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Are you that insecure about your ability that you think that without union support your labor isn't valued?
I am glad that I was instilled with the self confidence of knowing that I don't need someone to negotiate my worth for me.
Without unions you have situations like Bangladesh in which safety standards for garment workers are ignored, and in which last week one of the factory buildings collapsed killing over 400 garment workers.
Businesses have one goal: profits. They are going to pay workers the least possible, and without unions or a minimum wage, we would all be slave labor.
Horse crap! When a company doesn't get the price it WANTS for a product it's selling competitively against other companies selling the same product is that any different than having to contend with a part of the bargain called unions?
What you describe is not free market but simply the overhead costs to produce any given product.
Good grief you make it sound like everything goes fine with corporations on all fronts UNTIL the workers organize.
You have to be old enough to remember some history that unions formed in spite of people like Henry Ford hiring thugs to point rifles at them and indeed in spite of some companies even killing it's workers to prevent them organizing.
You obviously haven't been reading your history or at least none that portrays the accurate depiction that Unions put a stop to silly little unimportant things like owners of companies dictating what RELIGION you were allowed to practice, what stores you could buy your clothing and groceries from, GET SICK ~ GET FIRED!
Yep; none of you simpletons have anything to thank Unions for at all.
Visit a freak'n library then come on back and spout your nonsense.
I don't know where you got off on this tangent.
They didn't have a vote at Ford Motor. They went to Henry, he agreed to let a union in. Though he did resist at first.
All I was saying is that if a union is voted in and the employer doesn't want it then we can't call that free market. As the employer is forced by law to accept a contract he doesn't want and should be illegal as employers have rights too.
If he agrees to let a union in then the agreement is mutually agreed to and should be perfectly legal.
We have had decades of government turning their back on illegal immigration to the point that we are full of low skilled workers willing to work for low wages.
Blame government inefficiency, not business.
Then both progressive, parties placed our manufacturing base, in direct competition with low pay low skill labor, with the China Free Trade Act. and NAFTA
They didn't have a vote at Ford Motor. They went to Henry, he agreed to let a union in. Though he did resist at first.
All I was saying is that if a union is voted in and the employer doesn't want it then we can't call that free market. As the employer is forced by law to accept a contract he doesn't want and should be illegal as employers have rights too.
If he agrees to let a union in then the agreement is mutually agreed to and should be perfectly legal.
Which is a worse? A business being forced to pay workers a fair wage, or all of us working for slave wages?
Real wages for male workers have actually declined over the last few decades, and the collapse of unions is of one of the reasons.
Without unions you have situations like Bangladesh in which safety standards for garment workers are ignored, and in which last week one of the factory buildings collapsed killing over 400 garment workers.
Businesses have one goal: profits. They are going to pay workers the least possible, and without unions or a minimum wage, we would all be slave labor.
If you look at U.S. Census data from 1860-1890 you will see manufacturing wages (adjusted for inflation) jumped 50%. They jumped another 34% from 1891-1914.
This was before minimum wage laws. Union membership was less than 3% of the labor market. And unions had no legal protections. There were hardly any workplace laws at all.
And millions of unionized workers were leaving Western Europe for the non-union United States.
How do union people deal with this reality? They ignore it.
Which is a worse? A business being forced to pay workers a fair wage, or all of us working for slave wages?
You can't define "fair wage". It's up to the individual employer and employee to determine that.
And "slave wages" do not exist. Slaves are not paid. Slavery is not a part of the free market system or any type of union and is not relevent to this conversation.
If you look at U.S. Census data from 1860-1890 you will see manufacturing wages (adjusted for inflation) jumped 50%. They jumped another 34% from 1891-1914.
This was before minimum wage laws. Union membership was less than 3% of the labor market. And unions had no legal protections. There were hardly any workplace laws at all.
And millions of unionized workers were leaving Western Europe for the non-union United States.
How do union people deal with this reality? They ignore it.
Yeah, and that was also the period of time when millions of American workers faced unsafe workplaces, scores of coal miners for example were killed every year. Wages were still low; a wage increase from 15 cents an hour to 20 cents looks impressive but it's still a low wage.
The period of time from 1860 to 1890 is at the very end of the industrial revolution, so there are historic forces at play there. I don't know about the other time period, but I don't see what happened 100 years ago as that relevant for today's vastly different labor market.
I'm a teacher. I do not bring in revenue and teaching is a non competitive field meaning that schools do not compete for the best teachers and pay them more. The most valuable teacher to the school isn't the one who teaches the best but the one who does the job cheapest. I think they'd pay teachers next to nothing if they could get away with it. So, yes, we need a union.
I know what happens whan you don't have one. I taught in a non union charter school for $32K with two masters degrees. The conditions I taught in were dismal as well. Small overcrowded classrooms where I was expected to do labs. My stress level on lab days was through the roof. I could not conduct labs with 30+ students in a tiny little room and keep the kids safe and keep equipment from being broken. If that ever becomes the only job available to me, I'll take up panhandling.
The 15K more I make where I am doesn't put me rolling in dough but it's a lot better. And I don't have to spend thousands of my own money in my current school for supplies and equipment. I have a union to thank for my pay, the fact I don't have to buy my own materials out of my pocket and the fact I have reasonable sized classes and a proper lab to conduct labs in. I never thought I'd see the day I'd be pro union. All it took was teaching two years at a non union school.
You can't define "fair wage". It's up to the individual employer and employee to determine that.
And "slave wages" do not exist. Slaves are not paid. Slavery is not a part of the free market system or any type of union and is not relevent to this conversation.
A fair wage is a wage that is fair as determined partly by market forces and partly by government policy. You cannot simply rely on markets to establish wages because markets are inefficient, unstable, not necessarily fair and the history of economics shows us that that doesn't work.
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