Posted on 03/17/2009 6:33:44 PM PDT by Kaslin
Labor: In the same week legislation that would kill the secret ballot used to form a union is introduced, a poll finds fewer than one in 10 non-union workers wants to join a union. No wonder coercion is necessary.
Under current law, a work force is organized when a simple majority of workers, voting with secret ballots, approves of unionization. The Employee Free Choice Act, more appropriately called the card check bill, turns that honorable practice on its head.
If it becomes law, unions would be certified if a simple majority sign the cards that are used to gauge employee interest in voting on union participation. The signing is done publicly, where workers are vulnerable to intimidation from union representatives.
Further, the bill requires government arbitrators to step in and set the terms of the initial contract if the union and management can't agree on a deal three months after certification.
If workers don't lose the private ballot, unions' place in the U.S. work force will continue to diminish. Private-sector unionization, at 7.6% in 2008, has been steadily falling since its 1958 peak of 39%.
Clearly, workers have learned that self-reliance, productivity, investing and an entrepreneurial spirit, not dependence on the union, is the key to advancement. According to a Rasmussen poll taken Friday and Saturday, only 9% of nonunion workers would want to join a union, while 81% would not.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
This is not about what they want - it is all about what they will get...
The backlash to forced unionism will be huge - I say bring it.
Agreed, right now, the big box companies are just itching to close stores where this takes root. They’ll send the message that unionizing during a recession is personal economic suicide.
Join a union - lose your industry then your job.
I was watching Top Gear last night on awful BBC America. The BBC where every white person is an evil racist.
The star of the show Jeremy Clarkson is a fat America hater but James May the long haired egghead with excellent manners is hilarious.
They were showing cars from the 1970s in the USSR and eastern Europe. The cars were awful - just horrible. The only country in the eastern bloc who made anything even decent were the Czechs like their Skoda.
I guess Czech communism was slightly better probably because the women are hot, the beer is good and their guns like the excellent CZ. Also their cities were not bombed as heavily in WW2.
They they compared a Russian model (not a Lada) to a Morris Marina made by British Leyland which was onwed by the UK govt. They talked baout how the British autoworkers showed up for work, did nothing and just went on strike every day.
They raced and did a demo derby starting it by saying Soviet communism versus British communism. I was shocked because Clarkson hates America or does to make his BBC bosses happy. The point was cars built by govt owned car companies are horrible as is socialism/communism.
We will see this come to pass with GM and Chrysler. Pretty sad because GM was making progress but the UAW just bleed GM like leeches and vampires.
Unions kill jobs.
The major issue with unions is that they take an adversarial approach to dealings with a company in order to wring more benefits from a company. In typical Marxist fashion, their GOAL is to set employees against “greedy”, “parasitic” employers.
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, does anyone think they are just going to eat those profits? If an electricians union sets a floor on wages for their members, each of us as homeowners simply pay more for those services.
Unions served their purpose at one time. They don’t have much purpose now. That’s the real reason that their numbers are down. Should the need arise though I have no doubt that unionism would rise again.
This current BS law is just trying to pump up membership in a failing institution.
A good hydraulic relationship between union/line workers and management is not necessarily a bad thing. There is such a thing as creative conflict.
But it requires management from both sides.
I spent enough time on the shop floor to appreciate the presence of a good shop steward - and I don’t mean some loudmouth whose only desire is to vent all over the nearest foreman.
Sure we can blame the UAW for being out of control. But we need to blame management as well for agreeing to these excesses.
“The major issue with unions is that they take an adversarial approach to dealings with a company in order to wring more benefits from a company. In typical Marxist fashion, their GOAL is to set employees against “greedy”, “parasitic” employers.”
I worked for UPS in the 80’s and went to exactly one union meeting. Mostly because they had free pizza and beer. I remember the overweight slob in a UPS shirt getting up and giving a haraunging speech. Went something like this... “They treat us like animals! They sit in their ivory towers laughing at us while we do all the work.” And... “How am I supposed to feed my family on this wage?” (Didn’t have much of a problem feeding himself.) The crowd was whipped into a Hitler-like frenzy. It was like a cult of terminally disenfranchised complainers with no basis in reality.
I made good money at the time and was always treated with respect at UPS so this didn’t register with me at all. Never went to another meeting.
Will the names of the people who signed such cards be public? Would there be anything to prevent prospective employers from being aware of such lists? I would think that card-check should be portrayed as an attack not just on evil nasty corporations, but also on workers who might find themselves blackballed.
Argh. I detest class warfare of all kinds. It makes me grit my teeth. Reading your anecdote filled me with disgust.
One of the great things about America was that there were times and places where you didn’t have to be ashamed about being a good businessman who made a lot of money.
I did say “was”.
“Further, the bill requires government arbitrators to step in and set the terms of the initial contract if the union and management can’t agree on a deal three months after certification.”
Say a company goes to a union shop and negociations begin. How much you want to bet that the unions would make totally outrageous demands just to be sure there was an impasse. Their buddies in the government beauracracy would then step in and dictate the contract to the company. Without knowing a damn thing about the nature of the business the company is in! Sure enough, this company being saddled with oppressive demands closes it’s doors, dumping the new union brothers on the street. Another failure of government.
Why is it that liberals cannot see any cause and effect? They don’t think past step one of what they do, what the effects of it will be. All the stuff that is happening lately is simply maddening!
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