How Shutdown Exposed The Lie At Heart Of The Anti Union Right To Work Movement

[Dragonlady]

Unions are a joke. They claim they're working for the little man as they get him an extra nickel an hour while they take millions for themselves. The gullibles eat this up.

Funny how after the unions were destroyed by Regan in the 1980's, working men and women stopped getting raises at all, and in fact, have been losing ground in wages and benefits ever since, even as corporations booked record profits and dividends.

So maybe, just maybe, this bullshit line you're spouting is just another Republican lie to get working men and women to vote against their own best interests. Because Regan promised everyone a big raise when the unions were gone and working people are still waiting.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Unions are a joke. They claim they're working for the little man as they get him an extra nickel an hour while they take millions for themselves. The gullibles eat this up.

Funny how after the unions were destroyed by Regan in the 1980's, working men and women stopped getting raises at all, and in fact, have been losing ground in wages and benefits ever since, even as corporations booked record profits and dividends.

So maybe, just maybe, this bullshit line you're spouting is just another Republican lie to get working men and women to vote against their own best interests. Because Regan promised everyone a big raise when the unions were gone and working people are still waiting.

I only recall Reagan dealing with one union, and that was the air traffic controllers. As for any other union, what did he do to destroy them?

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Unions are a joke. They claim they're working for the little man as they get him an extra nickel an hour while they take millions for themselves. The gullibles eat this up.

Shows how much you know about labor unions. The average pay for a non union electrician is $18-24 per hour. The average pay for a union electrician is $32-45 per hour. With as much as $11 per hour paid toward retirement, and health insurance that is 100% paid for with no out of pocket costs. For the price of one hour of pay per month for dues.

It's the gullibles that are stupid enough to work for non union contractors.

It is the corrupted unions and the corrupted work rules and any construction contracts they have that has turned taxpayers into eunuchs. There are a lot of projects that take a massive amount of time more to complete then they should. Cities are held hostage and would look a lot better with more resources if not taken to the woodshed. Government unions are the same. I do not blame any worker wanting the money because that is normal. People leave areas because of this or worse are stuck there or live with others who make a good living.

Years ago our then Governor made an offer to our city: If we could get a school levy passed for half of what it cost to build new schools, the state will provide the other half. So failure after failure, the bill finally passed.

So they are half-way done with the schools, and the union came out to file a claim against our city because we hired some non-union outfits for the construction of the job. Long story short, we were forced to pay prevailing wage which of course cost us taxpayers a lot more money than we had passed. So they had to make cuts in material and structures to make up that lost money.

If you have a mortgage, you are required to have house insurance. You need to have enough insurance to cover a total loss. They use union companies to decide what your structures are worth. The more the union outfits charge, the more you have to pay for insurance even if you hire non-union companies.

Unions are just a pain in the ass and cost all of us money.

Yea...ya probably should have hired illegals to save costs...right?

You could. The Democrats keep wanting more and more of them over here. But the union people are not smart enough to figure that out yet.

 

[Oddball]

Labor unions were the primary reason for the vibrant middleclass between 1945-1980. Right to work laws were the primary reason for the destruction of it. Along with the trickle down failed policies of the Reagan era. Americans are waking up to that fact now, and there is a resurgence of union membership, and now a majority of Americans that support not only unions, but the tax and regulatory policies being out forward by new Democratic House members.

Horseshit.

The primary reason for the vibrant middle class of that time period, is that all the world's industrial nations, other than Murica, had been bombed back to the 1880s.

 

[Anathema]

I wouldn't be so interested in killing unions if they didn't suck so much.

Die unions, die!!

Interesting. I’ve worked for my current employer for 18 years. 5 as a contractor, 2 as a Management/Non-Union employee and the last 11 as a Union emloyee (10 as a Union steward).

The Company could not pay me enough money or custom build me a Non-Union job that I would agree to take. I’ve twice been offered Supervisor positions and turned them down. I’ll leave the Union when they drag my carcass out of my chair. Even though I’m topped out (no further advancement opportunities) in my department.

 

[Jarlaxle]

That is because you are a goldbricking slacker, doing the bare minimum to not get yourself shit-canned.

 

[Jarlaxle]

Government employee unions are a joke and should be outlawed. They do nothing, they cannot affect pay, hours, benefits, or anything a union normally tries to control.

Where that's true...it is BECAUSE of right wing attacks on unions

Of note...contractors...many who would have been union Federal workers had not their jobs been privatized..receive LOWER pay and will get NOTHING back of the wages lost during the shut down

Dude...even Franklin Roosevelt understood that government employees should not be permitted to unionize.

 

[Lesh]

Unions are a joke. They claim they're working for the little man as they get him an extra nickel an hour while they take millions for themselves. The gullibles eat this up.

Funny how after the unions were destroyed by Regan in the 1980's, working men and women stopped getting raises at all, and in fact, have been losing ground in wages and benefits ever since, even as corporations booked record profits and dividends.

So maybe, just maybe, this bullshit line you're spouting is just another Republican lie to get working men and women to vote against their own best interests. Because Regan promised everyone a big raise when the unions were gone and working people are still waiting.

Exactly

Reagan also used his appointments to set a lasting legacy for breaking unions. He would appoint 3 management representatives to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) causing it to significantly depart from its legal obligation to help promote collective bargaining. Under the board, they settled only half the cases the NLRB did under President Jimmy Carter and found in favor of the employer in 75% of the cases. For comparison, the board under Republican President Richard Nixon only found in favor of the employer in 33% of cases. Most of the cases found in favor of employers were around firing workers who were organizing. The board would often stall cases for an average of three years and even when they decided in favor of the employee they would often only award back wages. Now thirty plus years later, that standard is often used in NLRB cases.

The situation at the Department of Labor wasn’t much better. While the DOL continued to strictly enforce disclosure rules for unions, they cast a blind eye to high priced union-busting and consulting firms that began popping up. With no oversight, these high-priced firms took action to squash organizing drives by dumping millions of dollars of dark money into these firms. At the same time, Reagan made it less safe to be a worker. He closed 1/3 of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration offices (OSHA), decreased the staff by 25% and eliminated 75% of the penalties against employers. Instead of tough penalties against bad employers, OSHA began seeking voluntary compliance. Under the guise of reducing federal regulation, the Reagan administration forced OSHA to drop rules that required companies to pool their information about hazardous materials that might be used on a job site meaning that a laborer might not know that a painter is using a chemical that could be dangerous without the proper safety gear. His administration routinely used this excuse to block numerous OSHA regulations over his eight years in office.

 

[MAGAman]

Unions are a joke. They claim they're working for the little man as they get him an extra nickel an hour while they take millions for themselves. The gullibles eat this up.

Funny how after the unions were destroyed by Regan in the 1980's, working men and women stopped getting raises at all, and in fact, have been losing ground in wages and benefits ever since, even as corporations booked record profits and dividends.

So maybe, just maybe, this bullshit line you're spouting is just another Republican lie to get working men and women to vote against their own best interests. Because Regan promised everyone a big raise when the unions were gone and working people are still waiting.

How can you actually believe Unions raise does if thin air?

Supply and demand.... Learn it. Live it.

 

[Lesh]

WTF?

Bad translator program?

 

[80zephyr]

Of course what finally ended the Shut Down was the action of a couple air traffic controllers who stood up and said

NO MORE

And that's CLASSIC union style activity

Labor unions were the primary reason for the vibrant middleclass between 1945-1980. Right to work laws were the primary reason for the destruction of it. Along with the trickle down failed policies of the Reagan era. Americans are waking up to that fact now, and there is a resurgence of union membership, and now a majority of Americans that support not only unions, but the tax and regulatory policies being out forward by new Democratic House members.

Globalization killed the unions. We now compete with companies that pay workers pennies per hour. Its now a "race to the bottom".

Mark