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New union dues case on its way to SCOTUS for tie-breaker decision

Neomalthusian said:
Pass a law establishing the compensation and working conditions the people agree should exist for public sector employees. It's easy when government has lawmaking power.
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"The people agree..."?
Listen. In a capitalism you get paid according to the value of what you produce. In some cases that's a simple thing to decide. I was a structural Ironworker. The steel had a certain value when it was fabricated and laying on dunnage in the yard and a higher value when it was erected. The difference is what I produced. There's lots of similar examples in the private sector.
How do you decide the value of what a teacher produces, though, or a cop or a public health nurse? If you leave their wages up to 'the people', it'll look like an opportunity to save tax dollars and the wages will end up so low that you'll never attract good people to those jobs. That problem has already shown itself in some newsworthy cases, I think.
Call them 'unions' call them 'professional associations', call them what you want but they're necessary to the smooth, efficient operation of government services.
 
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azgreg said:
Why should one group of workers be treated different than any other group of workers?
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Because the groups are indeed different. Private companies are beholden to the CEO/owners. Public sector is funded by the government to serve the people. Public employees already have special perks like PSLF (student loan forgiveness after 10 years) and other such things not afforded to private employees.
 
digsbe said:
Because the groups are indeed different. Private companies are beholden to the CEO/owners. Public sector is funded by the government to serve the people. Public employees already have special perks like PSLF (student loan forgiveness after 10 years) and other such things not afforded to private employees.
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All that means (like I said before) is a public sector worker is less likely to need or want union representation. However, If it's available to a private sector worker it should be available to a public sector worker.
 
ocean515 said:
LOL

Cute appeal to emotion. However, that is not the issue.

Public sector employees are paid by taxpayers. There is no skin in the game. They don't care about the long term.

For example, California is heading for economic disaster because of the actions of public sector unions, and the actions of state legislators who have received massive contributions from those unions in return for legislation and regulations that favor them.

Private sector unions can put their employers out of business, so there is some degree of incentive to maintain some degree of objectivity during contract bargaining discussions.
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So the public service laborer is NOT worthy of his hire? He should work on the cheap just because. Public sector employees need a decent wage too.
Many private sector companies make their profits providing services for taxpayers on the taxpayer dime. Should they not work for cost?
 
Manc Skipper said:
So the public service laborer is NOT worthy of his hire? He should work on the cheap just because. Public sector employees need a decent wage too.
Many private sector companies make their profits providing services for taxpayers on the taxpayer dime. Should they not work for cost?
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Where are you getting this? If a job in the public sector doesn't pay enough, the government won't be able to get any decent employees.

If someone decides to take a public sector job that doesn't pay well, that is their problem.

Your argument is flawed by appeals to emotion that have no relationship to reality.
 
ocean515 said:
Where are you getting this? If a job in the public sector doesn't pay enough, the government won't be able to get any decent employees.

If someone decides to take a public sector job that doesn't pay well, that is their problem.

Your argument is flawed by appeals to emotion that have no relationship to reality.
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Whereas your has bno basis in reality whatsoever. Pubic sector jobs are generally vital to the community and poorly paid. Without union representation they would be completely unprotected from the capricious whims of employers with attitudes like yours. The ethos of public service is too valuable to be abandoned to chance.
 
Manc Skipper said:
Whereas your has bno basis in reality whatsoever. Pubic sector jobs are generally vital to the community and poorly paid. Without union representation they would be completely unprotected from the capricious whims of employers with attitudes like yours. The ethos of public service is too valuable to be abandoned to chance.
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Poorly paid? Obviously you are poorly informed. Perhaps public sector jobs are poorly paid in Southern England, but they have become coveted in the United States.

'Sanitation' search results | Transparent California
 
ocean515 said:
Poorly paid? Obviously you are poorly informed. Perhaps public sector jobs are poorly paid in Southern England, but they have become coveted in the United States.

'Sanitation' search results | Transparent California
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Greetings, ocean515. :2wave:


:wow: They really are well paid! :thumbs: How is the legislature going to find the money to pay for all those retirement benefits that will come due one day? :eek:
 
polgara said:
Greetings, ocean515. :2wave:


:wow: They really are well paid! :thumbs: How is the legislature going to find the money to pay for all those retirement benefits that will come due one day? :eek:
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How? They just announced they are going to borrow the money to meet the pension benefits.

How Progressives screwed California:

How a pension deal went wrong and cost California taxpayers billions - Los Angeles Times


What they plan to do now:

Gov. Brown wants California to borrow from itself to fund employee pensions. Good idea - LA Times

That's like using a credit card to buy groceries, and never paying off the balance. Notice the alt-left brain trust at the LA Times calls it a good idea.

I get taken to task by the uninformed for my position on California but the above is just one of a mountain of terminal cancers plaguing California.

Progressives have doomed California, and I'm glad I won't be here so they can try to keep the cadaver going by carving into the backs of people like me.

California = :boom
 
ocean515 said:
How? They just announced they are going to borrow the money to meet the pension benefits.

How Progressives screwed California:

How a pension deal went wrong and cost California taxpayers billions - Los Angeles Times


What they plan to do now:

Gov. Brown wants California to borrow from itself to fund employee pensions. Good idea - LA Times

That's like using a credit card to buy groceries, and never paying off the balance. Notice the alt-left brain trust at the LA Times calls it a good idea.

I get taken to task by the uninformed for my position on California but the above is just one of a mountain of terminal cancers plaguing California.

Progressives have doomed California, and I'm glad I won't be here so they can try to keep the cadaver going by carving into the backs of people like me.

California = :boom
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Uh oh! It appears that cuts are going to have to be made, popular or not! :shock: I cannot get my mind around the dollar amount of interest we will have to pay this year on our national $20 trillion dollar debt - approximately $500 billion dollars is the amount I've read - so what is California going to have to cut to pay the interest this year on the debt they alone have built up over the years?

Where is that money going to come from...the taxpayers in California? How much more can they afford to pay? Yikes!
 
Grand Mal said:
"The people agree..."?
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Yeah, you know, government's lawmaking power?

Listen. In a capitalism you get paid according to the value of what you produce.
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As a seller of anything you get paid what buyers are willing to pay for what you sell.

In some cases that's a simple thing to decide. I was a structural Ironworker. The steel had a certain value when it was fabricated and laying on dunnage in the yard and a higher value when it was erected. The difference is what I produced. There's lots of similar examples in the private sector.

How do you decide the value of what a teacher produces, though, or a cop or a public health nurse?
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The same way any employer decides what they're willing to pay for work they want done. This rhetorical question doesn't begin to justify unionism.

If you leave their wages up to 'the people', it'll look like an opportunity to save tax dollars and the wages will end up so low that you'll never attract good people to those jobs.
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And then what would happen?
 
azgreg said:
Why should one group of workers be treated different than any other group of workers?
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Because “It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”
 
Renae said:
Because “It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”
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Public unions campaign and support a candidate for office, and if that candidate wins, the union gets to "negotiate" a new contract. And if course reminding the politician about all the support they were given. Good deal if you can get it.
 
azgreg said:
All that means (like I said before) is a public sector worker is less likely to need or want union representation.
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That doesn't explain why reality is so starkly different. Union representation at the municipal government level is over four times more unionized than the private sector on average. State level government three times more unionized than the private sector.

However, If it's available to a private sector worker it should be available to a public sector worker.
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Why are you so preoccupied with this perceive double standard? It doesn't need to be available to anyone anywhere.
 
Unions vs employers should be a 50/50 arrangement. If either one yields too much power it is bad for the country as a whole. Right now I'd guess it is fairly close to 50/50.
 
Neomalthusian said:
That doesn't explain why reality is so starkly different. Union representation at the municipal government level is over four times more unionized than the private sector on average. State level government three times more unionized than the private sector.



Why are you so preoccupied with this perceive double standard? It doesn't need to be available to anyone anywhere.
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Sure it does.
 
azgreg said:
Sure it does.
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It surely doesn't. There is no problem that exists in the absence of a labor cartel cannot adequately be solved by government itself, with all its lawmaking and taxing powers.
 
In related news,

Future of unions in balance as Trump prepares to reshape national labor board

The NLRB is the administrative agency that is tasked with enforcing the National Labor Relations Act, the federal statute that gives employees the right to unionize and collectively bargain. The NLRB consists of five members who are appointed to five-year terms by the president upon the advice and consent of the Senate.

Right now, there are two vacancies on the board that President Donald Trump will fill. Once the Senate confirms President Trump’s nominees, Republicans will control the board for the first time since 2007.

The background of the three candidates reportedly under consideration suggests that the board will in fact be much friendlier to business interests under the Trump administration. One of the potential nominees, Doug Seaton, has made a career of being a “union-buster,” the term used to describe a consultant brought in by employers to beat a unionization campaign. Another, William Emanuel, is a partner at Littler Mendelson, one of the largest and most successful anti-labor law firms in the country. Less is known about the third potential candidate, Marvin Kaplan, but his history as a Republican staffer suggests he may also represent employers’ interests.

Many observers assume that this new board will overturn many Obama-era precedents that favored unions.​
 
Neomalthusian said:
New high court challenge to labor unions follows 4-4 split - CBS News

WASHINGTON - Conservative groups are wasting little time in trying to deal a crippling blow to labor unions now that Justice Neil Gorsuch has joined the Supreme Court.

A First Amendment clash over public sector unions left the justices deadlocked last year after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. But union opponents have quickly steered a new case through federal courts in Illinois and they plan to appeal it to the high court on Tuesday.​
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If the inability to force people to join your organization against their will cripples you, you are a crappy union that deserves to be crippled.
 
celticwar17 said:
Public sector unions should not exist... at all...

Private sector unions... of course should...
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agreed, and FDR did as well

I also have no problem with private employers firing Union members-assuming they can find enough labor. If, of course, a union can get the employer to agree to a contract, then the contract would determine the rules. But I don't support the government protecting unions.
 
cpwill said:
If the inability to force people to join your organization against their will cripples you, you are a crappy union that deserves to be crippled.
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Up until 2012, only 23 states were Right To Work, 20 of which had been since 1963. That means for most of the last half century, 60% of the nation had labor laws that allowed unions to put clauses into their bargaining contracts which established that they could force employees into their membership by forcing the employer to fire them if they aren't.

I don't think reliance on the security clause makes a union "a crappy union." I think it simply makes a union a union. Coercion is their fundamental nature. Even some economists who hold favorable views of unions have straight up said unions operate as cartels by establishing monopoly power over certain labor positions to drive the price for it above the market. Unions practically pride themselves in it. For example, take the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers' Constitution:

"The Objects of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers are:

To organize all workers in the entire electrical industry in the United States and Canada, including those in public utilities and electrical manufacturing, into local unions."

Their monopolistic intents are proudly announced. Step 1, monopolize the entire market, step 2, work less, step 3, take more, and more, and more, and more money, forever.
 
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