Scott Walker's crusade continues

[MrFun]

It's not punishment, it's precaution.

scaredy cat

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Ah so you're a college kid who thinks his part time jobs/summer jobs give him a deep understanding of the working world? Makes sense.

Let's have this conversation again in 10 years when you've got a house/family to support and life has randomly smacked you in the face a few times.

Nice to know we can use work experience as a penile substitute, shorty.

[Hauldren Collider]

I don't understand why DD, Kuci, HC, and others hate workers so much.

You're an idiot. I want unions to die because I care about workers. Unions will never affect me. I live in a right to work state, studying to enter an industry that is totally nonunionized. If unions continue to do what they do, my goods will just come from China instead of the USA. But I care about poor people. I want them to be employed. I want people to be wealthier. So I want unions to go.

[MrFun]

You're an idiot. I want unions to die because I care about workers. Unions will never affect me. I live in a right to work state, studying to enter an industry that is totally nonunionized. If unions continue to do what they do, my goods will just come from China instead of the USA. But I care about poor people. I want them to be employed. I want people to be wealthier. So I want unions to go.

If you hate unions, you want workers to be poorer.

[Hauldren Collider]

This statement is so stupid. Unions were historically responsible for many of the gains workers have seen. And I say that even today, unions are important and relevant for the welfare of workers.

No. This statement is stupid. You are merely parroting something you read in a grade-school history book. The fact that Kuci disagrees with what you already believe is enough for you to totally dismiss him.

[Hauldren Collider]

If you hate unions, you want workers to be poorer.

I'm now convinced that you are actually not intelligent enough to have a discussion with anyone.

Do you have any reason to believe that I want workers to be poorer? That's a retarded thing to believe. Could it BE, PERHAPS, that I have some reason to believe that unions do not in fact make workers richer? No way! That's impossible! Clearly I just get off on poor people starving.

[kentonio]

Nice to know we can use work experience as a penile substitute, shorty.

It's pretty simple, if you or DD start talking about work then I'm going to assume you at least know what you're talking about (however wrong you inevitably are ). If someone who's only played at it starts making sweeping pronouncements about how worker rights don't matter, then it seems fair to call bull****.

[Hauldren Collider]

No, you're actually just finding the cheapest and easiest way to dismiss people you disagree with.

[kentonio]

No, you're actually just finding the cheapest and easiest way to dismiss people you disagree with.

No, you really just don't know what the **** you're talking about. Your paper round really didn't give you an in-depth understanding of the lives of working people.

[MrFun]

I'm now convinced that you are actually not intelligent enough to have a discussion with anyone.

Do you have any reason to believe that I want workers to be poorer? That's a retarded thing to believe. Could it BE, PERHAPS, that I have some reason to believe that unions do not in fact make workers richer? No way! That's impossible! Clearly I just get off on poor people starving.

Okay, so you believe that a non-union worker who earns $8.00 an hour is going to be richer than a union worker who earns $17.00 an hour?

[DinoDoc]

Don't know about DD, but with HC and Reg I always just assume it's because they've never really had to work.

I don't hate workers. It would be self hatred as I happen to be one and I like myself too much for that. I simply like freedom more than I can tolerate the conditions non-RTW states impose on their citizenry as a condition of having a job.

The Indiana legislature is engaged in a fierce confrontation to determine if the Hoosier State will become the 23rd Right to Work state. Essentially, a Right to Work (RTW) law allows workers in a unionized shop to opt out of both dues-paying and membership in the union, although even under such a law the federal government still considers the union the collective bargaining agent for that worker. Republican legislators pushing the Indiana proposal argue that the current regulatory framework is an impediment to prosperity for both employees and employers. Meanwhile, unions argue that workers do better under their aegis, and the GOP is simply doing the bidding of their corporate paymasters to gut the unions.

Tim Carney wrote a provocative blog post yesterday in the Examiner. He asserted that even though the mainstream of self-identified free-market conservatives support RTW laws, the opt-out afforded to workers constitutes a government regulation on companies prohibiting them from reaching exclusivity arrangements with a union, and thus RTW laws are contrary to the free market.

Under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also called the Wagner Act, unions operate effectively as government-sponsored enterprises. Unlike normal private organizations, unions are empowered by the government to compel a company to form an association with them if a majority of employees vote to join the union.

Early on, opponents of the NLRA felt that it violated the First Amendment right of free association, as the corollary has long been established that one not only has the right to free association with another party under the Constitution, but also has the right not to associate with a given party. In this case, the company is compelled to form a contract arrangement with the victorious union, supervised by the National Labor Relations Board. The Supreme Court implicitly acknowledged the First Amendment critique of the NLRA by promulgating a compartmentalization of labor law that effectively insulated it from judicial review, a state of affairs that continues to this day.

With companies required under law to do business with the union, contracts can take months and even sometimes years to hammer out, but do eventually come into force, at which point the company and the union have an association that is essentially permanent, with union decertifications extremely difficult for workers or employers to force.

Perhaps also of interest to readers of a free-market bent, no less a figure than Friedrich von Hayek endorsed Right to Work laws in his 1960 work, The Constitution of Liberty (page 279, and reprinted on page 92 of A Tiger by the Tail: The Keynesian Legacy of Inflation, where I located the full quote):

If legislation, jurisdiction, and the tolerance of executive agencies had not created privileges for the unions, the need for special legislation concerning them would probably not have arisen in common-law countries. But, once special privileges have become part of the law of the land, they can be removed only by special legislation. Though there ought to be no need for special 'right-to-work laws,' it is difficult to deny that the situation created in the United States by legislation and by the decisions of the Supreme Court may make special legislation the only practicable way of restoring the principles of freedom.

Footnote: Such legislation, to be consistent with our principles, should not go beyond declaring certain contracts invalid, which is sufficient for removing all pretext to action to obtain them. It should not, as the title of the 'right-to-work laws' may suggest, give individuals a claim to a particular job, or even (as some of the laws in force in certain American states do) confer a right to damages for having denied a particular job, when the denial is not illegal on other grounds. The objections against such provisions are the same as those which apply to 'fair employment practices' laws.

Carney and others have commented elsewhere that the proper free-market solution might be to simply repeal the entire NLRA. This is an interesting idea, if presently unworkable given the composition of Congress, but it begs the question of what state legislatures are to do. They are not empowered to undo federal laws; but they are empowered to allow workers to opt out of union membership and the dues that go with it.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/a-stro...article/141251

[MrFun]

I don't understand why non-union workers would be angry about paying dues, when they get the same benefits obtain through a union's collective bargaining.

[kentonio]

I don't hate workers. It would be self hatred as I happen to be one and I like myself too much for that. I simply like freedom more than I can tolerate the conditions non-RTW states impose on their citizenry as a condition of having a job.

To be fair I always assumed you just had a decent job and didn't have to worry about things like struggling along on the poverty line.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

It's pretty simple, if you or DD start talking about work then I'm going to assume you at least know what you're talking about (however wrong you inevitably are ). If someone who's only played at it starts making sweeping pronouncements about how worker rights don't matter, then it seems fair to call bull****.

You presume to support Fun who as far as I can tell is a babe in the woods work/world experience wise and excoriate dissenting views of HC and Regex for their lack of work/world experience. The two sets of views are a paradox.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Okay, so you believe that a non-union worker who earns $8.00 an hour is going to be richer than a union worker who earns $17.00 an hour?

I believe the thought goes along the lines of the $8.00 per hour laborer is richer than otherwise being unemployed and provides a benefit to the taxable base required to support governmental functions to boot.