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Are Unions Still Viable?

Are Unions Still Viable?


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MarineTpartier

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I recently attended a course where I was instructed on the inspection of OSHA code as well as Laser, Radiation, small arms firing range, etc safety. I started thinking while I was subjected to death by Power Point "With all of these OSHA codes, minimum wage, workman's comp laws, etc. What do union's do?" Therein lies the question. What DO unions do? OSHA code, if you are not familiar with it, is the epitomy of ridiculous regulations imposed by the Federal gov't. Some of it is good, I will admit, but dictating how many toilets I have to have on a work site is going a little far. Minimum wage is something we are all familiar with. Workman's Comp is very complicated however, it is required in all states depending upon the states regulations. Unions don't have to negotiate safer working environments, the Federal gov't does that already. They don't have to negotiate salary, the Federal gov't does that already. They don't have to make businesses compensate injured employees, the state governments does that already. What I see of unions is almost always bad. They demand pay that is more than the market rate. They demand benefits that are more than the market rate. They demand work conditions that are more than OSHA code requires. Unions, IMO, were needed in the early industrialization of the US. Now, they are nothing more than an irritant. Am I wrong?
:arrow:***Please, keep the debate civil. Just because someone holds a different opinion than you doesn't mean they are a lesser form of human than you.***
 
Yes, they are still viable... but that doesn't mean all workers of all professions in all companies/institutions should have unions.
 
There is good reason why the share of the private sector that is unionized has shrunk so dramatically - and it is because unions keep the businesses they are attached to from being competitive. There is a reason why both political parties are now having to take on public unions - and it is because they make governmental finance unsustainable.


With the rare exceptions where they do perhaps mark a superior form of organization (perhaps in a private monospony), unions are non-viable.
 
There is good reason why the share of the private sector that is unionized has shrunk so dramatically - and it is because unions keep the businesses they are attached to from being competitive. There is a reason why both political parties are now having to take on public unions - and it is because they make governmental finance unsustainable.


With the rare exceptions where they do perhaps mark a superior form of organization (perhaps in a private monospony), unions are non-viable.

Actually union success is their own recipe for shrinking membership. As unions obtained more money and a better life for its members, some members forgot the lessons as to why the union was there in the first place. This is one reason things tend to repeat in cycles over a long period of time.

One other reason is that the advice given to companies trying to stop a union is simple: pay your people what unions shops pay and give them the same benefits. Thus, many non union companies and their employees are riding on the success of the union movement and their workers do not even realize it.

The research of Dr. Lafer in Oregon shows conclusively that in union shop states, the wages of non-union workers are also higher than their fellows in right to work states because of the already cited effect.

http://www.epi.org/publication/right-to-work-michigan-economy/
 
I recently attended a course where I was instructed on the inspection of OSHA code as well as Laser, Radiation, small arms firing range, etc safety. I started thinking while I was subjected to death by Power Point "With all of these OSHA codes, minimum wage, workman's comp laws, etc. What do union's do?" Therein lies the question. What DO unions do? OSHA code, if you are not familiar with it, is the epitomy of ridiculous regulations imposed by the Federal gov't. Some of it is good, I will admit, but dictating how many toilets I have to have on a work site is going a little far. Minimum wage is something we are all familiar with. Workman's Comp is very complicated however, it is required in all states depending upon the states regulations. Unions don't have to negotiate safer working environments, the Federal gov't does that already. They don't have to negotiate salary, the Federal gov't does that already. They don't have to make businesses compensate injured employees, the state governments does that already. What I see of unions is almost always bad. They demand pay that is more than the market rate. They demand benefits that are more than the market rate. They demand work conditions that are more than OSHA code requires. Unions, IMO, were needed in the early industrialization of the US. Now, they are nothing more than an irritant. Am I wrong?
:arrow:***Please, keep the debate civil. Just because someone holds a different opinion than you doesn't mean they are a lesser form of human than you.***

Just because a business regulation is a law doesn't mean it is always enforced or can't be repealed.

So yes, unions are still viable even as a political action group if not in regards to collective bargaining.

Though I think that allowing only employees of a corporation to own voting shares of a company and only non-voting shares of a company are allowed to be traded would be a much better way for labor and management to interact with each other in regards to large businesses. For small businesses, a guild telling their members what contract minimums to expect from their individual contracts would be better for them.
 
Modern unions are just like modern corporations, bloated and corrupt, but they both still play absolutely vital roles in our economy.
 
Actually union success is their own recipe for shrinking membership. As unions obtained more money and a better life for its members, some members forgot the lessons as to why the union was there in the first place. This is one reason things tend to repeat in cycles over a long period of time.

if that is the case then rejoice! clearly unions are about to stage a resurgence in the private sector, given their vanishing presence there.

.....but I rather doubt it. Unions were never a majority of workers, even at their peak, and unions are hardly required in order to maintain decent standards of living.

One other reason is that the advice given to companies trying to stop a union is simple: pay your people what unions shops pay and give them the same benefits. Thus, many non union companies and their employees are riding on the success of the union movement and their workers do not even realize it.

The research of Dr. Lafer in Oregon shows conclusively that in union shop states, the wages of non-union workers are also higher than their fellows in right to work states because of the already cited effect.

‘Right to work’: The wrong answer for Michigan’s economy | Economic Policy Institute

Yeah, I"ve seen that claim before, and if you like I can match it with plenty of studies that demonstrate flaws in the claim that RTW laws have negative impacts on wages. What I also notice about Dr Lafer right here is that he ignores superior job growth in RTW states, higher cost of living in non-RTW sates, and higher unemployment in non-RTW states.
 
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union membership is on a downward trend. membership will pick up again when employers do what they always do in a dynamic of unorganized labor. it's already happening, and eventually, people will get sick of it.

as union membership approaches one hundred percent, the unions would become more powerful and corrupt. as it approaches zero, employers become more powerful and corrupt. i'm beginning to think that society requires this sort of oscillation. the same can be said for our partisan duopoly.
 
I favour co-ops over unions.
 
Unionization is viable in specific industries, although certainly not optimal in most cases due to competitiveness, bloated pensions, and the hampered ability to prioritize and reward excellence in lieu of tenure.

For the most recent and pertinent woes unionization has caused however, contact the Green Bay Packers. :lol:
 
Yeah, I"ve seen that claim before, and if you like I can match it with plenty of studies that demonstrate flaws in the claim that RTW laws have negative impacts on wages. What I also notice about Dr Lafer right here is that he ignores superior job growth in RTW states, higher cost of living in non-RTW sates, and higher unemployment in non-RTW states.

By all means - lets see your studies. When you fail to cite them or link to them nameless studies by nameless people are not evidence.
 
I see it as a business cycle. First it swings too far one way and then too far back. Unions affect all worker's paychecks and their threat keeps Corporations in check. That is a needed check. When Unions go too far, the results are what we see occurring today. When fully fed both Corporations and Unions are evil, pusillanimous scumbags.
 
I think that unions can still do useful things. For example, my mom was a teacher for several years, and was in the teacher's union, and she told me that they campaigned a lot to keep class sizes and student:teacher ratios low, which I see as a good thing. On the other hand, unions also cause problems. In some cases they push too hard to get benefits for their membership, and it ends up hurting the companies they work for pretty badly. I don't think that they're necessary in the way they were back in the early 1900s either.
 
By all means - lets see your studies. When you fail to cite them or link to them nameless studies by nameless people are not evidence.

:shrug:

William Moore: “The empirical evidence accumulated in the 1970s and 1980s indicates that Right to Work laws do not have strong lasting effects on wages. Most researchers find that Right to Work laws have no impact on union wages, nonunion wages, or average wages”

David Kendrick found that the after tax income of workers in RTW states was $1,145 higher than in non-RTW states.

The Mackinac Center saw a number of interesting statistics arise:

From 1977 through 1999, Gross State Product (GSP), the market value of all goods and services produced in a state, increased 0.5 percent faster in RTW states than in non-RTW states. Michigan’s GSP grew at roughly half the rate of RTW states.

Employment grew almost 1 percent faster each year, on average, in RTW states. Employment in Michigan grew only half as fast as employment in RTW states.

Manufacturing employment grew 1.7 percent faster in RTW states. Right-to-work states created 1.43 million manufacturing jobs, while non-RTW states lost 2.18 million manufacturing jobs. Michigan lost more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs during this period, performing even worse than many other non-RTW states.

Construction employment grew 1 percent faster each year, on average, in RTW states. Michigan ranked 32nd in the nation in this category.

From 1978 through 2000, average annual unemployment was 0.5 percent lower in RTW states. Unemployment in Michigan was 2.3 percent higher than in RTW states.

Per-capita disposable income was 0.2 percent higher, on average, in RTW states. Michigan’s rate of increase in this category matched the average for other non-RTW states. Although nominal per-capita disposable income was 10 percent higher in non-RTW states in 2000, research shows that the cost of living is also higher in these states; so high, in fact, that after-tax purchasing power—real income—is greater in RTW states.

Unit labor costs—the measure of labor compensation relative to labor productivity—were 93.2 in RTW states and 98.1 in non-RTW states in 2000. Michigan, at 109.2, had the second highest unit labor costs in the nation that same year, exceeding all but New Jersey.

The percentage of families living in poverty in RTW states dropped from 18.3 percent to 11.6 percent between 1969 and 2000. During this same period, seven states saw increases in poverty, all non-RTW states. Michigan was among them, with a poverty increase of 0.6 percent, ranking it 45th among the states in poverty rate improvement.

Income inequality rose in both RTW and non-RTW states between 1977 and 2000. But while this inequality was greater in RTW states in 1977, by 2000 the situation had reversed...

Right-to-work laws increase labor productivity by requiring labor unions to earn the support of each worker, since workers are able to decide for themselves whether or not to pay dues. This greater accountability results in unions that are more responsive to their members and more reasonable in their wage and work rule demands..


etc. so on and so forth.
 
The report from the Mackinaw Center has been thoroughly discredited as being little better than junk science. In this state, anything with the name Mackinaw Center on it is immediately recognized for the far right propaganda that it is. I have already provided you with the detailed report from Dr. Lafer. In it he has an extensive analysis of the Mackinaw Center report and points out in detail their failures in both methodology and in application.

You list three sources - the first and the second are badly out of date and fail to take in the last dozen years of economic development particularly the effect of foreign migration of business.

The Moore study is 14 years old - it is looking at an era that is now ancient history.
The Wilson study is also badly dated and is ten years old and looking back even father than that.
The Mackinaw report simply is regurgitated Wilson writings from the second report.

Dr. Lafer uses up to date current data and thus has far more validity than the badly out of date stuff you cited.
 
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Your studies were out of date - badly out of date. They are measuring conditions and an era which no longer exists in America.
 

You quote the first paragraph of a USA Today article that continues with the following sentences - why didn't you post them?

The big drivers of red state income growth: energy and government benefit payments such as food stamps.

By contrast, Democratic blue states are more affluent but were hit harder by the downturn. Connecticut, dependent on the financial industry, suffered the largest income drop except swing-state Nevada. Yet Connecticut residents still make $10,000 a year more on average than people in fast-growing North Dakota.


Why I do believe one might see cpwill's C&P as a bit of quote mining
 
Your studies were out of date - badly out of date. They are measuring conditions and an era which no longer exists in America.

:lol: yes, economic laws have changed mysteriously for no particular reason in the last decade or so.
 
:lol: yes, economic laws have changed mysteriously for no particular reason in the last decade or so.

Laws? Who passed them?

You use reports that are a decade out of date and fail to take in the changes wrought by foreign outsourcing and you get all whiny when I point it out.

Too bad.
 
Sometimes is the best answer for this question...

In some unions it is very viable...see NFL

In others...not so much....public sector unions
 
Laws? Who passed them?

:sigh: economic laws, haymarket. you are arguing that corporate entities such as unions have ceased to have the same aggregate effects in the last couple of decades that they had in the previous 4 decades. Your evidence for doing so seems to be "i have a study that agrees with me and disagrees with you".

the strongest bit of evidence for the OP remains simple history - unions are doomed because of the destruction they bring to bear on the industries and employers they attach themselves to. they are a vanishingly small section of the private sector, and even their public sector allies are finding it increasingly difficult to remain tied to them.

You use reports that are a decade out of date and fail to take in the changes wrought by foreign outsourcing and you get all whiny when I point it out.

Too bad.

:lol: tell me more about how foriegn outsourcing will have uniquely not effected union states. :) This ought to be fun.
 
I recently attended a course where I was instructed on the inspection of OSHA code as well as Laser, Radiation, small arms firing range, etc safety. I started thinking while I was subjected to death by Power Point "With all of these OSHA codes, minimum wage, workman's comp laws, etc. What do union's do?" Therein lies the question. What DO unions do? OSHA code, if you are not familiar with it, is the epitomy of ridiculous regulations imposed by the Federal gov't. Some of it is good, I will admit, but dictating how many toilets I have to have on a work site is going a little far. Minimum wage is something we are all familiar with. Workman's Comp is very complicated however, it is required in all states depending upon the states regulations. Unions don't have to negotiate safer working environments, the Federal gov't does that already. They don't have to negotiate salary, the Federal gov't does that already. They don't have to make businesses compensate injured employees, the state governments does that already. What I see of unions is almost always bad. They demand pay that is more than the market rate. They demand benefits that are more than the market rate. They demand work conditions that are more than OSHA code requires. Unions, IMO, were needed in the early industrialization of the US. Now, they are nothing more than an irritant. Am I wrong?
:arrow:***Please, keep the debate civil. Just because someone holds a different opinion than you doesn't mean they are a lesser form of human than you.***


I will give you the perfect example to answer your post...whether you accept it is up to you....I worked for a company and I was in the union...the shop steward recieved numerous complaints from union workers about an unsafe working condition. He went to management brought up the concern, management blew him off and said there is no safety issues it was worker laziness and error that caused the injuries....The shop steward called the Local President and explained the situation and the union had their lawyer look into it....the lawyer found that in a 7 yr period 34 employees were injured over this steamer...he checked further and found the steamer not to be up to safety code...he contacted management and afforded them an opportunity to JUST FIX THE STEAMER....they refused and kept denying there was a problem...the lawyer took the next step osha stepped investigated the steamer said it was NOT UP TO SAFTEY cod and they had x amount of time to fix it...and then the fines start.....they fixed it...they could have saved alot of time and alot of problems.....THATS what unions and Osha does...some people just cannot understand how unscrupulous and uncaring some in business. The workers and their unions are not the villains republicans always want to make them out to be...you have villains of your own
 
Unions proved themselves no longer 'viable' when they became enmeshed with political parties and organized crime. Today, unions reward nepotism and preserve incompetence. They are every bit as much of the problem with job loss in this country as are industry owners. They are leeches and parasites. They dont 'create' anything but rather suck and drain off resources.
 
Unions remain a viable source of campaign funds for candidates from the Democratic party.

That's about it - and, to the Democrats, that's all that matters.
 
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