Look for the Union Label

What is a Labor Union? It is an organization of rank and file workers that acts on behalf of each and every represented worker in the bargaining process with an employer.

Why ‘collective bargaining?’ Collective bargaining is a market-based approach to increasing the power of the rank and file worker in the negotiation process with an employer in the efforts to maximize the pay and benefits sought. Without collective bargaining, the employer holds all the cards in setting pay, benefits and working conditions. Since labor, by definition, creates the value in any company, its interests can be marginalized by capitalist employers looking to maximize their own profits at the expense of Labor in the form wages and benefits. In other words, Labor does all the work and the Capitalist enjoys the fruits of that labor without sharing the profits accordingly. Collective Bargaining levels the playing field between Labor and Management.

Why do Rank and File employees oppose Labor Unions when they improve demonstably the lives, pay and benefits that these Rank and File employees receive? There are many reasons that I’ll point out and briefly address why these people oppose acting in their own fundamental self-interests.

• Supply and Demand should dictate wages and benefits, not Labor Unions
o S&D is one component in setting wages. It has little to do with an employer’s equitable sharing of the profits created by Labor.

• Unions artificially increase wages and actually cause job loss
o This only makes sense if the employer’s share of profit earned is sacrosanct and untouchable. If profit equals 10 slices of pie and the employer takes 9 of those slices, bickering about the one slice divided amongst Labor is really an absurdity.

• Labor Unions support the Democratic Party and I am a Republican
o It is no secret that Republicans are anti-worker, anti-labor, and anti-Union. The Republican Party represents the Employer and not the rank and file worker. If you are too stupid to act in your own self-interest regarding pay and benefits, then suffer your low wages and benefits. In other words, you are deluding yourself if you are a rank and file worker and you fancy that the Republican Party represents your interests.

• Austrian Economics decries ‘interference’ in Free Markets and Labor Unions are creatures of Big Government
o AE is a crank science that is internally inconsistent and senseless. It starts with positing that government operation and centralized planning are the causes of all economic woes in the free market and that the capitalist employer is supreme. As indicated, it is a crank science and anyone interested in having it explained in detail, just ask me and I’ll pm you the info. Unions are a market-based solution to the inequities inherent in the bargaining process between labor and management. Otherwise we are left with the childish ‘bromide’ of ‘take it or leave it’ for all rank and file employment.

• I could never submit to the collective part of Collective Bargaining. That’s Communism.
o If your individuality and ego are so fragile that you cannot stand with your colleagues to improve your own lot in life, then perhaps your hot-house individuality is not that robust or important. I know I’m still ‘me’ after a union meeting. I didn’t dissolve into the ‘collective.’ Communism is an historical conclusion to the clash of bourgeois and proletariat interests resulting in a class-less, government-free existence. So Collective Bargaining is most certainly not Communism.

• Unions served a purpose decades ago but are no longer needed
o Child labor laws? The 40 hour work week? Worker Safety regulations? Equitable pay and benefits? This senseless objection of the anti-worker crowd assumes that bargaining in one’s interest, once performed, is a fait accompli and dead forever thereafter. When you buy a home or a car, do you take the price offered ‘as is’ because, some time long ago, somebody bargained for the price of a house and bargaining is no longer necessary? I know I fight for the best price for a car, a home and my labor and Unions help me in getting the most pay for my labor.

Those rank and file workers part of Labor that decry unions are not acting in their own self-interest. They are convinced that they “know better” (flawed economics) or will one day be an employer not wanting to be hamstrung by paying livable wages (maybe, but statistically, most people are laborers and not employers). What will it be? Standing like a man with your colleagues to get the most for yourself or caving to the monied elites to be a ‘good little worker’ and taking whatever scraps are thrown at you by your economic betters. Even though Labor Unions are not legally obligated to cover Right to Work traitors, as a matter of course, those Right to Work rank and file employees enjoying the benefits of Union activity without paying union dues are some of the worst moochers on the planet. As a matter of law, all union dues must be used for employment representation only.

Remember, if you are not management, you’re Labor. Act like it.

 

Yeah!!!! Be a part of an organization that argues for you to receive more than you're worth. An organization that's going to run your employer into the ground and then you won't have a job. Way to go!!!

Ask Detroit what happens when unions get their way.

 

Labor unions do artificially increase wages and decrease employment. That is a fact and is demonstrable objectively.

Not saying its wrong, but it is a fact.

 

Specious drivel and false talking points on your part. It's a free country, if you want to give your labor away for less, do it. You seem to be one of those guys that forgoes his own self-interest because you know better that asking for a fair share will bankrupt your employer. So, you roll over for your boss and willingly work for less.

I guess you'll believe just about anything that reinforces your propagandistic training.

 

It's not a fact. Yours is a specious conclusion based on faulty assumptions (Employer's are entitled to the lion's share of the profit created by Labor, for e.g.). Labor unions are market-based entities that level the bargaining playing field between labor and employers. That's a fact.

What you are professing is conditioning bought and paid for by the monied elites. You argue against self-interest in an economic climate predicated on acting in one's self-interest...that's illogical.

 

If the unions are so great and caring than why did y'all cry so much to avoid obama care? Are unions racist because the unions begged to get out if paying their part of Obama care. Please explain why unions hate the poor and sick?

 

Its not about entitlement for anyone. Its a simple supply and demand equation. In the labor market, unions raise the equilibrium (IE market) wage by restricting the amount of employment.

I'm a union supporter but it is a fact that that is how it works in economics. They cut labor supply to artificially increase wages above the market level.

 

It is UNQUESTIONABLY a fact. It's basic monetary understanding. The more I have to pay you, the less I have to pay another employee. There are a certain amount of funds in every enterprise that is allocated for paying wages.

Let me ask you this. What happens if you pay each employee more than the value that employee brings into the company?

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Exactly.

 

Unions bought their way out of Obama care!
They didn't want any part of the law that Obama said we will all have to do our part to help the sick and the poor. Unless you are the unions and can buy your way out of it.
If you work for a company that employes both union and nonunion. They make the union workers to were patches to show who is union and who is not. Why is that? So the union workers can give them the no unions workers crap? To harass them? Why is this. What is the purpose to brand people?

 

A union supporter would not undercut unions. You are undercutting unions. Supply and Demand is one consideration in setting wages. The loose collusive effect of employers sitting on wages doesn't seem to enter into your calculus. Again, your formula only makes sense if the employer share of the profit manufactured by labor is untouchable and Labor is unreasonable in its demands. Your assumption that Labor Unions do nothing but increase pay to the point of labor supply's detriment is another red herring.

Collective bargaining is a rather complex mixture of values and concerns. Your observations are colored by the propaganda pushed by the monied elites...Unions are rapacious mindless entities wiping out entire businesses at every turn. It just doesn't work that way. That is the assumption underscoring your conclusions...Labor is blind to Supply and Demand. It isn't.

Your soft science bigotry runs counter to the interests of 'union supporter' like yourself.

 

Exactly. The income inequality in this country is appalling. Labor creates the value by doing the work and the employer takes an unfair share. Put a crowbar in the company purse and pay wages commensurate to what Labor is producing. Again, self-interest trumps your touching concern for the welfare of the monied elites. I guess executives can't have enough $80,000 floor rugs for guys like you. income inequality is a fact of the US economic climate.

 

I always look for the union label and promptly put it down. However it's easy to tell without the label, the price is twice as much and the quality is half as good.

 

Employers are only going to pay so much for labor. Period. That is the market wage. They will pay "x" amount and demand "y" amount of labor be supplied.

If you want them to pay more, then they are going to demand less, and less will be supplied.

I'm sorry, its pure economics. It doesn't undercut anyone. Stop looking at the issue from an emotional standpoint. I support unions even though they are an artificial alteration in the market. They should be. Equilibrium wages are determined using simple metrics. There's no heart in it and it has no connection in and of itself with other things like cost of living. Sometimes unions do need to exist in order to drive up wages above the market level.

I say all of this as an Economist.

 

If a company is publicly traded they have a fiduciary duty to make the investors the biggest return on their investment. It's a legal obligation. Workers are just rented mules to get the job done.

If ya don't like the "income inequality" then start your own business and work 20 hours a day for 10 or 15 years till it's successful and you can sit back and enjoy all that hard work.

 

Benghazi, Benghazi and more Benghazi and nobody cares about Benghazi.

 

You speak for everybody? Somehow I doubt that.

 

There you go again..."artificial alteration"... Labor Unions are market-based responses to the inequity inherent in the bargaining process between Labor and Management. Without unions, labor has no leg to stand on b/c the employer holds all the bargaining cards--from setting pay, to benefits, to working conditions. And Labor has little choice but to accept the offer if the workers want to eat. I'm not getting emotional. You're being quite over-simplistic in your analysis.

This is why we call it 'bargaining.' If the employer is so sure of the market price of labor, then let him / her make that argument in a robust bargaining session. That sure is a free way to set the price of labor with an eye on the current market value. We'll find out what the ER will pay bargaining with a union working from a position of relative strength in numbers.


I say this as an Attorney.

 

You still haven't answered my question about Obama care?

 

Benghazi and still, nobody cares. Have sense of proportion man. The American public has been through two illegal wars, hundreds of thousands dead...and you have a problem with 4 dead in a hostile part of the world.

Nobody cares about Benghazi. Good evening.

 

I'll just leave this here.

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Yea, i'd much rather buy cheap (*)(*)(*)(*) from China at Walmart.

 

Taxcutter says:
From the consumer's standpoint the union label is a dead giveaway that the items is the highest-priced competitor.

 

It last longer and that ain't saying much but at least it's cheaper.

 

Yep, and it's had absolutely no consequences for the American economy, right?

 

"I could never submit to the collective part of Collective Bargaining. That’s Communism" go back to school and start over, you are just too ignorant to be in public.

 

Thank you for supporting your fellow Americans with your purchasing dollar. Of course that is a sarcastic statement. But you are the perfect capitalist caricature. You have no allegiance to country or citizen, you care only about what's in it for you. I call that the 'Fredo Corleone principle.' There's nothing wrong with self-interest--even Jesus Christ acted out of self-interest. Yours is a pathological self-interest though.