'Right to work' kills, those who pass such are murderers

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Evidence, please, or admit that you're making it all up.

Well, I'm sincerely happy that your Dad was able to provide so much for you and your family. But the fact remains, my Dad, as an industrial laborer, probably wouldn't have had those advantages without organized labor providing good wages and benefits.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

It's just something that is parroted by labor folks. Workplace fatalities, injuries, illnesses, whatever have gone down in states AFTER they have enacted Right To Work laws just as I'm sure they have in closed shop states as well. It seems likely that the hazardous jobs are location and industry specific regardless or not if unions can force members to pay dues or be fired. Unions can still advocate for workplace safety, OSHA still exists, BBB still exists.

Wages are lower in Right To Work states but the cost of living is so much lower in those RTW states that they have more purchasing power on average. They have lower unemployment and more growth. It seems like a win all around for the actual workers.

Who gets hurt are the union leadership who actually become accountable to their members. No more funding ideological crusades or 6 figure incomes on the backs of their workers.

I haven't been in a union since before I went homeless back in the 1980s (in Michigan, BTW...), and since then I've moved to California, bought a new house (and paid off the mortgage), put my sons through college, and I'm paying the tuition on my wife's Master's degree.

IMO, unions have lost their relevancy just as much as the Republican Party has lost theirs, and by basically the same methods:

• They demonize anyone who disagrees with them.
  
• They take money from the lower ranks, only to redistribute it to the leadership.
  
• They believe their own rhetoric (e.g., lies and propaganda).
  
• They've lost touch with the aggregate "Common Man".
  
• They seek only their own agenda, and refuse to compromise on their "principles".
  
• They refuse to believe that anyone else could even possibly be right.

Sure, collective bargaining has its place; certainly, safety oversight is necessary in the workplace; and obviously, having your employer pay for an effective and cost-efficient dental/medical/optical plan is one of the main reasons why people go to work in the first place. But these things can all be accomplished by "Employee Associations" that are to unions what credit unions are to banks -- they keep it simple, keep it local, and keep it friendly, that's all!

On December 12, 2012, Clint Tarver, known as “The Hot Dog Guy” in Lansing had his business attacked and destroyed by out of line and out of control UNION protesters near the State Capitol building. Everyone who has passed the hot dog cart knows what a kind and caring individual Clint is. He never fails to bestow a smile or friendly greeting. In no way he he provoke this attack, nor any of the behavior displayed toward him.

Unionism in microcosm: Destroying a business and then standing around watching someone else clean up.

< Link to Full Article >

< Link to Follow-Up Article >

A friendly, hardworking entrepreneur ... A fixture of the community ... No wonder those UNION GOONS trashed his business.

Areas that allow automobiles have much higher rates of traffic accident death than those who do not, therefore anyone who advocates driving is a murderer. That about the size of it?

I don't think so, not at all. In this case, it's obvious that weakening unions leads to more dangerous workplaces which leads to deaths. There is no pressing need to make workplaces more dangerous. Perhaps some think that we have such scarcity that we must squeeze the workplaces harder and that it justifies the deaths, I mean that's what's happened in many places during times of less development, but that is not justified in this case. In the case of automobiles, outlawing them would hamper the transportation for many people...

I also don't buy this claim that right wing jurisdictions compensate for the paltry wages with a lower cost of living. Actually, fewer rich people helps keep down the cost of living. Quebec has the lowest cost of living in Canada despite being considered the centre of socialism in North America.

Workplace fatalities and injuries have fallen in states after they have passed Right To Work. If it led to a more dangerous work environment, then why did it fall after its passage?

But would those employee associations even exist without organized labor?

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Probably (imo). Employee Associations are kinda like when a few employees get together and retain a lawyer to make sure that their civil rights are no being violated, and to advise them of the legalities of any actions they may contemplate. There are no strikes, no slowdowns, no sit-ins, and no 3rd-party bystanders getting beat up for having the "wrong" skin color.

It's all local. You know all of the other members, and it may one day be your turn to chair the meetings for a year. You might even be friends with <*gasp*> management!

..

Last edited by marshall on 13 Dec 2012, 11:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Actually there was a kind of betrayal. The implicit covenant between owners of manufacturing firms and the working people was this. The owners would invest in advanced manufacturing technology and create jobs for workers in which they actually made stuff, high value added manufactured goods. This would do two thinks. Produce reasonably priced goods that would fuel a consumer driven economy and produce jobs with good wages so the workers could buy up much of the stuff they made with machines provided by the owners. It was a good deal. Everybody won. The goods would be turned out, they would be bought and the pot boiled very nicely. Then somewhere during the seventies the maga corps and the financial institutions decided to go for maximal profits. This meant exporting industrial jobs to low wage countries. This had the effect of hollowing out the American economy which became primarily a service based economy. This lead eventually to a flattening out of the wages and an increase in consumer debt in an effect to maintain levels of consumption not supported by production. We are now suffering from the consequences of this betrayal. If the owners had "kept the faiith" and sought profit from a system in which everyone got the good life, we would not be where we are today.

ruveyn

What future do our children have in the hands of statists? One where they are born with a $50,000 and growing share of the national debt. Add the $100,000 of debt they'll need for a useless degree at some substandard university that need to even be consider employable. That is of course if they make it thru their first 12 years of schooling in our crumbling public schools but hey those teachers need those fat pay checks and benefits kids be damned. A generation where Social Security and Medicare almost universally feel won't be there. Maybe if they're lucky they can sign up to die in some far off foreign land in some "humanitarian" war. Oh yes, you care so much about young people.

And the politicians who supported all this took their cue from the right-wing fraud Milton Friedman and his Chicago zealots. The new global trade economy along with tax cuts and deregulation was supposed to lead us to the new golden age. Now we have the Austrian terror cultists like Peter Schitt who say government debt is the problem and the only way to save ourselves is to offer up the poor as a living sacrifice to the Capitalist Gods (like himself). We must destroy minimum wages, gut the safety net, and starve the weakest members of society for the good of the investor class. These vicious con-men are literally out for blood.

I can guarantee I care more about people than the con-men who sold you your Austrian Austerity koolaid. These people do not care about you. It's really easy to scream "the sky is falling", and even be right, but give a completely backwards explanation to serve your own selfish purposes. No country has ever recovered from a serious economic depression that threatens the very social fabric society with budget cuts. It's not working anywhere in Europe. Austerity has lead to growing rather than shrinking debt-to-GDP ratio's and tons of people are literally suffering. If the national debt is really such a problem as you think it is then future generations will be doomed to suffer no matter what. You should also consider that the private debt-to-GDP ratio is much higher (nearly 300%).

Also, the word "statist" is a stupid type of derogatory framing label. Unless you're a utopian anarchist who wishes to completely abolish the state use of that term to differentiate yourself from others is pointless. Nearly everyone is a "statist" of some sort so your better off just sticking to calling me a "progressive" or "democratic socialist". If you want to call me a "statist" I'm going to start calling you an "anti-egalitarianist" or "anti-progressive".

I'm sure you do care, just as I'm sure Mao Zedong and Che Guevara cared. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Immoral acts are immoral acts regardless of how you justify them.

The longer we keep up this charade the worse the correction is going to be when the bubble finally does burst. Pain and suffering will result either way, the difference is how much and when. You can kick the can further down the road and hope your not around when the day of reckoning has come but you can't really claim to care about young people then.

I'm well aware of the burden of private debt, student loans will enslave us all. Academic inflation. The federal government needs to get the hell out of education.