Unions claim right to work law is slavery

Now you're getting it. (*)(*)(*)(*) Obama denying me my right to get turned down, and forced to sleep on the sofa.

 

Democrats think anything other than collecting a welfare check is Slavery...

 

So again, what is that number? How much should they get paid? If $20/hr is too much, what is enough? I paid most of my college through loans and after about 10 yrs, I was paid up. I didn't see any problem with it at all. And 10k a yr isn't expensive. I paid a lot more than that=) Speaking of education, I don't think everyone should have a college degree, because many simply don't deserve it and aren't smart enough to earn it. Its just the facts. That's what low level jobs are for. There are loads of people who just aren't qualified for anything more and its not because they didn't have the chance. They just don't care enough. I can't imagine someone with a college degree being satisfied flipping burgers or being a clerk at a gas station. Thats why everyone can't have a college degree. If everyone thinks they're too good for this job or that job, how do we fill them?

That went way OT, but the point had to be made. Back to the OP, I've worked in the private sector for 16+ yrs unless you include all the under the table jobs I did in my teens, which adds another 6-8 years on there. From washing dishes to waiting tables, to raking leaves & shoveling snow to Blockbuster, videotaping weddings to $million marketing campaigns....NEVER felt like anything close to a slave. But I have worked with PLENTY of unions at hotels & convention centers most of them are lazy SOBs. There have been the occasional hard worker, but overall, I can't stand clock watching, whiny complainers who count the seconds to their next smoke break. If I could do their jobs, I would, but then I'd be charged extra for putting a plug in an outlet without their consent. No freakin joke! I have very few positive experiences with unions.

 

Nonunion members shouldn't be able to get the benefit of collective bargaining that unions members receive, I think, is the point the union is trying to make. I can agree with that, though I'm not sure how that applies to the 13th Amendment.

 

So whatever agreement union workers and the employer come up with should be independent of whatever agreement is made between non-union workers and the employer? Sounds reasonable. I think the point of the law is just to establish that the union does not have a right to dictate who can and cannot negotiate to work for that employer. We all have a right to do so.​

 

Not really, small businesses can compete better at higher wage levels. If Wal Mart had to pay living wages there would be a lot fewer empty Main Streets.

My gripe against these low wage corporate giants is that my taxes become their profits. I do not mind paying taxes to support the poor people in my community but I am somewhat aggrieved when that money goes to help people who are deliberately underemployed by the largest and most profitable corporations on the planet. If they are so great they should pay their own way, otherwise they are just the biggest parasites on the planet.

I don't shop at Wal Mart but I do shop at Costco. Costco pays all its employees a living wage, is more profitable per employee, and has almost zero employee turnover. It also has some unions.

Living wage legislation is about stopping the corporate welfare and getting government out of subsidizing business. If a business cannot survive without public welfare for its employees, well that is just the free market.

It's what conservatives want, government out of the markets, right?

 

Government preventing people from working for anything less than a government mandated wage, is not getting government out of the market.​

 

A business whose profit depends on charity helping its underpaid employees survive is not a free market operation. It is a socialistic predator masquerading as a free market competitor.

I think that the government and private citizens should remove themselves from providing charity to the underemployed and let the markets decide. This includes the political market, where anger against private profit from public charity is growing as more and more people become aware of this pernicious practice.

How about this, eliminate all wage controls but also eliminate all government help for anyone with a job. That would get the government out of the markets.
How many people would take those low paying jobs if they were unable to go to the food bank or the free clinic?
I would guess not many, close to none.

 

Or just eliminate them period. I'm all for your experiment.​

 

You have no problem with people starving and living on the streets as long as they stay out of your way while they starve to death.

 

non se·qui·tur noun \ˈnän-ˈse-kwə-tər also -ˌtu̇r\
Definition of NON SEQUITUR

1: an inference that does not follow from the premises; specifically : a fallacy resulting from a simple conversion of a universal affirmative proposition or from the transposition of a condition and its consequent
2: a statement (as a response) that does not follow logically from or is not clearly related to anything previously said​

 

People living and starving in the street = direct consequence to not being able to get a job that will pay a living wage.
= direct consequence to being forced to compete with people from third world countries for third world wages.
Thus it does follow the premise.

 

Sure that living and starving in the street is not a direct consequence of failing to walk up to one of the many privately sponsored shelters, soup kitchens or salvation army recruitment stations? That not being able to compete with a third world sustenance worker... you think that's my fault as opposed to having something to do with never developing any skills that make them more valuable than a third world sustenance worker? Dunno. Seems like questionable logic to me.​

 

Unions believe "right to work" is slavery...
and OWS believes government(s) should mandate a "universal living wage" http://occupywallst.org/article/occupy-midsummer-global-festivals-universal-living/



Neither have any concept of economics, but fully understand and seek to utilize government force.

 

They are overwhelmed now. They can't afford to feed everyone now. So you move to bringing in more immigrants to take low skill jobs, you keep unemployment up trying to compete with low wage places like China and there will be starving people in the streets because these charity's can't feed the ones they got now.


My sister runs the food charity groups now. One group gives out meat once every 3 months. They write down your SSN to make sure you don't get it more often than that. It's the only one that serves meat. The rest serves plenty of pastery, cakes and bread as long as you don't mind picking out the green fluffy stuff from it. Plenty of speghetti, no speghetti sauce. You know eating speghetti makes you fat?

The food charity groups can't keep up with demand the way things are now they won't be there when things get worse.

 

Seriously, no one thinks to make up a new soc number each time they get in line? Tsk. The solution isn't "let's give everyone free stuff." Your budy Obama is going to run out of free stuff long before people run out of need. America has to find ways to offer the world something besides people that are no better than third world sustenance workers. Or those people need to live with the reality that that's what they are. ​

 

I agree everyone who can work should work. But if you work for a living you should earn a living. Thus the job should pay a living wage. We should increase import taxes on any country that doesn't pay a US citizens living wage which will help us to compete. If they made the stuff at the same cost that they would cost to make here they would make them here to save the transportation cost.

 

Work doesn't equate to wage, productivity does. I don't care how hard you ask the guy at the counter if he want's fries with that, your work isn't producing enough value to pay for your cell phone, internet service, food, shelter and Obamacare. Many folks who work for a living are actually living on the charity of their neighbors. And getting indignant about how hard you pressed the register buttons doesn't change that.

If you think your produce more than your wage and you're not happy with your wage -- quit and sell your work on the open market. You'll find out fast if what you thought was right or not. ​

 

Companies complain that they can't find enough qualified engineers and technicians in America.

That's why so many foreigners with higher skills are allowed into the United States each year.

Libs should be blaming the failed liberal culture and the failed liberal public education system for that.

 

Maybe, but since so many of those folks from other countries get their higher education here before choosing to stay in America, I wonder if the failing is with the system that educates them or if it's with the system that incentivizes them to become educated.

When we guarantee a factory worker a living wage, and set the perks of that living wage to include a smart phone, iPad, 2.5 TV's with HD content and mobile internet access for the same work as a third world sustenance worker... well, why would he choose to work harder, learn more, become more skilled for about the same lifestyle? In America we fool ourselves and our neighbors by sheltering folks from the consequences of contributing less than they consume, even from the knowledge that that's what they're doing. The guy in Thailand or even Germany is desperate for that educational opportunity, the guy in America... well just look around the classroom. Any classroom; any age group. The American's in the bunch, for the most part, don't really value being there and it shows in what they learn.

There's no stigma and little impact on lifestyle (at least compared to what those same folks would experience in the real world) for consuming more than you contribute. The result is folks feel they earned the lifestyle they're living and more, they demand entitlements without regard to the deficit between what's being contributed and consumed, and so each year we as a people do less and demand more.​

 

So your saying that working at McDonalds isn't worth keeping the human doing that job alive and in a rooming house somewhere paying rent. Then maybe the job shouldn't exist at all.

 

A lot of the people let into the US on work visas are not in areas where there is any actual shortage of US workers. There is plenty of unemployed IT workers in the US but companies bring in foreigners because they work for far lower wages and cannot leave for another company without losing their work visa. A step above indentured servitude.
The government does not actually check that there is a shortage of trained people in the US, it just accepts the companies assertions and issues the visas.

You are so wrong about the liberals causing a skilled worker shortage when it is a direct result of a long term conservative agenda. For decades it was the unions that trained the skilled manufacturing workers but the conservatives right to work laws and other anti-union legislation killed off the unions and with that, the training of an entire generation of skilled workers. . The conservatives plan has been a complete success. No more unions. They completely ignored the other side of that, no more new generations of union trained skilled workers.

The blame for the lack of skilled technical workers falls squarely on short sighted businesses and their conservative political allies. The short term gain in profits from getting rid of the unions without replacing their training programs created a long term threat to manufacturers survival, one that they are paying for now, and will continue to for a long time. The long drop in manufacturing wages has also had a big effect. How manufacturers expect to attract workers into investing their time and money to make a career commitment by training for jobs where the average wage has been declining for decades and mass layoffs are more the norm than the exception is a mystery to me.

If manufacturers wanted to attract a new generation of workers into manufacturing maybe they should not have treated the last one as poorly as they did.

 

I find this a difficult case to rationally accept. What evidence (logic or otherwise) do you have that small businesses could compete against Walmart on wages, if both are subject to a significantly higher price floor for labor?

 

I know of many retired engineers that would teach, if they were allowed. Some would even do it for free as they have comfortable retirements and plenty of time on their hands. However, teaching regulations make it onerous to get credentialed, at least in states where teachers unions reign supreme. Few retirees want to spend a year, or years, and tens of thousands getting a degree or a certification so that they can teach a high school class a few hours a week.

 

I'm saying that what that person wants in wages is less than what what he offers in contribution. As far as whether that job should exist, well it's likely not too much longer. Touch screen ordering at the counter, self service credit card readers, passing drive through call boxes through to call centers, and increased automation in the kitchen... well industry trends predict most of those folks are likely going to need to find new ways to contribute to society.​