Unions Suffer Deathblow after Wisconsin Supreme Court Ruling

[NYcarbineer]

Weakening the public sector labor unions means one thing and one thing only. It means that one more sector of the American economy will have its labor force working for less money, fewer benefits, and less job security;

it's all a part of the long slow decline of America. Why conservatives think this is a good thing is a mystery. It's not as if conservatives have some sort of immunity or insulation from the decline. It's not as if every conservative is in ownership or management or of some other status that has a personal special interest in making America's workers poorer.

Doesn't any conservative want to explain why he thinks the decline of working class wages in this country is a good thing?

You support it; you ought to be able to defend it.

Since almost no one supports that why would they defend it?

You realize that the problems are not all related to the fact that there have been bad contracts negotiated with unions who are colluding with the politicians to get them in power in the first place. That can translate into lesser wages in an industry where those wages were not set at appropriate levels in the first place. That is just one benefit that the taxpayers will receive though.

The real benefits stem from having more control over your workforce - being able to get rid of teachers that are not carrying their weight and hire new teachers. Getting rid of seniority practices that reward time warming a chair over skills. More flexibility in who you can hire. The list goes on.

The question that you have to answer is where the balancing force is for a public sector union? That is a VITAL piece that is missing from the public sector. In a private sector union the company and the workers come to an equitable agreement through negotiations that balance the needs of the company to generate profit and the needs of the worker to generate an income and benefits. In a public sector there is nothing balancing the other side of that equation. Further, they are negotiating with people that they have invested millions into for obtaining the office they hold with promise of further donations if they support the unions. IOW, they are on the same side. That hoses the taxpayer.

Finally, there is nothing to be gained at all in paying higher wages than justified by the added value of a worker. It causes companies to go out of business and municipalities to run out of money. Those teachers are not getting paid out of thin air - they are paid by the rest of us and our taxes. The economy is not getting anything by taking my dollars and transferring more to a teacher or any other public sector employee than they are worth.

You seem to be inferring that teachers are now going to have to live on the wages of a pauper suddenly because they are no longer part of a public sector union (sucking some of their wages off the top I might add) and that is flatly false.

Well how much should a person with a master's degree, and charged with one of the most important tasks in our society, i.e., educating our children, make??

 

[NYcarbineer]

Unions are just another deduction on your paycheck.
Everyone is better off without them.

Really? So the teachers in Wisconsin are getting, or will be getting, better pay and benefits and better work rules and better job security because of this ruling?

How will that work, exactly?

Well, for starters public sector unions will have a harder time picking the pockets of taxpayers and their members. Secondly, the general Wisconsin public will benefit by being able to dispose of incompetent teachers. They can go teach in Chicago inner-city schools where no one's learning anything anyway.

So by making teaching a shittier profession in Wisconsin, Wisconsin will attract better people into the teaching profession?

lol, in what rightwing nuthouse did you learn economics?

 

[NYcarbineer]

Too bad. Corporations and billionaires have the supreme court and most politicians (including scott walker) as their trade unions. But teachers? Hell no.

Hah, a Teachers Union was the one who brought the case! Is this it? How the evil corporations influenced the court? How facile. Just what makes you think that Corporations played any part in this ruling?

Right wing lunatics are waging a war of attrition on working people, and know that if they can hurt public sector employees, they can focus on finishing off the private sector unions.

More poverty, less economic freedom and the US can slip closer to third world status.

You would think that conservatives who pretend to support family values would recognize the harm to family values that is inflicted when both parents are forced to work outside the home in order to support a family.

 

[Erand7899]

Doesn't any conservative want to explain why he thinks the decline of working class wages in this country is a good thing?

You support it; you ought to be able to defend it.

Since almost no one supports that why would they defend it?

You realize that the problems are not all related to the fact that there have been bad contracts negotiated with unions who are colluding with the politicians to get them in power in the first place. That can translate into lesser wages in an industry where those wages were not set at appropriate levels in the first place. That is just one benefit that the taxpayers will receive though.

The real benefits stem from having more control over your workforce - being able to get rid of teachers that are not carrying their weight and hire new teachers. Getting rid of seniority practices that reward time warming a chair over skills. More flexibility in who you can hire. The list goes on.

The question that you have to answer is where the balancing force is for a public sector union? That is a VITAL piece that is missing from the public sector. In a private sector union the company and the workers come to an equitable agreement through negotiations that balance the needs of the company to generate profit and the needs of the worker to generate an income and benefits. In a public sector there is nothing balancing the other side of that equation. Further, they are negotiating with people that they have invested millions into for obtaining the office they hold with promise of further donations if they support the unions. IOW, they are on the same side. That hoses the taxpayer.

Finally, there is nothing to be gained at all in paying higher wages than justified by the added value of a worker. It causes companies to go out of business and municipalities to run out of money. Those teachers are not getting paid out of thin air - they are paid by the rest of us and our taxes. The economy is not getting anything by taking my dollars and transferring more to a teacher or any other public sector employee than they are worth.

You seem to be inferring that teachers are now going to have to live on the wages of a pauper suddenly because they are no longer part of a public sector union (sucking some of their wages off the top I might add) and that is flatly false.

Now what is it that private sector unions can do that public sector unions can't do.
Do you have any idea what the difference between the two types of unions are?

Does it have ANYTHING to do with the fact a public sector union can't strike? Why yes I do think that is a MAJOR difference right there.

And while it is nice that you are so concerned that a public sector union member not be paid what you think they are worth, it does seem strange that you don't complain about all the non union workers who are way overpaid for what they do.

Is it just public sector union members that are able to fool everybody as to what their worth in the work force really is? How they do that?

Why is it that governments can band together, corporations can band together but let the workers band together and the world is close to an end.

Just what is it that you republicans are so afraid of with unions? Seems to me that your fear is based on union members voting for Democrats. To bad. It is the American way to band together with like minded people and vote your pocketbook.

More power to the unions is what I say. They are a counter balance to the worship of the corporation that you Republicans practice.

Corporations don't have a damn thing to do with public sector unions, or government employee pay and benefits.

You are getting your partisan rants all mixed up, and your masters at the Daily Kos will not be happy with you.

If unionization was so great, the unions would not have to rely on government to force workers into those unions.

BTW, not considering corporations to be evil and deserving of bitter hatred, does not mean we worship them. Most working Americans get their paychecks from corporations, and most working Americans buy from corporations. The people who run corporations are also workers who receive their paychecks from the corporation. Your hatred of these people is not rational.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Hah, a Teachers Union was the one who brought the case! Is this it? How the evil corporations influenced the court? How facile. Just what makes you think that Corporations played any part in this ruling?

Right wing lunatics are waging a war of attrition on working people, and know that if they can hurt public sector employees, they can focus on finishing off the private sector unions.

More poverty, less economic freedom and the US can slip closer to third world status.

You would think that conservatives who pretend to support family values would recognize the harm to family values that is inflicted when both parents are forced to work outside the home in order to support a family.

So why aren't you supporting the deportation of 20 million illegal infiltrators? That would help the problem you identify.

Let me help you out by pointing to a real-life experiment. Look north to Canada.

Alberta is experiencing labor shortages. The mean annual household income for 2012 in Alberta was $94,450. Meanwhile, in Ontario, the big leagues in Canada in terms of finance, government, industry, media, in other words a mecca for high paying jobs, the mean household income was $74,890. Mean household income in Alberta was 26% higher.

Amazing what labor shortages can do to worker salaries, huh?

Now, here comes the interesting part. You'd think that in a labor environment where there were such labor shortages that the women of Alberta would be flocking into the labor force in order to get for their families a big chunk of change, but the exact opposite is happening, women are leaving the labor force. Alberta has the lowest rate of female participation in the workforce and the highest male level of workforce participation in the country.

It appears that when husbands can earn enough to support the family that women prefer to stay home and raise the kids and even super-high wages can't entice them back into the labor force.

There are two types of married women in this analysis, those who work because they want to and those who work because they have to. When those who are working because they have to find that their husband's income is sufficient for the family's needs, these women stop working.

 

[Rikurzhen]

More on Alberta's labor shortages:

Alberta has the highest job vacancy rate in the country, according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, and that is translating into close to 55,000 unfilled private sector jobs.

The CFIB said Tuesday that as Canada’s labour markets continue to recover from the 2008-2009 recession, the percentage of unfilled private sector jobs increased slightly from 2.3 per cent in the second quarter to 2.4 per cent in the July-to-September period.

The latest 2.4 per cent vacancy rate is equivalent to about 275,900 full- and part-time private sector jobs, said the CFIB. Canada’s construction industry has the country’s highest sectoral vacancy rate (3.7 per cent), although hospitality (2.9), agriculture, forestry and fishing (2.8), oil, gas and mining (2.8) and professional services (2.7) are also high.

Alberta and Saskatchewan have the highest vacancy rates (3.6 per cent each), while Newfoundland and Labrador (2.8) is also above the national average. Quebec (2.4), Prince Edward Island (2.2), Ontario (2.1), Manitoba (2.1), British Columbia (2.1), Nova Scotia (1.9) and New Brunswick (1.8) either match, or fall short of the overall rate.

“The smallest firms have the highest job vacancy rate and are being hit the hardest by labour and skills shortages,” said Richard Truscott, Alberta Director for CFIB. “The considerably higher rate in Alberta also clearly refutes the assertion by some labour leaders that there isn’t a shortage of qualified labour in our province.”​