Posted on 09/06/2010 7:43:59 AM PDT by Askwhy5times
Among the tidbits buried in the first Universal Periodic Review (UPR) report of U.S. Human Rights issues was the section excerpted (starting on page 6) below. The Obama administration has declared unionization a human right and indirectly equated it to freedom of speech, freedom of religion and other normal human rights.
23. Freedom of association also protects workers and their right to organize... Workers regularly use legal mechanisms to address complaints such as threats, discharges, interrogations, surveillance, and wages-and-benefits cuts for supporting a union. These legal regimes are continuously assessed and evolving in order to keep pace with a modern work environment. Our UPR consultations included workers from a variety of sectors, including domestic workers who spoke about the challenges they face in organizing effectively. Currently there are several bills in our Congress that seek to strengthen workers’ rights—ensuring that workers can continue to associate freely, organize, and practice collective bargaining as the U.S. economy continues to change. (emphasis mine)Making it very easy for unions to organize workers is now a stated U.S human Rights goal. The primary bill among the 'several bills' the Obama administration is referring to is the ironically named Employee Free Choice Act which is commonly called 'Card Check.' This bill does away with secret ballot elections for unionization. When a union gets over 50% cards signed, they have won. There is no election. Supporters of the bill claim it still allows an election to be called when 30% have signed cards (same as current law), but only the union doing the organizing can petition for an election. Anti-union workers and businesses don't have that right... Shamefully, stripping workers of their right to a secret ballot vote is now a stated U.S. Human rights goal. Liberal and labor supporter George McGovern explains.(video)
(Excerpt) Read more at bluegrasspundit.com ...
Unions a “human right”?
These people are beyond nuts
It’s the free choice that is the human right, not the union itself
“It’s the free choice that is the human right, not the union itself”
Well said. President Obama support for the poorly named EFCA doesn’t protect that right.
Unions do not have a RIGHT TO EXIST.
Unions were created to combat abuses by management such as child labor, low slave wages and poor working conditions. Many of these problems do not even exist anymore so unions have outlived their usefulness. They no longer are revelant. In fact, if anything unions have become abusive and the proverbial 900 pound gorilla and in the end unions cost jobs and even entire industries which move overseas to remain competitive. Lose the unions and jobs and businesses and industries will return to the US.
It ain't the peon changing the bed sheets or building the crappy, over-priced cars, folks, who are getting the benefits. Organized labor depends on idiots and the NEA is always ready to oblige in cranking our more. STUPID PEOPLE BELONG TO UNIONS BECAUSE THEY ARE TOO STUPID TO UNDERSTAND THEY ARE BEING SCREWED. Smart, greedy people e get involved in union organizing because they LIKE being millionaires. Workers. Screwed. Organizers. Rich. Get it, Joe Sixpack?????
Except, of course, in the non-"right to work" states. Then, your choice don't mean diddly... Its all about enslaving dues paying union "members" and using the money for lavish lifestyles, political power and sex. Workers of the World... YOU ARE IDIOTS!
Free choice was mine before I was born.
First, the Democrats enslaved blacks to steal their labor. When we won that war in 1865, they then concocted unions to shift the cost of production to capital but they still get the dues. Swing low, sweet chariot!
Ev, I don’t mean to hijack the thread but could you please define “child labor”, and “slave wages”. What age is too young to work for wages? What is the dollar per hour amount that defines “slave wages”?
Unfreakingbelievable. And our dear leader and Sec of State, Clinton are totally on board with this serious violation of human rights in America today, they submitted it.
I started young with a lemonade stand.
I even considered getting a paper route but I didn’t have a bicycle.
I began as a boxboy in a supermarket.
I worked for both union shops and non union and I always liked non union better. I still do.
Slave wages is pay that only allows you to exist and never get out of the job you have.
Umm, ok. I was just trying to make a point. To me “slave wages” is an amount less than I am willing to work for. As for “child labor”, I used to think this was a bad thing until Dr. Walter Williams set me straight and I had a 13 year old who pleaded for me to help her get a job.
You can look that information up for yourself (child labor 19th century). But there was a time when children as young as 4 were working in mills and factorys on 12 hour shifts for less than a dollar a day. I would call that child labor and slave wages.
It is terrible that a four year old is forced to work for a dollar a day. Would that child be better off starving to death?
See the following essay excerpted from "Our Ageless Constitution," a 292-page history of the ideas of liberty in America.
"Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise." - Thomas Jefferson
"The enviable condition of the people of the United States is often too much ascribed to the physical advantages of their soil & climate .... But a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government." - James Madison
America's Constitution did not mention freedom of enterprise per se, but it did set up a system of laws to secure individual liberty and freedom of choice in keeping with Creator-endowed natural rights. Out of these, free enterprise flourished naturally. Even though the words "free enterprise' are not in the Constitution, the concept was uppermost in the minds of the Founders, typified by the remarks of Jefferson and Madison as quoted above. Already, in 1787, Americans were enjoying the rewards of individual enterprise and free markets. Their dedication was to securing that freedom for posterity.
The learned men drafting America's Constitution understood history - mankind's struggle against poverty and government oppression. And they had studied the ideas of the great thinkers and philosophers. They were familiar with the near starvation of the early Jamestown settlers under a communal production and distribution system and Governor Bradford's diary account of how all benefited after agreement that each family could do as it wished with the fruits of its own labors. Later, in 1776, Adam Smith's INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS and Say's POLITICAL ECONOMY had come at just the right time and were perfectly compatible with the Founders' own passion for individual liberty. Jefferson said these were the best books to be had for forming governments based on principles of freedom. They saw a free market economy as the natural result of their ideal of liberty. They feared concentrations of power and the coercion that planners can use in planning other peoples lives; and they valued freedom of choice and acceptance of responsibility of the consequences of such choice as being the very essence of liberty. They envisioned a large and prosperous republic of free people, unhampered by government interference.
The Founders believed the American people, possessors of deeply rooted character and values, could prosper if left free to:
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Such a free market economy was, to them, the natural result of liberty, carried out in the economic dimension of life. Their philosophy tended to enlarge individual freedom - not to restrict or diminish the individual's right to make choices and to succeed or fail based on those choices. The economic role of their Constitutional government was simply to secure rights and encourage commerce. Through the Constitution, they granted their government some very limited powers to:
Adam Smith called it "the system of natural liberty." James Madison referred to it as "the benign influence of a responsible government." Others have called it the free enterprise system. By whatever name it is called, the economic system envisioned by the Founders and encouraged by the Constitution allowed individual enterprise to flourish and triggered the greatest explosion of economic progress in all of history. Americans became the first people truly to realize the economic dimension of liberty.
Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part
Here is the Democrat response:
The government should take money from the evil rich winners of life's lottery and redistribute it to the poor so that they do not have to work.
Well I guess from your answer that is the only two choices.
Since I did not live back then I can not address the question.
However, did I miss the mass starvation of four years after the laws where changed preventing childen from workin at a young age?
Or could it be economic forces kicked in raising the wages of adult worker to a level they could support their family without putting their children to work.
If a factory worker could get work done by hiring a four year old, at a cheap price, then there was no incentive to raise the wage scale or to hire an older worker.
In general I support the idea that what a person is paid should be between the person doing the work and the one paying for the work to be done. But nothing is absolute.
I do not belive even Walter Williams would support child labor as it was practice in the 19th century. If you do, then I guess your children should be grateful they live in the 21st century.
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