Nolan Finley Editorial On AWOL Politicians

[Augustiner]

And it would be the best thing for Unions. If they had to earn their keep from their members by 'agreement', not coercion, they'd become better at what they do. They'd be more responsive to their members, and not so much to the political class.

That is simply not true. If payment of dues was optional, you would get a free-rider problem. People who didn't pay the dues would still reap the benefits of the union's bargaining power, so no individual worker would have any incentive to pay the dues. This would weaken the union over time, trapping it in a cycle of decreasing revenue and diminishing clout. There is absolutely no way you can spin open shops as being beneficial to unions; they're a union-busting mechanism, plain and simple, and a very effective one.

[Novine]

Other than Nolan Finley's "informed" opinion, why is this being discussed on DY? Shouldn't this be moved?

[Augustiner]

Here's how AFSCME describes it: "We elect our bosses"

We all elect our bosses, Mike. That's what democracy is.

[Mikeg]

We all elect our bosses, Mike. That's what democracy is.

The rest of us elect our representatives.

[mam2009]

Just a few years ago, the "boogey man" of all employers was pharmaceutical companies, then the health care industry as a whole. Now, when the economy is still taking a serious toll on the ability of the average middle class American to earn a decent living and maintain their homes -- its the labor unions. Forgive my ignorance, but was the battle against the pharmaceutical companies and the health care industry won? It feels like big business and big government started with deep pockets and are now just going down the list of "big bad wolves", but this time they're messing with "main street". Really? Were the costs of health care driven down. The costs of providing health care benefits to employees continues to increase exponentially. Businesses and governments alike have laid off employees, cut employee benefits, reduced employee salaries, how much more do you expect employees to sacrifice? Let's get back to dealing with the astronomical cost of health care!

[R8RBOB]

My phrase for the moment is: it's all about the numbers

For the last 30 years, the United States has been in a transformation phrase. Love him or hate him, Michael Moore exposed a bit of truth and we sometimes forget. After the second world war, the US was the industrial power in the world. Made in USA truly meant something because nearly everything was made in America. We bombed Germany and Japan into the stone ages, China was turning red and Russia was busy building nuclear bombs. We had no competition to supply the world and American workers were producing those products. Unions thrived because we had millions of Americans working and worker rights needed to be protected.

Americans thought the good times were going to last forever and a strange thing happened. The rich got greedier. They discovered that they could save millions by moving their operations overseas to countries wishing to emulate America. India, China, Taiwan, Vietnam were some of the nations that welcome industrialists like Phillip Knight to build factories in their countries and pay their people cheap wages. These men and women of wealth discovered that they didn't have to deal with union reps, they didn't have to pay for health benefits and there were no rules. This was great for the rich because this was a return to the days when America had rich and poor and no middle class. Working Americans would be the big losers because jobs were lost and unions were losing numbers making them null and void. Oh, can't forget the foreign companies coming to America and hiring workers to be non-union employees. This didn't help the unions with their number problem and their strength was slowly eroding.

Now the thing with Wisconsin. Walker and Kasich and Christie want to break the public unions. There is a reason for that. Industrialists who have made billions overseas still want to business in America and government is always a cash cow but there is a problem....public unions. A guy like Walker want the flexibility to contract government services but he can't because the state workers are union employees and under contract. [[Fact: hiring contractors don't necessary save money. Hiring contractors is about pushing friends to get that government money. Think Halliburton) Now if Walker can strip the workers of their rights then they will walk away from the unions. No need to pay union dues if the union is powerless so they will be plain old workers. It is easier to get contractors to do government services if there is no unions to deal with.

[partyhardy]

The thing I don't seem to understand about the whole situation in Wisconsin is I keep hearing about how "we all have to make sacrifices." Yet, the top 2% of income earners in this country were the only ones to see their income go up during the recession. Yet, when it was time for them to contribute more in taxes, it was a big issue. Where's their sacrifice? Why is it always the middle class having to make the sacrifices?

The middle class aren't the ones responsible for this mess...unless you count losing your job as a platform on which to place blame. Can the people who got us into this mess start making some sacrifices please?

[oladub]

The thing I don't seem to understand about the whole situation in Wisconsin is I keep hearing about how "we all have to make sacrifices." Yet, the top 2% of income earners in this country were the only ones to see their income go up during the recession. Yet, when it was time for them to contribute more in taxes, it was a big issue. Where's their sacrifice? Why is it always the middle class having to make the sacrifices?

The middle class aren't the ones responsible for this mess...unless you count losing your job as a platform on which to place blame. Can the people who got us into this mess start making some sacrifices please?

R8RBOB's second paragraph goes a long way to addressing your issue. Raising taxes on the rich back up to Clinton levels would address about 30% of our federal deficit spending. I think that a more efficient way of addressing the disparity between the rich and everyone else would be to [[also?) transfer taxes from personal income taxes to corporate import taxes.The federal income might be neutral but suddenly it would make a lot more sense to hire US workers. If there was a large demand for US workers, which there isn't now, unions could once again become effective at securing a larger share of the national economic pie for workers. In addition to import taxes, NAFTA type agreement would have to be scrapped and immigration laws would have to be strictly enforced. All three changes would result in a shortage of US workers allowing workers to name their price. The rich, of course, will object.