Hatred of unions

[Dugdale_Jukes]

So your opinion is that unless these people belonged to a union, they wouldn't show up! Is that what you are saying. It wasn't the skill of the pilot that landed that plane in the Hudson, it was the UNION. Without the union, Sully would have ditched it.

Usually, it is not the union rank and file that's hated but the union structure. That is, until it gets to same place Stockton did.

Stockton bankruptcy showcases results of union greed Page 1 of 2 | UTSanDiego.com

Milton Freidman was 100% wrong about unions and if he had any sense he would have advocated that unions are as much of a necessity for capitalism as are corporations. They are one of the checks and balances on corporate power.

Until they get all of the power. Then what sort of checks and balances do you have in the marketplace.

The best sort of checks and balances are between the employee and employer.



This is false by Capitalism own definition, which leaves to believe you do not understand the concept very well. Shall I give it a go?

The corporate profit motive is the driving engine of capitalism but it isn't a deity to be worshiped above all else. Unions for all their faults are no better or worse as far as corruption goes than their corporate counterparts. If anything the reverse is true. There are far more instances of corporate greed and corruption that there are of unions.

The different between corporate corruption and union corrupt is that if a corporation has been accused of corruption, it can be sued, go out of business or someone can be held accountable. This isn't the same with Unions at all. In many cases, the Unions act as a cartel to extort businesses. Depending on whether or not the union belongs public/private sector, the business has the option of either moving away/negotiating with that union, or staying where they are and taking said abuse.

The basis for the hatred of unions has been a deliberate campaign of disinformation by corporations. The reality is that unions perform an essential function in a capitalist society.

There a couple of economies which performs just fine without the use of Unions, so this is obviously not true. What is essential in a Capitalist society is a strong protection of private property rights and a strong foundation of The Rule of Law.

While almost all of those claims are unsupported and so doubtful, the part that is shocking is the lack of a list of economies that "performs just fine without the use of unions." Hard to imagine making that sort of highly questionable claim without providing a verifiable supporting list of at least three major economies.

It'd be good to see that list.

 

[Derideo_Te]

The teachers union strike in Chicago which happened not to long ago is a good example. Its very difficult to fire a teacher there. It's great if you are a teacher, no so much if you are a student in a classroom before taught by a teacher who is under-performing. The parents want to be able to identify good teachers and reward them with merit pay, but this isn't want the unions want. What the unions want is everyone to have equal treatment, so no one will know the difference.

The unions there weren't fighting for fair treatment. They were fighting for the lack of accountability. When a union has gained enough power to the point of where they no longer want to be held accountable for what they do, they have far too much power.

And this is the problem with public sector unions. At least a private sector union can move out of the state, and then the teachers would be able to decide if their jobs are worth it. In a public sector job, these employers are stuck.

Apples and Oranges comparison. Public education is not a competitive capitalistic endeavor. It is an essential service. Attempting to rate teachers on the performance of students is a completely false premise. This is akin to rating your job performance on the local rainfall in Peru. There is no connection between the effectiveness of a teacher and the socio-economic status of the students that they are teaching.

You don't believe that the problem with public education is that it's not competitive based? This is the idea with publicly run entities, such as the Post Office and Public Medicine, the idea that it is created to offer an alternative to private entities, but doesn't have to 'perform' to the same standards because it doesn't make a profit. Profits are the only market mechanism which tells an entity to either do more or less of what it's already doing.

The problem with public schools which America can really learn from is that other nations does treat their school system as a competitive endeavor. Schools which are performing up to standards stay open, while the ones which are not close down, and justifiably, as they are wasting resources.

GE's Jack Welch often says that if a nation is to stay vital, it must reward's it's best workers and the bottom 10% must go. Most workers would be better off with a merit based pay, but most union contracts forbid this. The idea of unions is to promote equality in the workplace. Everyone is treated equal, but not when it comes to work or when it comes to accountability. This makes it very difficult for anyone who is more ambitious than the rest to move up in the ladder. There is no autonomy when it comes to unions. It's either my all of us, or none of us.

Then why force these children to attend school everyday?

I can't tell whether or not you are placing the blame on the student or something else. I don't understand why the blame shouldn't be placed on the teachers. They are hired solely for one purpose: to educate young students. If there are other factors involved in why a student cannot learn, this should be addressed.

Let's put this into perspective. If you privatize the entire education system you end up destroying the very foundation that this nation was built upon. Jefferson understood that an educated populace was essential to the very freedoms and liberty this nation holds most dear. If you privatize education you end up with an educated ruling elite and at best a poorly educated proletariat that is oppressed and exploited. Now let's consider what happens if you impose Jack Welch's corporate business model on the education system. You fire the bottom 10% of teachers across the state because their students did poorly. These will be teachers in the poorest parts of the state. You replace them with graduates right out of college. At the end of the year they get fired and you repeat the mindless cycle over and over again. What exactly have you accomplished? Did you actually solve the problem of teachers who "don't perform"? Have you improved the education of a single child in those areas? With unions at least you have an experienced and dedicated base of teachers working in the poorest school districts. Education does not fit the "one-size-fits-all" capitalism business model. You are dealing with something unique unto itself. Other civilized western nations have a single national unionized teaching model. They do better because they focus on the needs of the nation in the future. In this nation with thousands of individual school districts who can decide how much or how little to fund their schools and what must be on the curriculum you end up with at best an average. If you want a national school system that is competitive you need to start thinking on that level.

But I am not unionised, and this doesn't happen to me. Not because Unions have made it illegal, but because the terms of my employment is already negotiated between my boss and I. I can work 16 hour days if I really need to. I can also work 5 hour days if I really need to. My hours are really not the issue, but the compensation I receive. If my employee wanted to cut my wages, I can't organise. I can go on strike or anything. I can either except my lower wages or find another job. In which case, I am free to go to the competition who will treat me more fairly than my former employer.

You only have those benefits because unions fought for them in the first place. If you were unionized and you and your fellow employees had a legitimate grievance you could go on strike. It is one of your freedoms. Why not use the right that you have for the betterment of yourself, your family and your community?

Except for Qatar, the economies I have named are good examples of a Free Market. In fact, the only two in the world.

Hong Kong is under Communist Chinese control. Do you believe that is still a good example of a Free Market?

The only goal of a corporation is to make money.

If that is their sole purpose then what makes you believe that it is a good model to apply to public education? If your own child is "not profitable" to the corporate run school system do they get to fire your child for a failure to "perform"? Oh wait, the teacher gets fired even if they did manage to get the other 90% of the kids to pass because they now fall under the 10% rule and are fired just because that is the business model. How is your child going to feel knowing that they were responsible for getting their teacher fired? Is that the kind of pressurized learning system you want your child educated under?

Corporations do have a responsibility to the community, which are their consumers. By providing goods and services, they are creating value and making others better off than they previously were before. These regulations which are enacted to protect the little guy works in favor of the big guy. They use economies of scale to their advantage to keep most of the market-share.

Every business wants 100% of the market-share, so they can gouge their consumers. This is why every business wants a monopoly, and often corporations use regulation to make this happen. Free markets and open competition prevents this, as there is always some form of competition. The only way someone can truly obtain a monopoly is by providing the market with everything they want, and at the same time lowering the price, thus providing the community.

The federation of trade unions has been around in Hong Kong since 1948. Singapore criminalizes the right to strike. Not exactly a bastion of freedom and individual liberty. Qatar is facing the threat of an international boycott of the 2022 World Cup if it continues to obstruct the existence of unions and workers rights. Soccer fans are very pro union.

The number of unions in Hong Kong are much smaller than any other nation in the world, with 654 trade unions registered, consisting of only 683,000 members. Also, it's not uncommon for many industrialised cities to criminialise strikes. New York has done it to the MTA during 2005 when the entire Transit authority decided to go on strike. New York City is about as union friendly as you can get.

The government does NOT pick "winners and losers". The government is the umpire/referee. Until the myth that the government in the problem is dispelled not much is going to be resolved.

Even the umpire/referee can be paid off. And when that keeper of the rules has it out for you, the only thing you can do is try your best to play by the rules given to you. Either that, or pay them so that those rules no longer apply to you.

Now that we agree that the current system is broken what are our alternatives? This thread is about unions so let's start there. Should all unions be outlawed here in the USA? Do you believe that will solve all of our present economic woes?

 

[Dugdale_Jukes]

That seems a little over the top in the clean debate zone, even for a quantum windbag. The fact is the only important mistake in her post is that Republican presidents mostly opposed unions going all the way back to the post civil war era. Nixon is an important exception, and his is big because he did little to stop the malignancy government worker unions are on the health and well being of the United States.

Why? Is it because it actually tears apart the argument that Friedman hated unions? I will point out that, unlike you, I never attacked the person who made the argument, I just attacked the argument.

Feel free to point out anything I said about any president from either party while you contemplate the fact that personal attacks are actually against the rules here.

Roosevelt had enough sense to be very, very clear he opposed government workers unionizing on the basis that there was no one trustworthy to represent taxpayers at government worker bargaining tables. Turns out he was right about that as he was with more than enough of his decisions.

The bottom line on Friedman is he was a lot like Allan Greenspan - a glad handing professional hack with one more important accomplishment than Greenspan, he'd say anything anyone paid him to say and find some gibberish to back it up. Read Friedman on unions below, then apologize to Dragonlady.

[FONT=&quot]“When unions get higher wages for their members by restricting entry into an occupation, those higher wages are at the expense of other workers who find their opportunities reduced. When government pays its employees higher wages, those higher wages are at the expense of the taxpayer. [/FONT]
​

[FONT=&quot]But when workers get higher wages and better working conditions through the free market, when they get raises by firm competing with one another for the best workers, by workers competing with one another for the best jobs, those higher wages are at nobody's expense. They can only come from higher productivity, greater capital investment, more widely diffused skills. The whole pie is bigger - there's more for the worker, but there's also more for the employer, the investor, the consumer, and even the tax collector. [/FONT]
​

[FONT=&quot] That's the way the free market system distributes the fruits of economic progress among all people. That's the secret of the enormous improvements in the conditions of the working person over the past two centuries.” [/FONT]
​

― Milton Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement

Apologize for what? Can you point out how anything you just quoted can logically be interpreted to mean that "Unions were seen by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics as the anathema of free market economics and a distortion on the free market." What he actually did is explain why, in a free market, unions will not survive.

It appears to me that he was 100% correct in his analysis, despite your insistence that he was a paid hack.

It's clear you know little about Friedman. His point above is unions imperil the free market. He wrote it AFTER his earlier pro union writings; worse, he wrote it to stay cool with Don Regan and the crowd grooming Reagan for the role of a lifetime.

Was there something else?

 

[AmazonTania]

Let's put this into perspective. If you privatize the entire education system you end up destroying the very foundation that this nation was built upon. Jefferson understood that an educated populace was essential to the very freedoms and liberty this nation holds most dear.

That's great, but that doesn't necessarily mean that this requires public education. In fact, I have no problem with public education at all. The problem is when the public education has a government granted monopoly and the employees (teachers) are unionised, which doesn't help anyone. There essential is no incentive for improvement, as the great teachers are lumped together with the average and below average teachers.

If you privatize education you end up with an educated ruling elite and at best a poorly educated proletariat that is oppressed and exploited.

But this has already happened. Most schools in America requires students to attend schools where they are zoned. Chances are, if your family can afford a $500,000 home, then you can attend a really good school, as those good schools to be located in those areas. It's only the schools located in poorer areas which are worst off.

Now let's consider what happens if you impose Jack Welch's corporate business model on the education system. You fire the bottom 10% of teachers across the state because their students did poorly. These will be teachers in the poorest parts of the state. You replace them with graduates right out of college. At the end of the year they get fired and you repeat the mindless cycle over and over again. What exactly have you accomplished? Did you actually solve the problem of teachers who "don't perform"?

Not necessarily. If the money is attached to the student, like it is when you are in the private sector, teachers have to worker harder to attract students. And this means by doing better, offering more activities and other forms of education. By this model, students can always take their money and attend a private school, state school, religious or other type of institution. After all, you wouldn't continue to eat at a restaurant which serves bad food or gives you a bad hair cut, right?

This model is similar to how it works in Belgium. Education is still funded through scholarships and through the government, but the money is still attached to the students.

You only have those benefits because unions fought for them in the first place. If you were unionized and you and your fellow employees had a legitimate grievance you could go on strike. It is one of your freedoms. Why not use the right that you have for the betterment of yourself, your family and your community?

I don't know which benefits you are referring to. I can only assume these are the benefits which are mandated into law. The minimum wage doesn't really help, or effect me and I am a salary worker so I don't get overtime. My vacation and sick pay was negotiated without the use of unions. I didn't get it at first, but after a few months I was able to accumulate enough. And I either use it or I don't. My boss doesn't give it to me in the form of a bonus.

All these benefits which mandates vacation pay, severance pay, sick pay and others increases the burden on employers. As a result, you have more unemployed individuals. Less people are willing to take a chance on you if there is no guarantee that you are a good addition to their business.

Hong Kong is under Communist Chinese control. Do you believe that is still a good example of a Free Market?

When Hong Kong was under British control, it was still every free. After the hand over, not much has really changed. The constitutions allows for a very strict policy of non-interventionalism.

If that is their sole purpose then what makes you believe that it is a good model to apply to public education? If your own child is "not profitable" to the corporate run school system do they get to fire your child for a failure to "perform"? Oh wait, the teacher gets fired even if they did manage to get the other 90% of the kids to pass because they now fall under the 10% rule and are fired just because that is the business model. How is your child going to feel knowing that they were responsible for getting their teacher fired? Is that the kind of pressurized learning system you want your child educated under?

Again, I am really not sure if you are trying to place blame on the student or something else. Teachers are providing education, which means they are providing a service. If a teacher is not providing a good service (in this case, good education) then they should be held accountable. Whether or not the teacher should be fired, reassigned or retrained is not up to me. All I am pointing out is that when there is a monopoly on that service, no one is allowed to compete.

Now that we agree that the current system is broken what are our alternatives? This thread is about unions so let's start there. Should all unions be outlawed here in the USA? Do you believe that will solve all of our present economic woes?

We should allow more open competition. Competition makes everything better. Unions are generally designed to be anti-competitive, as one of the reasons why unions generally support minimum wage increases and tariffs. Minimum wages keeps low skills workers from being able to compete with high skilled competition. Tariffs keep trade unions from being able to compete with foreign labour.

No one likes a monopoly, so it does not make sense for a particular union to have a monopoly on labour. If unions are as good as they profess, then they should be able to show why they are good. If they are, then their benefits and wages are well justified.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

It isn't the right that hates unions. Unions are hated by a majority of people. That's why union membership has been dropping across the country and the shift in states is toward right to work.

What happened? That's the question. Unions were very beneficial at one time. They certainly did improve wages and working conditions. As the unions got more powerful they became greedy for the benefit of union bosses. The unions married politicians and created what's been called "unholy alliances". Worker's paid into unions, who used those dues to support politicians, who used their office to benefit the unions. Now there is a revolution with Americans who now hate unions.

Almost all of that is wrong. There is no evidence proving very many people of normal intelligence and emotional development have anti- views on private sector unions. The lowest support for unions ever recorded was after the auto industry bailout in 2009, 48%. Today it is safely over 50% and rising. When government worker unions are stripped out support for unions is above 60%.

Further, attitudes toward unions are party dependent. Democratic Party support for unions approaches 80% while just about one-in-four of the party of reactionaries supports unions.

In addition, union corruption was mostly against union members; it never approached effects on the public of, say, price fixing among corporations or corporations buying influence from politicians. The NEA/AFT have held America's children hostage to get pay raises, etc., but that is avarice, something the party of reaction regularly blesses and Reagan signed the biggest pay raises in federal government history signing pay parity bills - perhaps to atone for his acts against the ATC union.

The disheartening thing is how few realize the dangers of government worker unions. The NEA/AFT are the most dangerous organizations in the United States yet Reagan's signature blessing federal union pay parity bills led directly to huge increases at state and local levels. That is not Reagan's fault but it is perhaps an INTENDED consequence based on NEA/AFT lobbying at federal level at the time.

It is interesting that you think public support for unions qualifies as proof that unions are effective. I think a better indicator would be union membership, which has dropped to a 93 year low. Less than 12% of the entire workforce is in a union, with less than 7% of private sector workers are in a union.

Union supporters automatically decry this, and pontificate that this will result in a decline in worker compensation. When rational people point out that wage and benefit packages have been steadily increasing despite a steady decline in union membership we are dismissed as being haters.

Does it make me a hater to point out that the Teamsters/AFL engaged in vandalism in an attempt to monopolize the trucking and construction industries? If a corporation had done the same thing you would be using it as evidence that we need to regulate corporations to keep them hones, yet you dismiss unions doing it as completely internal and not affecting the public.

Can I also point out that union members are actually part of the public and that when corrupt union steals their pension it forces other people who are not part of the union to step up and supply an alternative? Or would that, once again, make me a hater?

 

[Derideo_Te]

Thanks for cleaning up the posts.

Let's put this into perspective. If you privatize the entire education system you end up destroying the very foundation that this nation was built upon. Jefferson understood that an educated populace was essential to the very freedoms and liberty this nation holds most dear.

That's great, but that doesn't necessarily mean that this requires public education. In fact, I have no problem with public education at all. The problem is when the public education has a government granted monopoly and the employees (teachers) are unionised, which doesn't help anyone. There essential is no incentive for improvement, as the great teachers are lumped together with the average and below average teachers.

Do you know why teachers became unionized in the first place? Here is a high level synopsis. In order to save costs school districts hired women at lower salaries during the 1900's because they were paid less than their male counterparts. Since they couldn't vote they formed unions to protect themselves. They were instrumental in women's suffrage too so the right of women to cast a vote is in part due to unions. Secondly teachers are paid less than people with equivalent degrees in the private sector. Thirdly there are incentives for improvement within the teaching profession itself. Another factor that is very often ignored is class size. Trying to maintain order and teach in a class of 20 children is far easier than it is with 40. Even the very best teacher becomes a baby sitter when they have to spend half the period just taking attendance and collecting homework assignments. So when evaluating the performance of a teacher it is not as simple as just looking at how many kids passed vs failed. Would your own job performance suffer if you were expected to do 4 or 5 times the work for the same pay? Note: the number of interactions is an exponential factor of the number of children.

If you privatize education you end up with an educated ruling elite and at best a poorly educated proletariat that is oppressed and exploited.

But this has already happened. Most schools in America requires students to attend schools where they are zoned. Chances are, if your family can afford a $500,000 home, then you can attend a really good school, as those good schools to be located in those areas. It's only the schools located in poorer areas which are worst off.

Bingo! So let's deal with that problem rather than demonizing the entire teachers union.

Not necessarily. If the money is attached to the student, like it is when you are in the private sector, teachers have to worker harder to attract students. And this means by doing better, offering more activities and other forms of education. By this model, students can always take their money and attend a private school, state school, religious or other type of institution. After all, you wouldn't continue to eat at a restaurant which serves bad food or gives you a bad hair cut, right?

This model is similar to how it works in Belgium. Education is still funded through scholarships and through the government, but the money is still attached to the students.

The charter school model has proven to be no more successful than the public schools in terms of results achieved. This is because the problem is not the teachers or their union.

I don't know which benefits you are referring to. I can only assume these are the benefits which are mandated into law. The minimum wage doesn't really help, or effect me and I am a salary worker so I don't get overtime. My vacation and sick pay was negotiated without the use of unions. I didn't get it at first, but after a few months I was able to accumulate enough. And I either use it or I don't. My boss doesn't give it to me in the form of a bonus.

All these benefits which mandates vacation pay, severance pay, sick pay and others increases the burden on employers. As a result, you have more unemployed individuals. Less people are willing to take a chance on you if there is no guarantee that you are a good addition to their business.

Benefits like vacation pay, hours worked and sick time were only mandated into law because of unions.

When Hong Kong was under British control, it was still every free. After the hand over, not much has really changed. The constitutions allows for a very strict policy of non-interventionalism.

If that is their sole purpose then what makes you believe that it is a good model to apply to public education? If your own child is "not profitable" to the corporate run school system do they get to fire your child for a failure to "perform"? Oh wait, the teacher gets fired even if they did manage to get the other 90% of the kids to pass because they now fall under the 10% rule and are fired just because that is the business model. How is your child going to feel knowing that they were responsible for getting their teacher fired? Is that the kind of pressurized learning system you want your child educated under?

Again, I am really not sure if you are trying to place blame on the student or something else. Teachers are providing education, which means they are providing a service. If a teacher is not providing a good service (in this case, good education) then they should be held accountable. Whether or not the teacher should be fired, reassigned or retrained is not up to me. All I am pointing out is that when there is a monopoly on that service, no one is allowed to compete.

Compete for what exactly? Where is the competition in education? Can you teach more facts in a given time? Can you teach children how to learn faster? Is there a better way to focus their attention and make them concentrate on the subject matter? Children are individuals and while most are well behaved there is always a joker in every classroom and they will jump at any opportunity to "change the channel" in a manner of speaking. So let's have some concrete suggestions on what constitutes competition is a classroom.

Now that we agree that the current system is broken what are our alternatives? This thread is about unions so let's start there. Should all unions be outlawed here in the USA? Do you believe that will solve all of our present economic woes?

We should allow more open competition. Competition makes everything better. Unions are generally designed to be anti-competitive, as one of the reasons why unions generally support minimum wage increases and tariffs. Minimum wages keeps low skills workers from being able to compete with high skilled competition. Tariffs keep trade unions from being able to compete with foreign labour.

No one likes a monopoly, so it does not make sense for a particular union to have a monopoly on labour. If unions are as good as they profess, then they should be able to show why they are good. If they are, then their benefits and wages are well justified.

You are approaching this from the point of view that teachers would improve if there was competition. Well there is and it is called charter schools. The problem is that while they pay their teachers less they don't get any better results. What does this tell us?

 

[Big Black Dog]

Unions are nothing but organized thugs and criminals.

 

[Wyatt earp]

Why the hatred for unions from the right wing? This is a fairly recent attitude in our history from what I can remember. I remember working in non union shops in Texas in the 60's as a welder and the old timers advised me to try to get in a union if I wanted to make good money. Now unions are called communists by the right wingers. If those words were used back in the 50's and 60's there would have been problems. I believed any number of union men back then including my uncles who were also vets of WW2 would have knocked someone's block off for talking like that. After all, the corporations have their unions (job protection). It's called most politicians in their pocket and also the U.S. Supreme court. How ridiculous can it get that Exxon can be a citizen? Never dies, can break up into dozens of holding companies and live in different countries to beat paying taxes, never get drafted, never go to jail, and yet a union worker or teacher receives nothing but scorn? I wonder if the great generation would now say "Yes, this is what we fought for"?

Private sectorUnions were great up to the 60's but then they just became what they were fighting in the first place Its not just right wingers the numbers dont lie. In 1983 20.1% of all workers were members of a union and in 2011 11.8% of America's employed were union members.

Union Membership at All Time Low | The Economic Populist
and its not even just America.....

Trade union membership falls to all-time low in Poland - National

In 1991, 19 percent of workers were also members of trade unions such as Solidarity or OPZZ. Just one-in-three respondents told a CBOS survey taken in April that there was a trade union active in their workplace and just 16 percent told the pollster that they thought that unions were effective in advancing workers' pay and conditions.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Let's put this into perspective. If you privatize the entire education system you end up destroying the very foundation that this nation was built upon. Jefferson understood that an educated populace was essential to the very freedoms and liberty this nation holds most dear. If you privatize education you end up with an educated ruling elite and at best a poorly educated proletariat that is oppressed and exploited. Now let's consider what happens if you impose Jack Welch's corporate business model on the education system. You fire the bottom 10% of teachers across the state because their students did poorly. These will be teachers in the poorest parts of the state. You replace them with graduates right out of college. At the end of the year they get fired and you repeat the mindless cycle over and over again. What exactly have you accomplished? Did you actually solve the problem of teachers who "don't perform"? Have you improved the education of a single child in those areas? With unions at least you have an experienced and dedicated base of teachers working in the poorest school districts. Education does not fit the "one-size-fits-all" capitalism business model. You are dealing with something unique unto itself. Other civilized western nations have a single national unionized teaching model. They do better because they focus on the needs of the nation in the future. In this nation with thousands of individual school districts who can decide how much or how little to fund their schools and what must be on the curriculum you end up with at best an average. If you want a national school system that is competitive you need to start thinking on that level.

What?

Jefferson wanted the country to concentrate on growing food for the rest of the world. When Jefferson was alive the only farmers that could spare the time for an education were the ones that were rich enough to hire other people to work their land.

Jefferson also believed that education should be limited to basic grammar in public schools, and that only the best students should be eligible for further free public education. I can only guess at how he would react to mandatory public education of all students until they reach the age of 18, but I doubt he would favor it.

Then again, I am not an expert, like you.

You only have those benefits because unions fought for them in the first place. If you were unionized and you and your fellow employees had a legitimate grievance you could go on strike. It is one of your freedoms. Why not use the right that you have for the betterment of yourself, your family and your community?

It is also my right to not go on strike if I think the union is wrong.

If that is their sole purpose then what makes you believe that it is a good model to apply to public education? If your own child is "not profitable" to the corporate run school system do they get to fire your child for a failure to "perform"? Oh wait, the teacher gets fired even if they did manage to get the other 90% of the kids to pass because they now fall under the 10% rule and are fired just because that is the business model. How is your child going to feel knowing that they were responsible for getting their teacher fired? Is that the kind of pressurized learning system you want your child educated under?

Didn't you just post in favor of Jefferson's view of education? Or was that someone else?

Now that we agree that the current system is broken what are our alternatives? This thread is about unions so let's start there. Should all unions be outlawed here in the USA? Do you believe that will solve all of our present economic woes?

Alternatively, should unions be mandatory? Do you believe that will solve all our economic woes?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

That seems a little over the top in the clean debate zone, even for a quantum windbag. The fact is the only important mistake in her post is that Republican presidents mostly opposed unions going all the way back to the post civil war era. Nixon is an important exception, and his is big because he did little to stop the malignancy government worker unions are on the health and well being of the United States.

Why? Is it because it actually tears apart the argument that Friedman hated unions? I will point out that, unlike you, I never attacked the person who made the argument, I just attacked the argument.

Feel free to point out anything I said about any president from either party while you contemplate the fact that personal attacks are actually against the rules here.

Roosevelt had enough sense to be very, very clear he opposed government workers unionizing on the basis that there was no one trustworthy to represent taxpayers at government worker bargaining tables. Turns out he was right about that as he was with more than enough of his decisions.

The bottom line on Friedman is he was a lot like Allan Greenspan - a glad handing professional hack with one more important accomplishment than Greenspan, he'd say anything anyone paid him to say and find some gibberish to back it up. Read Friedman on unions below, then apologize to Dragonlady.

[FONT=&quot]“When unions get higher wages for their members by restricting entry into an occupation, those higher wages are at the expense of other workers who find their opportunities reduced. When government pays its employees higher wages, those higher wages are at the expense of the taxpayer. [/FONT]
​

[FONT=&quot]But when workers get higher wages and better working conditions through the free market, when they get raises by firm competing with one another for the best workers, by workers competing with one another for the best jobs, those higher wages are at nobody's expense. They can only come from higher productivity, greater capital investment, more widely diffused skills. The whole pie is bigger - there's more for the worker, but there's also more for the employer, the investor, the consumer, and even the tax collector. [/FONT]
​

[FONT=&quot] That's the way the free market system distributes the fruits of economic progress among all people. That's the secret of the enormous improvements in the conditions of the working person over the past two centuries.” [/FONT]
​

― Milton Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement

Apologize for what? Can you point out how anything you just quoted can logically be interpreted to mean that "Unions were seen by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics as the anathema of free market economics and a distortion on the free market." What he actually did is explain why, in a free market, unions will not survive.

It appears to me that he was 100% correct in his analysis, despite your insistence that he was a paid hack.

It's clear you know little about Friedman. His point above is unions imperil the free market. He wrote it AFTER his earlier pro union writings; worse, he wrote it to stay cool with Don Regan and the crowd grooming Reagan for the role of a lifetime.

Was there something else?

He did not say that, so stop pretending he did. In fact, he clearly said business organizations were undermining the market. All he ever said negative about unions is that they restrict options. If you actually understand his philosophy you would know that he believed that almost everything, including a complete lack of government, restricts options. He understood that the world is not perfect, he just wanted to place the onus for bad choices on the individual, not the group.

 

[Wyatt earp]

You just hit a home run....

Alternatively, should unions be mandatory? Do you believe that will solve all our economic woes?

 

[PaulS1950]

All the years that I was a union member none of my money was spent on the political organizing that the unions did. That part is a choice that each member can make.

I have seen union shops where the union was a necessity and I have seen shops where the union was a limitation on the members. I was living in a "union town" where unions controlled the wages. Non-union shops proliferated but they paid similar wages - they just didn't have the same benefits that the union employees had. Prices always rose to the level of the income of the "average" worker so there were higher wages but the costs were also higher.

 

[Dugdale_Jukes]

[FONT=&quot]

Unions were seen by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics as the anathema of free market economics and a distortion on the free market. When the right-wing South American dictators took over in the 1970's, they killed all of the lawyers, university professors and union leaders to stifle all dissent to the freemarket reforms they put in place.

While unions were certainly the reason for the rise of the middle class in Europe and North America, by the 1950's, many of the US unions had been taken over by criminal elements. Jimmy Hoffa is better known as a New York gangster than as the President of the Teamsters Union but he was both.

It was Reagan who initially attacked unions in the US, busting the air traffic controllers' strike by firing all of the workers. Reagan was a huge fan of Milton Friedman, as are successive Presidents since Reagan, until Obama.

Since the Republican Party has been in thrall to Friedman and the Chicago School since the 1970's under Richard Nixon, is it any wonder that they have all been trained to hate unions?

Friedman never said anything that could remotely be interpreted that way. In fact, he actually opposed right to work laws as being anti free market government solutions.

He also opposed laws that require people to join unions, which is what probably has you so confused.

Since your entire post is based on a lie your entire post is completely wrong, and your conclusion deserves as much deference as the belief that the moon is made of green cheese.

DJ initial response:

That seems a little over the top in the clean debate zone, even for a quantum windbag. The fact is the only important mistake in her post is that Republican presidents mostly opposed unions going all the way back to the post civil war era. Nixon is an important exception, and his is big because he did little to stop the malignancy government worker unions are on the health and well being of the United States.

Roosevelt had enough sense to be very, very clear he opposed government workers unionizing on the basis that there was no one trustworthy to represent taxpayers at government worker bargaining tables. Turns out he was right about that as he was with more than enough of his decisions.

The bottom line on Friedman is he was a lot like Allan Greenspan - a glad handing professional hack with one more important accomplishment than Greenspan, he'd say anything anyone paid him to say and find some gibberish to back it up. Read Friedman on unions below, then apologize to Dragonlady. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]“When unions get higher wages for their members by restricting entry into an occupation, those higher wages are at the expense of other workers who find their opportunities reduced. When government pays its employees higher wages, those higher wages are at the expense of the taxpayer. [/FONT]
​

[FONT=&quot]But when workers get higher wages and better working conditions through the free market, when they get raises by firm competing with one another for the best workers, by workers competing with one another for the best jobs, those higher wages are at nobody's expense. They can only come from higher productivity, greater capital investment, more widely diffused skills. The whole pie is bigger - there's more for the worker, but there's also more for the employer, the investor, the consumer, and even the tax collector. [/FONT]
​

[FONT=&quot]That's the way the free market system distributes the fruits of economic progress among all people. That's the secret of the enormous improvements in the conditions of the working person over the past two centuries.” [/FONT]
​

[FONT=&quot]― Milton Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement[/FONT]

Why? Is it because it actually tears apart the argument that Friedman hated unions? I will point out that, unlike you, I never attacked the person who made the argument, I just attacked the argument.

Feel free to point out anything I said about any president from either party while you contemplate the fact that personal attacks are actually against the rules here.

Apologize for what? Can you point out how anything you just quoted can logically be interpreted to mean that "Unions were seen by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics as the anathema of free market economics and a distortion on the free market." What he actually did is explain why, in a free market, unions will not survive.

It appears to me that he was 100% correct in his analysis, despite your insistence that he was a paid hack.

It's clear you know little about Friedman. His point above is unions imperil the free market. He wrote it AFTER his earlier pro union writings; worse, he wrote it to stay cool with Don Regan and the crowd grooming Reagan for the role of a lifetime.

Was there something else?

He did not say that, so stop pretending he did. In fact, he clearly said business organizations were undermining the market. All he ever said negative about unions is that they restrict options. If you actually understand his philosophy you would know that he believed that almost everything, including a complete lack of government, restricts options. He understood that the world is not perfect, he just wanted to place the onus for bad choices on the individual, not the group.

The actual quote is above in my original response to your vicious attack on another poster in the clean debate zone. People can read it for themselves; the more gifted may want to click the link to learn how to discover more about Milt.

Bottom line on Friedman: he was all over the map on everything but monetary policy, and his position depended precisely on who was writing the checks. Friedman was a for-fee thinker/publisher whose views on unions changed in the latter part of the 1970s after he sold voice to Reagan's crowd. No question about it.

Last but not least, my posts are factual. Facts are by law not attacks.

Meanwhile you called another poster a liar and belittled her post in the clean debate zone, then accused me of attacking you which did not happen (entire post above). The rest of the crowd can determine who is, uh, windbagging it thirteen to the dozen and who has Friedman dialed in.

 

[Wyatt earp]

[FONT=&quot]

Unions were seen by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics as the anathema of free market economics and a distortion on the free market. When the right-wing South American dictators took over in the 1970's, they killed all of the lawyers, university professors and union leaders to stifle all dissent to the freemarket reforms they put in place.

While unions were certainly the reason for the rise of the middle class in Europe and North America, by the 1950's, many of the US unions had been taken over by criminal elements. Jimmy Hoffa is better known as a New York gangster than as the President of the Teamsters Union but he was both.

It was Reagan who initially attacked unions in the US, busting the air traffic controllers' strike by firing all of the workers. Reagan was a huge fan of Milton Friedman, as are successive Presidents since Reagan, until Obama.

Since the Republican Party has been in thrall to Friedman and the Chicago School since the 1970's under Richard Nixon, is it any wonder that they have all been trained to hate unions?

Friedman never said anything that could remotely be interpreted that way. In fact, he actually opposed right to work laws as being anti free market government solutions.

He also opposed laws that require people to join unions, which is what probably has you so confused.

Since your entire post is based on a lie your entire post is completely wrong, and your conclusion deserves as much deference as the belief that the moon is made of green cheese.

DJ initial response:

That seems a little over the top in the clean debate zone, even for a quantum windbag. The fact is the only important mistake in her post is that Republican presidents mostly opposed unions going all the way back to the post civil war era. Nixon is an important exception, and his is big because he did little to stop the malignancy government worker unions are on the health and well being of the United States.

Roosevelt had enough sense to be very, very clear he opposed government workers unionizing on the basis that there was no one trustworthy to represent taxpayers at government worker bargaining tables. Turns out he was right about that as he was with more than enough of his decisions.

The bottom line on Friedman is he was a lot like Allan Greenspan - a glad handing professional hack with one more important accomplishment than Greenspan, he'd say anything anyone paid him to say and find some gibberish to back it up. Read Friedman on unions below, then apologize to Dragonlady. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]“When unions get higher wages for their members by restricting entry into an occupation, those higher wages are at the expense of other workers who find their opportunities reduced. When government pays its employees higher wages, those higher wages are at the expense of the taxpayer. [/FONT]
​

[FONT=&quot]But when workers get higher wages and better working conditions through the free market, when they get raises by firm competing with one another for the best workers, by workers competing with one another for the best jobs, those higher wages are at nobody's expense. They can only come from higher productivity, greater capital investment, more widely diffused skills. The whole pie is bigger - there's more for the worker, but there's also more for the employer, the investor, the consumer, and even the tax collector. [/FONT]
​

[FONT=&quot]That's the way the free market system distributes the fruits of economic progress among all people. That's the secret of the enormous improvements in the conditions of the working person over the past two centuries.” [/FONT]
​

[FONT=&quot]― Milton Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement[/FONT]

It's clear you know little about Friedman. His point above is unions imperil the free market. He wrote it AFTER his earlier pro union writings; worse, he wrote it to stay cool with Don Regan and the crowd grooming Reagan for the role of a lifetime.

Was there something else?

He did not say that, so stop pretending he did. In fact, he clearly said business organizations were undermining the market. All he ever said negative about unions is that they restrict options. If you actually understand his philosophy you would know that he believed that almost everything, including a complete lack of government, restricts options. He understood that the world is not perfect, he just wanted to place the onus for bad choices on the individual, not the group.

The actual quote is above in my original response to your vicious attack on another poster in the clean debate zone. People can read it for themselves; the more gifted may want to click the link to learn how to discover more about Milt.

Bottom line on Friedman: he was all over the map on everything but monetary policy, and his position depended precisely on who was writing the checks. Friedman was a for-fee thinker/publisher whose views on unions changed in the latter part of the 1970s after he sold voice to Reagan's crowd. No question about it.

Last but not least, my posts are factual. Facts are by law not attacks.

Meanwhile you called another poster a liar and belittled her post in the clean debate zone, then accused me of attacking you which did not happen (entire post above). The rest of the crowd can determine who is, uh, windbagging it thirteen to the dozen and who has Friedman dialed in.

you have a point. this is the clean zone just debating....and not trying to belittle a poster ....

 

[Mr Natural]

Unions were seen by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics as the anathema of free market economics and a distortion on the free market. When the right-wing South American dictators took over in the 1970's, they killed all of the lawyers, university professors and union leaders to stifle all dissent to the freemarket reforms they put in place.

While unions were certainly the reason for the rise of the middle class in Europe and North America, by the 1950's, many of the US unions had been taken over by criminal elements. Jimmy Hoffa is better known as a New York gangster than as the President of the Teamsters Union but he was both.

It was Reagan who initially attacked unions in the US, busting the air traffic controllers' strike by firing all of the workers. Reagan was a huge fan of Milton Friedman, as are successive Presidents since Reagan, until Obama.

Since the Republican Party has been in thrall to Friedman and the Chicago School since the 1970's under Richard Nixon, is it any wonder that they have all been trained to hate unions?

Isn't Milton Friedman the same quack who argues for the elimination of licensing requirements for physicians?

 

[Eric Cartman]

If anyone hate unions then they must hate freedom, the free market and the working class.

There are people in unions that have done bad things but there are people in every walk of life that have done bad things. That wouldn't be a reason for hating humanity would it?

 

[The Rabbi]

If anyone hate unions then they must hate freedom, the free market and the working class.

There are people in unions that have done bad things but there are people in every walk of life that have done bad things. That wouldn't be a reason for hating humanity would it?

I must hate freedom.
Can you explain how it is freedom to force someone to join a union as a condition of work? Is it freedom to force employers to hire only certain kinds of people and not others? Is it freedom to set wages across the board regardless of individual merit? Is it freedom for an employer not to be able to fire an incompetent employee?
The answers are self explanatory.
Unions are the opposite of freedom. They are the opposite of capitalism. They are all about coercion. And they need to die.

 

[Eric Cartman]

If anyone hate unions then they must hate freedom, the free market and the working class.

There are people in unions that have done bad things but there are people in every walk of life that have done bad things. That wouldn't be a reason for hating humanity would it?

I must hate freedom.
Can you explain how it is freedom to force someone to join a union as a condition of work? Is it freedom to force employers to hire only certain kinds of people and not others? Is it freedom to set wages across the board regardless of individual merit? Is it freedom for an employer not to be able to fire an incompetent employee?
The answers are self explanatory.
Unions are the opposite of freedom. They are the opposite of capitalism. They are all about coercion. And they need to die.

Freedom to assemble.
Freedom to associate.
Freedom to negotiate contracts. (including exclusive supply of labor contracts and how terminations are handled)

 

[AmazonTania]

Unions were seen by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics as the anathema of free market economics and a distortion on the free market. When the right-wing South American dictators took over in the 1970's, they killed all of the lawyers, university professors and union leaders to stifle all dissent to the freemarket reforms they put in place.

While unions were certainly the reason for the rise of the middle class in Europe and North America, by the 1950's, many of the US unions had been taken over by criminal elements. Jimmy Hoffa is better known as a New York gangster than as the President of the Teamsters Union but he was both.

It was Reagan who initially attacked unions in the US, busting the air traffic controllers' strike by firing all of the workers. Reagan was a huge fan of Milton Friedman, as are successive Presidents since Reagan, until Obama.

Since the Republican Party has been in thrall to Friedman and the Chicago School since the 1970's under Richard Nixon, is it any wonder that they have all been trained to hate unions?

Isn't Milton Friedman the same quack who argues for the elimination of licensing requirements for physicians?

You really must not understand why the AMA was initially created.

 

[HUGGY]

Why the hatred for unions from the right wing? This is a fairly recent attitude in our history from what I can remember. I remember working in non union shops in Texas in the 60's as a welder and the old timers advised me to try to get in a union if I wanted to make good money. Now unions are called communists by the right wingers. If those words were used back in the 50's and 60's there would have been problems. I believed any number of union men back then including my uncles who were also vets of WW2 would have knocked someone's block off for talking like that. After all, the corporations have their unions (job protection). It's called most politicians in their pocket and also the U.S. Supreme court. How ridiculous can it get that Exxon can be a citizen? Never dies, can break up into dozens of holding companies and live in different countries to beat paying taxes, never get drafted, never go to jail, and yet a union worker or teacher receives nothing but scorn? I wonder if the great generation would now say "Yes, this is what we fought for"?

Your recollection of anti union activity by the fascist right wing supported by the oligarkies(sp?) of industry would serve you better if you did some serious research rather than muse over your "feelings" on the subject. There is a clear history of union busting including murder and physical assault as well as a whole plethera of illegal methods of forcing unions out of the workplace.