Introduction
Many members of labor unions vote for Democratic candidates (often upon the
heavy-handed "advice" of union leaders) even though the Democrats stand
for socialist principles with which the average blue collar worker probably disagrees.
When you write out a check for union dues, you might as well make the check payable to the
Democratic National Committee, because that's where the money is eventually going.
Labor unions appear to be little more than fundraising machines — and pools of temporary
manpower — for the Democratic Party. But the Democratic Party supports a number of
things that the average blue collar worker opposes, such as high taxes, gun control, abortion,
same-sex adoptions, same-sex marriages, women in combat, radical environmentalism, radical
feminism, race-based hiring quotas, and a permanent multi-billion dollar welfare state.
"Joe Six-Pack", the average white male factory worker, has no use for
taxpayer-funded needle exchanges for IV drug users. He doesn't approve of
dispensing condoms (and instructions on how to use them) in schools. And
he doesn't like 1.6 gallon toilets any more than the rest of us. But these
are the kinds of things the Democratic Party fights for, and he unwittingly supports
them with money siphoned from his union dues.
If you vote for a particular party as a matter of habit, or if you join a labor union
without thinking about how your money will be spent, you're making a serious mistake.
Subtopics on other pages:
Corruption:
Organized crime
Shadowy connections
An atmosphere of sleaze and graft
Occasional violence and constant strife
Politics:
Your union dues go straight to the Democratic Party
Unions act as manpower pools for Democrat campaigns
Politicians and unions exchange favors constantly
President Obama is paying back the unions for their support
Other organized labor problems:
Mismanagement
Declining membership
Constant attempts to expand
Unions protect lazy and stupid workers
Unionized government workers
Related pages:
Card Check, the
so-called Employee Free Choice Act, and the preservation of the secret ballot.
The Minimum Wage
The teachers' unions
The unionized teachers' uprising in Madison, Wisconsin, 2011
The UAW
The TSA
President Obama is paying back the
unions for their support.
Overviews of organized labor issues
Here's
why union membership keeps falling. Folks in Springfield, Ill., witnessed a bizarre scene two
years ago. Thousands protested outside the Capitol, chanting: "Raise my taxes! Raise my taxes!
Raise my taxes!" Who protests for higher taxes? Government unions do. The American Federation of
State, County, and Municipal Employees helped organize the rally. This is the new face of the union movement.
Union fight builds at Capitol.
The political strife over union power that has resounded through Capitol rotundas in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana
may be on its way to Minnesota as Republican legislators push for a "right-to-work" constitutional amendment on
the November ballot.
Union
Bosses Burn Through Members' Money. Following Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's reforming his state's
collective bargaining laws and breaking the stranglehold unions held on taxpayers (saving them $476 million so far),
union bosses across the country laid siege on the dairy state's capitol and declared war on Walker and his fellow
Republicans. In 2011, union bosses and other outside groups spent tens of millions of dollars in a failed attempt
to recall six Republican state senators and are spending millions more now trying to recall Scott Walker.
Public Sector Unions & Political Spending.
California's 1.0 million unionized public sector employees times dues of $750 per year times one-third equals $255 million
per year, over $20 million per month. This is what public sector unions are probably spending on politics, and for
the many reasons detailed here, this number is probably quite low compared to reality.
Unions'
Bully Model is Dead. Certainly, we have heard about all the dangerous workplace conditions that
unions addressed back in the day. So thanks, union leaders from 150 years ago. The primary
purpose of unions today is to fund the Democratic Party. The secondary purpose of unions today is to
provide manpower for Democratic Party campaigns and causes. The third purpose is the facilitation of
Democratic Party political philosophies in the workplace.
Supreme
Court challenge strikes at the root of Big Labor's political clout. From Ohio to Wisconsin to
California, state budget battles over extravagant union privileges grabbed headlines and flooded airwaves
throughout 2011. This year, however, the fight to restrain public-sector union bosses has shifted to a
new venue. Tuesday [1/10/2012], the Supreme Court weighs arguments about the limits of union officials'
power to spend compulsory union dues on politics. ... Union bosses know that their political influence —
and, by extension, their massive, government-granted special privileges — rest on the power to use
workers' hard-earned dues to elect sympathetic politicians.
Labor unions double-crossed by the White House:
Obama gives coal workers the shaft.
The leader of the United Mine Workers of Americas, the continent's largest coal workers union, December 21
denounced the President and the EPA on the day the agency issued its new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards
rule. ... The union leader's tone was a sharp contrast from his full-throated 2008 support of candidate
Barack H. Obama Jr., when he said, "Obama's election will mean a new day for American coal miners and all
working families throughout our nation."
How
To Win Power by Selling Out Your Own Union. From an historian's point of view, one could do
worse than studying the United Mine Workers of America. It is a microcosm of the American Labor
Movement. It is a startling picture of the role of individuals in the making of American history.
It is the story of how a once powerful institution's leaders repeatedly sold out its members as the nation
drifted from large scale industrial production of power and goods to being a producer of private and public
services. Finally, not least, it is a story of breathtaking betrayal of working men by a man who used
them as a stepping stone to greater personal power and to influence with an administration which time will
prove the epitome of crony capitalism in the U.S.
Whither the White Working
Class? You chaps are being screwed, said the Serpent. Why, if you vote for us, we will force
the bosses to give you More. More unions, more wages, more health care. It seemed like a dream come true
until the unionized steel industry collapsed, and then the unionized auto industry went into terminal decline, and
corporations started moving their businesses to non-union states or even overseas. Not to worry, said the
educated elite. You policemen and firemen are getting screwed. Why, if you vote for us, we will
force the taxpayers to give you More.
Your union dues at work:
Union PAYS Occupy Protesters.
Since people started camping out in the name of socialism or something, there have only been half measures by the
media to determine whether union organizers were using dues to provide transportation, food and lodging for the
Occupiers. Accuracy in Media infiltrated the National Nurses United for the duration of their Occupy
DC protest tour.
The
Real Class War: Jimmy Hoffa, Ohio Union Bosses Won't Lower Dues to Help Workers. In Ohio, as
union bosses have embraced Occupy Wall Street's (OWS) class war between the "99 percent" and the
"1 percent," it has becomes increasingly difficult not to ask an obvious question: Aren't
union bosses basically the 1 percent?
My dad vs. the unions. By
their very nature, most modern unions are top-heavy bureaucracies that reward members based on longevity and
seniority, not necessarily quality and merit. The results of such a system are often disastrous.
What the United Auto Workers have done to the automobile industry in Detroit and elsewhere is a perfect
example. So is what teachers' unions have done to public education. So is what the National
Labor Relations Board has been trying to do to Boeing in South Carolina...
Not Even Unions
Trust Unions. Unions exist, in today's world, only to the extent that people are forced to
join them and to the extent that dues are forcibly withdrawn from their paychecks. Few people in their
right mind would choose to join or financially support a union. Of course, in the Age of Obama, even if
you are in your right mind the federal government isn't, so the Left is bringing all possible pressure to bear
on behalf of union bosses.
How
Obama Protects the Teamsters. The 1.4 million-member Teamsters lifted Obama to
power with a coveted endorsement and bottomless campaign coffers funded with coerced member dues.
Over the past two decades, the union has donated nearly $25 million to Democrats (compared to
$1.8 million for Republicans).
Big
Labor's Compulsory Politics = $1.1 Billion in 2010 Election Cycle. According to the U.S. Department
of Labor (DOL), Big Labor spent $2.2 Billion on political activities during the 2008 and 2010 election
cycles alone.
Real
Union Enemy Isn't Boeing, It's Competition. [Scroll down] In a study of the decline of
unions between 1973 and 1988, economist Henry Farber and sociologist Bruce Western found that the chief
reason was that nonunionized companies grew faster than unionized ones. Employment at unionized
companies dropped by 2.9 percent per year while employment at nonunionized companies rose by
2.8 percent a year. ... You might be thinking that unionized companies shrank mainly because they
tended to be in declining industries. But you would be wrong.
Union
leaders motivated by power and greed, not desire to help. Unions are supposedly there for workers.
In fact, they are there for the acquisition of power by union mobs and to advance radical political agendas.
Their modus operandi is to transfer wealth from the workers and divert it to themselves. Workers,
often forced to join the unions, see their dues used for politicking, something the union leaders like
to call "democracy" and "acquired rights."
Labor has 'snootful'
but will stick with Obama. "Don't any of you guys vote Republican," Vice President Biden said to
the International Brotherhood of Teamsters convention in Las Vegas last week. "Let me put it this way:
Don't come to me if you do. You're on your own, Jack!" Biden's warning, which received virtually
no coverage in the press, is part of the Obama re-election campaign's 2012 strategy for organized labor.
It's a two-part plan. One, use the president's executive powers to give labor all sorts of advantages that
can't be achieved through legislation. And two, when labor leaders complain that they haven't gotten
everything they want, tell them they have nowhere else to go.
Redistributing from
the 'Have Nots' to the 'Haves'. The Democratic Party and their union co-conspirators have
been running a scam that takes the tax payments of the "have nots" and redistributes them to the
"haves." ... Just who are these "haves"? They are the 22.5 million public sector employees of
city, county, state and federal government. These are individuals who have close to life-time
employment, pay that is often twice the level of an equivalent private sector employee, generous sick leave,
annual leave, annual cost of living increases (even during recessions), great pension benefits, and health
care benefits that private sector employees can only dream about. The "have nots" are the private
sector employees who pay the taxes that subsidize the public sector employees.
Obama Unions a Microcosm of Liberalism:
Parasites Devouring Their Host. When Obama predictably stood up for Wisconsin unions, he
didn't create sympathy but merely cast a spotlight upon bygone methods and absurdly selfish goals.
Unions typically represent the proposition that, regardless of the underlying economic state, their power
and wealth is sacrosanct. Such obscene leftist power-brokering led to the demise of Detroit as the
world's automobile capital. It is time we defang and emasculate these anachronisms of Marxism.
When Unions Win Mob Rule Follows and
Taxpayers Lose. Who creates jobs, we should ask. Do unions create employment (jobs)
or is it the management of the corporations that grew from that small business while struggling to
provide a better product or service? We all know the answer to that. Who employs the workers
that get down in the trenches and produce that product or service; is it the labor unions or is it the
management of those corporations? We all know the answer to that one also.
Wisconsin or Venezuela?
When sworn law enforcement officials willingly step aside to allow union hooligans to tear up recall petitions,
we, as a nation of laws, have come to the edge of a dark precipice. So what do honorable citizens do when
they cannot exercise their First Amendment right to "peaceably" assemble? They have a duty to come together
and loudly and repeatedly demand protection from our long established government institutions. If that is
not the case, the Constitutional Republic will have ceased to function, only to be replaced by mob rule.
Saul Alinsky and his most famous protégée, Washington D.C.'s golf-happy community organizer, would
be thrilled by such an outcome.
In
Midwest, Former Union Households Adopting Anti-Union Attitudes. The factories are gone, and with
them, the unions: the Midwest may be seeing a huge swing away from the Democrats.
Scores of Union Leaders Earn Six-Figure
Salaries. The NEA [National Education Association], representing most of the nation's teachers,
has 31 headquarters officers and employees who earn over $200,000. The president, Dennis Van Roekel,
received $397,721 in salary and benefits. Of the $3.7 million NEA spent on political activities in
the last election cycle, 98 percent went to Democratic candidates. ... Over the past two years, SEIU gave
almost $2 million to Democratic candidates and $8,500 to Republicans. ... Of the $1.9 million the
[United Food & Commercial Workers] union donated to political candidates over the past two years,
99 percent of it went to Democrats. ... Over the past two years, the UAW donated more than $1.6 million
to political candidates, and all but $3,000 went to Democrats.
Are
Unions Fighting for the Right to Organize or the Right to Coerce? When unions in Wisconsin and
elsewhere talk about the "right to organize," you should remember that they have a very expansive definition
of that phrase. And it often includes the right to coerce people into stuffing union coffers against
their will.
Privatize Education.
The obnoxious and disruptive conduct of public employee unions shows how bad labor unions in general have been for
America. Republicans, if they are wise governors of states and brave political warriors, will defang organized
labor by passing right-to-work laws in all six of the states in which Republicans now have the muscle to do
so — Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Maine. Unions are a huge drag on
our economy and a major cause for the flight of good jobs out of our nation.
Blue Corruption puts
Wisconsin in Red. Wisconsin's ongoing crisis is exposing the channeling of taxpayer money
to unions, and thence to Democrats. Taxpayers are being swindled by a system in which their interests
come second. ... On average, public sector unions such as AFSCME, NEA, and SEIU nationally give anywhere
from 98 to 99% of their contributions to Democrats. Moreover, union contributions constitute a
relatively large share of the monies Democrat candidates receive.
5
Reasons Unions Are Bad For America. At one time in this country, there were few workplace
safety laws, few restraints on employers, and incredibly exploitive working conditions that ranged from
slavery, to share cropping, to putting children in dangerous working conditions. Unions, to their
everlasting credit, helped play an important role in leveling the playing field for workers. However,
as the laws changed, there was less and less need for unions. Because of that, union membership shrank.
In response, the unions became more explicitly involved in politics. Over time, they managed to co-opt
the Democratic Party, pull their strings, and rewrite our labor laws in their favor.
Why the Unions Fight:
Much attention has misleadingly focused on benefit contributions and collective bargaining restrictions, which are
not the main reasons labor and its allies are up in arms. If they were all that was at stake, labor
would be overreacting. But they aren't. The real issues are union dues and certification elections,
both of which would reach into unions' wallets and take away money they would otherwise use, in most cases, to
fund the Democratic party.
Unions vs.
the Right to Work. Labor unions like to portray collective bargaining as a basic civil
liberty, akin to the freedoms of speech, press, assembly and religion. For a teachers union,
collective bargaining means that suppliers of teacher services to all public school systems in a
state — or even across states — can collude with regard to acceptable wages,
benefits and working conditions. An analogy for business would be for all providers of airline
transportation to assemble to fix ticket prices, capacity and so on. From this perspective,
collective bargaining on a broad scale is more similar to an antitrust violation than to a civil liberty.
Is organized
labor obsolete? What we are witnessing in Wisconsin and elsewhere is the death knell of Big
Labor. Once upon a time, most Americans could identify the head of the AFL-CIO. He was George
Meany, the cigar-chomping ex-plumber who ran the union federation from 1955 to 1979. He was one of
the nation's great power brokers, much quoted and wooed by presidents. It's doubtful that as many
Americans can name Meany's present successor.
Why I Changed My
Mind About Unions. I'd never heard word of criticism about unions in my life until I was in
college and worked summers for a small, independent contractor with only two full-time employees. Those
guys were courteous, professional, diligent craftsmen who worked very, very hard — and they
hated unions. Before long I'd discover why.
Message
to unions: Taylorism died a long time ago. Who's to blame for the unions' plight?
I blame Frederick W. Taylor. Most readers will ask, Who? And those who know the name
might wonder why I pin the blame on someone who died in 1915. But Taylor, the supposed pioneer of
scientific management, was an influential man in his day and long after. He conducted time and
motion studies aimed at getting workers to perform most efficiently single tasks on long assembly lines.
Workers, he said, should be regarded as dumb animals, incapable of initiative, inefficient when they are
not compelled to perform the same simple task in the same single way over and over.
Top 10 Labor Union Outrages. While
President Obama carped during the midterm elections about all the corporate and foreign cash being spent on
behalf of Republicans, he seemed to overlook the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by labor unions.
The largest government-workers' union, the 1.6 million-member American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees (AFSCME), was the largest 2010 campaign donor, spending some $90 million to help
Democrats hold onto Congress. Not exactly money well spent.
Union Backlash.
It worked well for the unions so long as Democrats controlled most state houses and governors' offices, but with
the 2010 election producing huge gains for Republicans, the chickens are coming home to roost.
Union buys Hillcrest Golf Club for $4.3M.
A local pipefitters union has snapped up the old Hillcrest Golf Club in St. Paul, paying $4.3 million for the
private club and vowing to keep it private for at least two years. The union said it hopes to breathe new life
into the business, which has been in the red with sliding membership. The all-cash deal closed earlier this
month.
Government Worker Unions:
The Long Good-bye. There is nothing wrong with private people or organizations, including private
unions, spending money on political campaigns as institutional sources are disclosed. However, AFSCME, the
NEA, the AFT (American Federation of Teachers) or the public union sector of SEIU are government employees.
Their salaries are paid by the taxpayers and a portion of their salaries go to union dues which are slush funds
for political activity and the promotion of left-wing causes. In 2008 the NEA and the AFT made contributions
and grants totaling over $96 million of union dues; all to liberal organizations irrespective of the desires
of the rank and file or the taxpayer.
Democrats,
Government Unions Are Co-Dependent. The American Federation of State County and Municipal
Employees, the top public-sector union, spent a reported $87.5 million nationally in the 2010 election
cycle — 99% for Democrats. The Chamber of Commerce, by contrast, spent $75 million.
The National Education Association spent $40 million, and the Service Employees International Union
spent $44 million. That doesn't count the unions' importance in get-out-the-vote efforts, in
organizing rallies and in other election activities.
The Battle of Wisconsin.
[Scroll down] One of the motivations for President Obama to insert himself in this dispute is the simple
matter that unions bankroll Democrat candidates and Mr. Obama has already said that he plans on raising
$1 billion for his re-election effort in 2012. The website Opensecrets.org lists the top campaign
contributors for the period 1989-2010. The aggregate political contribution by unions to Democrats during
this period was a total of $480,000,000. That's nearly half a BILLION dollars. As the old saying
goes, he who pays the piper, calls the tune. For a half a billion dollars, the unions should expect a
full blown symphony.
Labor
Unions, and the Problem With "More". It is interesting to watch so-called "Progressives"
tout 19th century solutions for 21st century problems. One such initiative is "high
speed rail", upon which the Obama administration proposes to spend $53 billion. However,
another (and far more economically destructive) goal is "increased unionization". It is not
surprising that unionized companies like GM, Chrysler, and Bethlehem Steel went bankrupt, and that
heavily unionized States like California, New York, and Illinois are in deep financial trouble.
By their very nature, unions must seek to drive their employers into bankruptcy. If they don't,
then they aren't doing their job.
Labor
union stronghold rethinking its position. The nation's Rust Belt once ran on union power, its
factories and steel mills employing Democratic-voting union members who got regular pay raises and good
pensions. Now the region is at the vanguard of a national backlash against organized labor, as newly
elected Republican governors and legislatures try to control costs by weakening — or virtually
eliminating — unions of government workers.
Public unions force taxpayers to fund Democrats.
Unions, most of whose members are public employees, gave Democrats some $400 million in the 2008 election
cycle. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the biggest public employee
union, gave Democrats $90 million in the 2010 cycle. Follow the money, Washington reporters like
to say. The money in this case comes from taxpayers, present and future, who are the source of every
penny of dues paid to public employee unions, who in turn spend much of that money on politics, almost all
of it for Democrats.
Unions And The Right To
Work. If unions were formed to protect workers from employer abuse, right-to-work laws were
created to protect taxpayers and workers from union abuse. States with such laws enjoy higher growth
and purchasing power.
Today's
Trade Unions and the Left. There was a time when the mainstream trade union movement confined
itself to union concerns — a union contract that guaranteed a decent standard of living, and in
turn for a negotiated agreement with the corporation, guaranteed labor stability and productivity. Large
corporations learned quickly, as did the leadership of General Electric in the 1930s, that signing with the
union, even as in their case a Communist-led union, meant the opportunity for both profits and economic growth.
When Push Comes to Shove. Uncle
Sam is broke. So are a lot of the states. Unlike those of us locked in a state of penury thanks
to a drunken sailor policy of spending money we don't have, a lot of politicians and labor unions insist on
continuing to spend the public's money as if there was an endless supply of it. There isn't. For
the most part, in many places, it's almost all gone.
Big
labor's big betrayal. Today New Yorkers, like all Americans, are observing Labor Day —
and many have the day off. Great. No doubt, they earned it. But the holiday — once
meant to extol an honorable movement, affirm worker solidarity and celebrate gains won through collective
bargaining — is an ideal time to look at what has become of the labor movement in recent years.
Alas, that doesn't merit celebration.
This oughta teach
him! In a move of stunning hypocrisy, the United Federation of Teachers axed one of its longtime
employees — for trying to unionize the powerful labor organization's own workers, it was charged
yesterday [8/12/2010].
To Protest
Hiring of Nonunion Help, Union Hires Nonunion Pickets. Billy Raye, a 51-year-old unemployed
bike courier, is looking for work. Fortunately for him, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters
is seeking paid demonstrators to march and chant in its current picket line outside the McPherson Building,
an office complex here where the council says work is being done with nonunion labor.
Union
rules can't trump worker rights. More than 800,000 men and women in this country choose to
dedicate a significant portion of their free time to serving their communities as volunteer firefighters.
These individuals train on nights and weekends and are "on call" to respond to emergencies when they aren't
at their full-time jobs. For thousands of career firefighters, the choice to volunteer for their
hometown fire department during off-duty hours comes with a threat of expulsion from their labor union.
America's lead
weight. Do you have to love labor unions to be a good Democrat? That was the question raised
last year by the unpopular bailouts of unionized Detroit automakers. It's been raised again this year by
California's budget crisis, created at least in part by generous pensions for unionized public employees.
I think the answer is no. It's time for Democrats, even liberal Democrats, to start looking at unions and
unionism with deep skepticism.
More
Proof Big Labor's Unionizations Costs Jobs. Union bosses will stop at nothing to get their agenda
through — after all, even if Congress won't pass the job-killing EFCA legislation because they know
it's politically unpopular and bad economic policy, then they will work to accomplish the same goals and enact
portions of the Employee 'Forced' Choice Act through administrative action within the NLRB.
Jobs On Aisle Three.
A group of ministers wants a big-box retailer to create jobs in a desolate area of President Obama's hometown.
In a largely jobless recovery, why are the labor unions and political bosses fighting the clergy?
How Unions Work:
There is a reason that unions kill merit pay, and it's not because they just happened to solidify in an era when
merit pay was out of fashion. To state the obvious, unions negotiate ironclad contracts to cover dozens,
hundreds, or thousands of workers. Once they take effect, those contracts are rarely renegotiated, and
they apply to every single worker no matter what the situation. So unions are always going to be looking
for the simplest, least subjective metrics by which to measure their members. Furthermore, they will be
looking for metrics which are not under the control of the other side.
Labor Unions and the News
Media. Over the years, commentators have given much thought to the news media's "liberal bias."
But one issue has been overlooked — press criticism of labor unions. That is because it is
hard to spot something that doesn't appear in print. The media just don't publish criticism of
unions. The main reason, I believe, is that newspaper reporters are themselves largely unionized.
Their operating principle is solidarity: unionized workers don't criticize other unionized
workers. Which means they don't criticize labor unions.
Live Better, Don't Work
Union. Card check legislation appears to be dead in Washington. Companies, shareholders and
employees don't know how narrowly they missed the financial trouble that comes with a union shop.
What Do Union Members Want? For
all their influence in the workplace, it is not clear whether unions actually represent their members' values.
While it is true that union members elect their leaders, union leaders appear to pursue an agenda disconnected
from the concerns of their members.
The Fallacious Notion
of Job Creation: when considering work, it should first be said that it always exists wherever there are
people. Given the basic human need for the necessities of life, absent an ability to draw on the gains or
productivity of others, people must necessarily work in order to consume. In that sense the word "unemployment"
is a logical falsehood. Individuals aren't so much out of work because there are no jobs as they're unemployed
for failing to supply their labor at the going market rate. Better yet, people are frequently unemployed owing
to the belief that available jobs aren't worth their time, or worthy of their skill set.
Hiding the
Truth About the Pay Gap Between Men and Women. The Labor Department's new report is clearly an
important contribution to the debate over pay equity. But where is it? Although it was posted on
the Labor Department's web site just days after it was finalized, it was apparently removed as the transition
in power was occurring between former President Bush and President Obama. We don't know why the report
was taken down, but certainly the timing is suspicious.
How Obama Stimulates Feminists.
[Scroll down] "Could it possibly be that women have lost only 20 percent of the jobs that have vanished
in the last, devastating year?" Yes. Women (generally) favor public-sector jobs that are not
contingent on high rates of productivity and involve little personal risk. Being a teacher, an academic,
a social worker, and/or a bureaucrat are not careers wherein one is exposed to physical danger or the elements.
Therefore, it is no surprise that they are largely immune to economic downturns because government never cuts
programs. Living on a budget is something only the taxpayers need do.
Sizing Up Civil
Service: Before 1981, there were an average of 300 strikes a year. Strikers held all the
power; they were seldom replaced by their employer. By firing the air traffic controllers, [President Reagan]
changed the dynamic. "Any kind of worker, it seemed, was vulnerable to replacement if they went out on strike,
and the psychological impact of that, I think, was huge," explains Joseph McCartin, a historian working on a book
about the strike. That's why strikes are rare these days, with fewer than 30 per year on average.
Democracy
Alliance memo details Dem plan to "educate the idiots" and target minorities. In a confidential
internal memorandum obtained by Face The State (PDF), the Colorado Democracy Alliance outlines a roster of
"operatives" who worked for Democratic victory in the 2006 general election. The document outlines
specific tasks for various members of the state's liberal infrastructure, including a campaign to "educate
the idiots," assigned to the state's AFL-CIO union. Among the operation's intended targets:
"minorities, GED's, drop-outs."
Dems play footloose
with immigration facts. As they recall the failure of immigration reform in Congress, Democrats
want to come off as the good guys. This means burying the fact that their patrons in organized labor
instructed them to kill any compromise that included guest workers — a concept AFL-CIO President
John Sweeney termed "a bad idea (that) harms all workers."
"You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the
strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot
further the brotherhood of many by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by
destroying the rich."
— Rev.
William J. H. Boetcker, 1916.
Union
mentality can be a roadblock to innovation. One of the most cherished assumptions of
organized labor is that a hefty increase in union membership would be good for the nation.
This is simply untrue. … For the economy as a whole, a large increase in the number of
unionized businesses would be a tremendous drag on growth, especially in dynamic sectors such
as technology.
Unions are bad for job growth.
Right to Work laws give individual workers the right to stay out of unions. In a truly free society, though,
right to work laws would not exist. After all, a company should have the right to make union membership a
condition of employment, even though that might be a foolish approach. But because there is so much
pro-union legislation tilting the playing field against business, right to work laws are seen as a way
of creating some balance.
The
Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire of 1911 is often misused as a example of the need for
child labor laws and safety codes. It is actually a warning to employers and employees to
beware of the misdeeds and negligence of other employees. … The workers
were 17, 18, and 19 years old or older. So workers were not children, would not
be controlled by present child labor laws and thus the incident provides no
support for child labor laws. … Socialists deliberately lied about the Triangle
Shirtwaist fire in order to blame capitalism and to cover-up for the usual
failures of socialism.
The People Who Brought You Weekends? Not
Quite. The government outlawed child labor only once large numbers of parents were doing well
enough that they didn't need to send their children to work.
Don't Get into a Lather
over Sweatshops. Economists point out that alternatives to working in a sweatshop
are often much worse: scavenging through trash, prostitution, crime, or even starvation.
How Outsourcing Creates Jobs for
Americans. Some companies are being criticized for outsourcing work from the
United States to other countries. U.S. manufacturers have outsourced operations to countries
such as China to lower wage costs and escape from high taxes, burdensome government regulations
and intransigent unions at home.
Outsourcing Myths. America's
companies are shutting down factories and offices, and shipping jobs wholesale overseas. That's how the media have
portrayed it. In reality, outsourcing has created more, better-paying jobs here.
The Great Outsourcing Scare of 2004,
like all protectionist scares, turned out to be one part sensationalism, one part economic ignorance. … If
there is a threat to American workers, the U.S. government should get a large portion of the blame.
Taxes, regulations, and mandated employee benefits, when taken together, drastically increase the cost of
hiring Americans.
The
silver lining of outsourcing overseas: The truth is that outsourcing is far
less of a threat to American workers than they imagine, and there are significant benefits
for the U.S. economy. For starters, there is not a one-for-one relationship between jobs
lost here and those gained elsewhere from outsourcing.
Help for
Americans. Since 1992 there's been a loss of 391 million jobs; however, during those years,
America created 411 million new jobs, for a net gain of 20 million. A Dartmouth University
Tuck School of Business study found that companies that send jobs abroad ended up hiring twice as many
workers at home. Most new jobs created are higher-paid.
Jobs
come and go. In 1970, the telecommunications industry employed 421,000
switchboard operators. In the same year, Americans made 9.8 billion long
distance calls. Today, the telecommunications industry employs only 78,000
operators [and we make ten times as many calls]. That's a tremendous
80 percent job loss. One forgotten beneficiary in today's job loss
demagoguery is the consumer.
Liberals and class: part
III. Sometimes it seems as if liberals have a genius for producing an unending stream of ideas
that are counterproductive for the poor, whom they claim to be helping. Few of these notions are more
counterproductive than the idea of "menial work" or "dead-end jobs."
More pieces in the jobs puzzle. It's
true that our country's "loss" of manufacturing jobs has been due partly to our shift from labor-intensive products, such as
textiles, to high-tech products, such as pharmaceuticals. But there are pieces of this jobs puzzle that
aren't getting nearly the attention they deserve.
$58-an-Hour
UAW Workers Kill $16K Ford Bonus as Stingy. As the UAW rank-and-file continues to vote on the
contract offer hammered out between management and UAW honchos, the Detroit Free Press reports that at least
one local has rejected the offer, even though it includes a $6,000 cash bonus, a $3,700 profit sharing bonus
and at least another $1,500 cash for each of the four years on the contract for a total of $15,700 on top of
wages and benefits.
The alleged "wage gap"
The Wage Gap Myth: When
women behave in the workplace as men do, the wage gap between them is small. June
O'Neill, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, found that among people
ages 27 to 33 who have never had a child, women's earnings approach 98 percent
of men's. Women who hold positions and have skills and experience similar to those of
men face wage disparities of less than 10 percent, and many are within a couple of
points. Claims of unequal pay almost always involve comparing apples and oranges.
The wage gap, give
me a break. Feminists keep demanding new laws to protect women from the so-called
wage gap. Many studies have found that women make about 75 cents for every dollar a
man earns. Activists say the pay difference is all about sexism. … But how could
this be possible? … If a woman does equal work for 25 percent less money, businesses
would get rich just by hiring women. Why would any employer ever hire a man?
A wage
gap? The Census Bureau did find that women earned 76 cents for every
dollar paid to a male (now up to 80 cents on the dollar), but that was a raw
number, not adjusted for comparable jobs and responsibility. A new book, Why
Men Earn More by Warren Farrell, goes further, examining a broad array of wage
statistics. His conclusion: When reasonable adjustments are made,
women earn just as much as men, and sometimes more.
The government rushes to fix a problem that doesn't exist:
EEOC targets
gender gap in wages. An attorney with the "reinvigorated" U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission says that it is becoming more aggressive in looking into claims of sex discrimination in pay and
that the agency doesn't need a formal complaint by a woman to begin an investigation.
The feminist complaint
festival: There's one problem with Equal Pay Day — the premise is bogus. Department of
Labor data confirms that the median wage of a full-time working woman is three-quarters of that of a full-time
working man, but like too many statistics, this fact ignores more than it reveals. This data doesn't
account for relevant factors such as occupation, experience and educational attainment. Feminists may
not like it, but the evidence shows that women's choices — not discrimination — cause
wage gap.
Pilot
Errors: All above-market wage rates forcibly exacted by labor unions cause unemployment
precisely as $20 for a pound of cheese would cause its unemployment at the table. How is this
unemployment catastrophe covered up? Labor unions, using their political power, get the
government to pick up the tab: public housing, urban renewal, the Gateway Arch, moon shots, and
thousands of other pyramids — "make work" projects to employ resources which have been
coercively excluded from the market.
Big
Labor and Big Government: Big labor is trying to make itself relevant again by attempting to
rebuild its declining membership base, and, more importantly, by striving to increase the role of government
in the American economy. Under the leadership of AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney, the union movement has
revived its militant organizing activities of the 1930s, updated with a 1990s Madison Avenue message campaign.
The
Feminine Mistake: The argument in favor of "equal pay for equal work" rests
on a concept of labor that was overturned in the 1870's. It assumes that there is
such a thing as concrete human labor, a physical entity that in some way can be
measured. Value is in some way linked to labor, and pay should reflect value. This
was the economic premise of virtually all economists until the advent of modern economics;
Karl Marx was the last major economist to hold the labor theory of value. Modern
economics rests on the concept that value is linked to usefulness; the value of labor
depends on the value of labor's output. The distinction between the two concepts
of value is crucial.
The Unseen Consequences of
"Green Jobs". [Scroll down] This strategy is reminiscent of the no doubt apocryphal story
of the American economist visiting Mao's China taken on a tour of a construction site where 100 workers
were using shovels to build an earthen dam. "Why don't you just use one man and a bulldozer to build the
dam?" asked the economist. The guide responded, "If we did that, then we'd have 99 men out of
work." To which the economist replied, "Oh, I thought you were building a dam. If your goal is to
make jobs, why don't you take their shovels away and replace them with spoons?"
Even
In California ... Public-employee unions are being pummeled by Republican legislators and
governors all over the country. But they still seem to think they have the people on their side.
In Wisconsin they're talking recall against Gov. Scott Walker and his state house allies. In California,
they admit to losing some ground. But they figure on winning it back with one of their tried-and-true ad
campaigns, pulling on the public's heartstrings about teachers, cops and firefighters. But it may be
that the public is no longer so ripe to be manipulated in Wisconsin, California or anywhere else. In
the Golden State, a new survey by UC Berkeley and the Field Poll showed a sharp trend toward skepticism
toward unions over the past two years.
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