inevitable in a globalizing economy and that frequently outseourcing has the merit of saving a few jobs highly skilled jobs here by sacrificing low skilled jobs to other countries.
I understand that corporations have a duty to their shareholders.
What I don’t understand is why tax cuts seem to be the beginning and end of the Republican strategy to addressing outsouring. Why is a tax race to the bottom the only conceivable response to this loss of jobs?
China seems to have no problem strong-arming corporations into doing everything from giving up autonomy to giving up intellectual property in exchange for access to a consumer market that is about a third the size of ours. I’m not saying that we have to adopt China’s tactics but this capitulation to corporate interests (while not unique to the Republican party) is not something that the most vibrant economy in the world shares with us.
I’m not sure that there is anything we can do to reverse the outsourcing of jobs bt i am pretty sure taht tehre is stuff we can do to reduce the rate at which we lose jobs. Somthing that doesn’t involve cutting taxes until the corporate tax becomes a gratuity.