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:
|
|
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.
Who can trust Walter Williams... he supported shipping OUR jobs to China!!!!
I agree. It isn’t a right or lack of right that allows unions to exist, it is necessity in certain circumstances that causes them to exist. But unions are anathema to a free market, whether good or bad. In the best of situations, unions can help prevent mistreatment. However, when unions exist only to extort non-sustainable compensation packages, they they destroy companies and the industries that company functions in.
Unions take an adversarial approach to dealings with a company in order to wring more benefits from a company.
Through strikes, intimidation and other union tactics, they hold a company over the barrel until they force them to submit.
This submission by the company removes market forces from the equation, and the costs of doing business are no longer driven by the market, but are instead driven by intimidation, emotion and a variety of other factors that have nothing to do with market forces of supply an demand.
These costs of increased wages and benefits are simply passed on to the consumer, where market forces WILL take effect. The company then is faced with having to produce a product or service that is unsustainable in the face of market forces, and consumers will not buy the same (or sometimes inferior product) at an increased price, and the company will do poorly, often going out of business. This is one of the key reasons the US Steel Industry went belly up in the Sixties and Seventies, because they refused to modernize (which would have required fewer people to produce the same amount of steel) The unions were not interested in staying competitive with a market, they were interested PRIMARILY with increasing wages and benefits while ensuring no jobs were lost.
The Japanese did not have the same kinds of issues, because their unions are not the same as our unions. Their unions work WITH the company. Our unions work AGAINST the company.
The UAW is going to ensure that the US auto industry goes the same route as the US Steel industry. And the same thing is going to happen to the autoworkers.
The people in charge at the unions are going to pull up their tents, shrug their shoulders and say “Sorry folks, we tried! The evil company would rather fold than meet our demands, so...you all have a good life and all...Bye!” They will find some other unionized industry to get involved in.
Union members love to point out that the higher wages enjoyed by many people are due to their efforts. It is also worth noting that the higher prices paid by all of us for damn near everything that comes out of a unionized industry is also due to their efforts. Too many of them view their unions as operating in a vacuum, but they don’t. If a company has to pay higher prices to a truckers union, you think they are just going to eat those profits? If an electricians union sets a floor on wages for their members, do you think any of us as homeowners don’t simply pay more for those services? Of course we do. (That was a rhetorical, question, by the way...)
Well stated. Unions have forced prices of American products so high that consumers (even union members themselves) have purchased foreign-made products at cheaper prices in order to economize in their personal lives. They have driven jobs off shore, and then the millionaire union leaders use that fact to politicize the issue and criticize American business leaders.
The coercive and tyrannical politicians buy votes by using the compulsory union dues extracted from the pockets of union workers by the tyrannical union bosses, and the cycle goes on and on.
It’s hard not to laugh at these idiots but I don’t since I know we’re the onese paying for their bs.
The world has gone freaking crazy.
Employers are not supposed to pay people based on the economic value they create in their job, but instead based on how much money the person needs to get a better job?
I guess this means the UN will be investigating Walmart and Fedex.
You know exactly what I meant. Nice childish strawman attempt, though.
To unionize is a human right, just as is not to unionize is as well.
Everything they touch they destroy. Next will be the magnificent auto manufacturing that exists in the American south. The unions will seek to destroy that - watch, and Obama will help them.
Children were employed in the 19th century because they could be paid less than adults.
Don't argue with me, argue with Dr. Williams. I don't think he supports child labor either, he was putting it out as an academic exercise, just like I was. Work or starvation, take your pick.
Everyone I know is glad they live in the 21st century, although society was much more civilized, it seems, about 50 years ago. Thanks for inquiring about my kids, they are doing fine, both in University, one is a grad student the other is going to be.
Hey Pal, you asked a question, I provided an answer then you responded:
"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? "
That would certainly imply two things, one, that there were only two choices back then, put a four year old to work in a factory or starve. Not being an expert of 19th Century societies, I cannot be sure that there were not other choices available. But in all my reading I have not come across accounts of mass starvation of four years olds because they would not or could not work.
The second assumption from your comment is that you are against any government interference between labor and management such as regulating the minimum age for working in a factory.
But when I call you on it, you do the childish thing of saying Oh it is not me that is saying this, it is Walter Williams idea, I just want an academic discussion. No you don't, you want to crawl out from under the bridge you are living under and play TROLL for a day. Sorry, I am not going to "play" with you anymore.
For the record I am for minimum government involvement between labor and management. As one of the early post listed, unions once were the ones to deal with working rules between labor and management, that is one way to protect workers.
Glad we could refrain from personal attacks and stick to the facts. That's what liberals do, I expect more from a freeper. Did you march today?
And I want to reiterate: I don’t necessarily hold anything against union members, many of them have to be a member to work, and many disagree with their union’s position on many things. I see many of them as being happy with the highest wages and most lavish benefits they can get, but it is not what the market can bear, as many obsolete unionized fields that can no longer exist in this country shows us.
Unions have destroyed jobs, dried them up or movedf them offshore because of union bully boy tactics, the “my way or the highway” approach.
Unions do not negotiate, they bully.
And if they don’t get their way, they strike.
That is not negotiation, that is intimidation.
This act sacrifices the right of a secret ballot to Americans in order to increase the power of Union Leaders.
Anyone who supports this bill has turned a deft ear to the framers of our U.S. Constitution and can no longer consider themselves an American in the true sense of the word!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.