New Report Reveals Why GOP Hates Unions: They Raise Wages, Boost Economy

The Hoover-like GOP has been working overtime to oppose President Obama's stimulus package while hoping he fails. Meanwhile, a report released yesterday by the Center for American Progress Action Fund essentially underscores the real reasons Republicans and the business community have taken another equally short-sighted economic stance: fighting workers' right to organize. As Unions Are Good For the American Economy points out with irrefutable statistics, unionization raises wages and boosts the economy because it puts more money in the pockets of American workers.

(The report itself, of course, doesn't directly accuse the GOP and corporate interests of opposing economic growth and recovery, but reading its measured analysis of the economic benefit of unions leads to the inescapable conclusion that anti-union business leaders have a misguided zeal for low wages at all cost -- regardless of the impact on their own workers, their firms' productivity, their own long-term profits or the broader economy.)

In a conference call with reporters to discuss the report, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich observed: "One reason we're in the crisis we're in is because consumers have run out of money....If they can't borrow anymore, and they have to rely on sinking wages, the entire economy is in trouble, because there's not enough demand out there." Reich added, "The point of the Employee Free Choice Act is to end intimidation and allow workers to join unions as they have a right to do. Workers want to be in unions [nearly 60% say they'd join if they could], and if they did have unions, they'd have higher wages and benefits. And if they had higher wags and benefits, they'd have the purchasing power to buy more goods and services."

In fact, the relative stagnation of wages over the last few decades -- due in large part to effective unionbusting aimed at keeping labor costs low -- helped bring on the economic meltdown because too many low-income workers were suckered into mortgages they really couldn't afford. Those mortgages were in turn bundled into the "toxic assets" -- those various nearly-worthless investment vehicles -- that have weakened the world's financial systems and brought on our free-fall recession. As Daily Kos diarist Trapper John reported last year, "AFL-CIO Associate General Counsel Damon Silvers lays out how the decline in unionization which began in the mid-Seventies led to the burst of the sub-prime bubble, and ultimately to today's recession. And he wrote it way back in April."

In contrast, this new Center for American Progress report points out, if unionization rates today were the same as they were in 1983, an additional $49 billion could be pumped into the economy by workers represented by unions. As the report co-authored by David Madland and Karla Walter says, "In 1983, 23.3 percent of American workers were either members of a union or represented by a union at their workplace. By 2008, that portion declined to 13.7 percent." And, as Reich and the report noted, "Workers in unions earn 30% higher than non-union workers."

As Beth Shulman, author of The Betrayal of Work, observed during the conference call: "A union job transforms a low-wage job into a good job" -- and a pathway to the middle-class. And those workers will be able come into showrooms, real estate offices, auto dealerships and stores across America to start buying again and paying down-payments for a home. Shulman quoted a grocery store worker who joined a union, Linda, telling her, "For the first time, I can dream for my child," and who started putting away money for her child's college education. "Having unionization gives people a stake in the American dream," Shulman said.

But , as usual, big businesses and the GOP have taken a short-term, greedy look at their economic self-interest and determined they must fight the Employee Free Choice Act with all the weapons at their disposal. These include $200 million worth of smear ads , lobbying and misleading talking points; they're claiming (falsely) that it takes away the secret ballot and will wreck the economy.

Yet, as Shulman says, "The business community knows the basic facts that are in this report: when workers have unions, they have better wages, they have better benefits, they have a voice in the workplace, so it's not surprising they would take a hard line with this. This [bill] is important to ensure a road to the middle class and a right to organize." She's confident that the goals of the legislation will trump corporate special interests and right-wing ideology: "Clearly, it will get passed, because it's in the interest of working America."

And as Walter and other pro-union advocates point out, a level playing field for union organizing helps the economy. The higher wages paid by unions boosts productivity, reduce turnover and can even improve profits. Partially unionized Cosco, she says, has nearly 40% more in labor costs than its sister company, Sam's Club, but has almost double the per-employee profit margin. "They invested in the jobs and lowered turnover," she observes.

In fact, even the Heritage Foundation's much-hyped index of "economic freedom" in countries around the world pointed to economies with the highest rates of unionization in the workforce.

As for the right-wing's favorite whipping boys, the auto industry and the UAW, Walter and other experts say the blame should fall on the executives' poor manufacturing decisions -- not the 10 percent of a car's cost made up by labor costs. And, despite the demonization of the UAW, the American auto-industry workers' wages are now roughly comparable to those in non-unionized Japanese factories, but it's the added costs of health care and pensions for union retirees over the decades that have actually raised costs. In addition, as the latest restructuring and cost-cutting plans show, the UAW has been willing to compromise -- after giving up important gains in negotiations in earlier years.

The important new report shows that the original goal of the UAW -- helping their workers achieve a decent, middle-class standard of living while working in factories -- could also help today's low-paid workers, especially in the growing service and health-care sectors, boost their incomes if they had the right to join a union. As the AFL-CIO Now blog reports:

The report also provides a state-by-state analysis of increased union membership on wages. An increase in the rate of union membership of just 5 percent would increase total wages by $176 million in Nebraska, $503 million in Wisconsin and $852 million in Pennsylvania.

These wages would be spread across the entire labor market.

"The essence of what labor unions do -- give workers a stronger voice so that they can get a fair share of the economic growth they help create -- is and has always been important to making the economy work for all Americans. And unions only become more important as the economy worsens.

"One of the primary reasons why our current recession endures is that workers do not have the purchasing power they need to drive our economy...what is sustainable is an economy where workers are adequately rewarded and have the income they need to purchase goods. This is where unions come in."

Walter and Madland point to the disconnect between productivity and wages as a major factor in our economic crisis. Indeed, if wages had kept pace with productivity increases, rather than falling behind as they have in recent decades, average wages would be 42.7 percent higher. That's a sizable share of the economy that workers have lost, undermining consumer purchasing power and economic security--which, in turn, hurt the nation's entire economy in a vicious downward spiral.

That's why protecting union rights becomes so critical to economic recovery. As Karla Walter summed up her research, "The Employee Free Choice Act is not only important because it makes it harder for anti-union companies to harass workers, it boosts unionization rates, and improves millions of Americans' economic standing, providing families of those with union jobs a path to the middle class and pumping billions into the American economy every year."

At the heart of all this is a drive for fairness and a level playing field for workers -- the right to bargain for decent pay and benefits. As Stewart Acuff, the special assistant to the president of the AFL-CIO, says caustically, "If the bosses can bargain with their boards of directors for their $200 million salaries and $10 million bonuses while they were screwing up their companies, workers ought to be able to bargain for their kids' health care and wages they can count on."

Art Levine co-hosts "The D'Antoni and Levine Show" on BlogTalk Radio at 5:30 p.m. ET, every Thursday, then archived online. This week's guests, Berkeley economist Brad DeLong and the Campaign For America's Future senior fellow, Bernie Horn, explain President Obama's bailout, stimulus and recovery packages -- and the political fights over them.

Comments

[nightwind928]

It's not even about "fair" wages or lack thereof. The system works when those providing employment step up for the people who's labor makes their product an economic viability. But the exec's and their shareholders demand ever increasing returns on their investments forcing the manafacturing base to export their industries to a cheap labor market or face being replaced by cheap imports. This leaves the american consumer of those products without a means to purchase them. That's what we see now in this disasterous economy. If a fair wage giudeline and benifit package for those in blue and white collar positions could be adheared to by patritotic american companies, and the tide of cheap imports could be effectivly controlled, unions would be unnecessary. The truth is, no such guidelines exist and will never happen as long as greed alone controls the American market place. Big american companies grudgingly give the non union worker only what wages and benifits they have to and threaten them with their jobs when they complain. Even the old " annual company picnics" have gone the way of the steam engine as companies, in todays american market place, tighten their respective belts to stay competitive in a shrinking economic market. They fail to understand the "catch 22 situation they, themselves have helped create

[JustAHumanOnEarth]

Unions cause inefficiencies, wage imbalances, and bankruptcy. Just look at our top union sectors, automotive and government. GM and California­.....prime examples.

[LeftRight]

You mean the ones where the union members get paid $28 per hour, and the CEOs get paid $1600 per hour???? Those ones, where the CEOs add more cost to the final product than ALL the labor who actually worked on it COMBINED?????

[olgraydawg]

Hooray for Wal-mart! Hiring illegals, not giving breaks, soiled clothes in public and shipping our neighbors job to the Mariannas Islands. Sweat shops, child labor, human rights abuses. An extra five bucks in the collections [plate will make it all right with whoever your God is. You know, the one who says do unto your neightbors as you would have them do unto you. Support the selling of Chinese made lapel flags and tell yourself that since they are cheaper the unemployed, the underemployed, even the homeless will be able to buy more of them and you will have done your part to support the troops as well as the broke, sick, homeless are able to share your joy at strengthening America. Ain't it Grand?

[BruceHNV]

You don't get it. In order to strengthen America, workers must agree to be weak and compliant, and do the noble boss's bidding for pennies. Then America will be strong.

[teensy]

The auto industry is doing great. Detroit is a lovely city. Everyone wants to move to Michigan because the people there are doing so well.

[realpolitic]

I am all for unions, but part of the decline in unionization in America must be related to globalization. Unions are usually associated with blue-collar jobs, except for government. Gains in producitivity have not been filtering down to the worker leaving people vulnerable. But these days, a manufacturer can easily take the plant to China or Mexico or some other low cost country with infrastructure. The white collar call centers go to India or in some cases Ireland. So it may be a difficult macro-problem for us. In the meantime, I am sure the idea of having secret ballots will benefit unionization and is a good idea.

[hippie chucker]

Globalization is directly related to higher costs of doing business.

What are some of the higher costs of doing business?

Regulation, and higher union wages here in America.

Think about it. You make Yo Yos in Indiana. Your company becomes unionized, and is getting buried by a blizzard of union work rules and government regulation.
Since, of course, your goal is to make money, and not exist for the sake of your workers, you move the plant, and why wouldn't you?

And what does that plant do in China? It provides work, and supports a growing middle class....until after a time, labor costs go up, and the Yo Yo plant moves again.

Any student of history can tell you about the textile industry in the Northeast before the War.

After the war, the textile industry moved down south, and employed millions for a generation. Then, it moved to China, where wages were less.

Already, companies are moving to Vietnam from China.

You see, the notion of private property, that you liberals disdain, says that ownership of capital gives you the right to do what you like.
In a free society, which you all pay lip service to, I am free to make contracts and move my money where I see fit, BECAUSE IT IS MINE. It is not the States, it is not the Unions, it is the property of the owner.

[Oldchef]

You should just invest YOURS in some of those sweet "Financial instruments". No worry about actually having to make something or deal with those lowclass "workers" or, God forbid actually doing some work yourself. Banking or mortgage banking is the obvious choice for such a pragmatist as yourself.

[cam]

Your money is yours. The society you live in is ours. If you want to drain more from our society than you contribute then we need to defend ourselves. We have always needed to defend ourselves, but some of us need to hit rock bottom before we realize it. A lot of us are landing hard. A lot of Republicans.

We have three primary mechanisms for dealing with you - i)we can tax you, ii)we can unionize , and iii) we can regulate. We understand that all three recourses are abhorrent to you. We rather enjoy that.

So move your money around. Put it in China, or in Antigua, or in your mattress for that matter. Just understand that fewer and fewer of us believe in trickle-down economics - especially when that trickle is from our economy into another. More and more of us are working actively to stop you from influencing our politiicans and destroying our society.

You were annihilated at the polls because your propaganda machine couldn't carry you anymore. Neither your money nor your ideology can keep us at bay.

Not anymore.

[BruceHNV]

But the labor of the people who produced the money is not yours. It belongs to the people who perform it. You have to buy it from them. If they choose to keep their own property (their labor) and band together to make themselves stronger in doing so, and refuse to sell it to you for rates that are unfair to them, then that is their right.

Then you only own the money you did not spend buying the labor you bargained for.

If you love your country and your fellow citizen so much that you would rather drive the middle class here into poverty or grow the middle class in communist china rather than here, well, so be it. We can't make you grow a conscience. But we can protect ourselves from you.

[BruceHNV]

Globalization is not related to higher costs here. It is related to higher profits elsewhere. While wages stagnated and went down here and millions more entered poverty, our government made it more profitable for companies to grow the economies of other countries.

Now we produce nothing and have a ballooning trade deficit. History says that unless we turn that around, our dominance on the world stage is at an end. There are two ways to do this - insist on local rather than foreign production (for which we have the capacity) - or race to the bottom - stopping only when it's cheaper to pay an American worker living in a cardboard shack than a Mexican worker living 30 to a cardboard shack.

Which route do you choose?

[marxmarv]

Actually, all property is the State's. It's only through their inaction that you are allowed to keep it.

If you don't want your workers forming a union, don't treat them like crap and they won't feel the need. They, unlike you, stand a better chance of knowing what "enough" means. You need them more than they need you; they just don't realize it yet and businessmen try to keep them from knowing that by any means necessary. Remember how to use an indicator dial?

[NURREDIN]

People just don't realize this economic mess has been forty years in the making,starting with Nixon's trip to China to jumpstart their manufacturing so American companies could fire Union and highly paid factory workers and use Chinese labor. If you really think "Detente" was about anything but "globalization" of the U.S. economy you must be Republican. Globalization is just a euphemism for finding cheaper labor than what's in America. Now we have Hanes underwear making apparel in Viet Nam where the workers are only paid $30.00 a week, and they fired all their American workers in North Carolina! Wait till they get their Hanes on us! Republicans won't be happy until all American labor is making the same $4.00 an hour the Chinese are making. We don't have a mortgage crisis in this country,we have a low paid American worker crisis,and it's getting worse every day. I saw an executive from Hanes saying they chose Viet Nam because the workers there were cheaper than the Chinese! Are they lowering the prices on their under wear,or just making sure the executives still make their millions while the newly unemployed go on welfare? The Republicans have done their job on us since Nixon, and this economy CANNOT come back without a viable middle class. The Republicans just don't care.

[hippie chucker]

Your solution is what exactly? Protectionism? Don't trade with other countries?

Think about it. Your entire life, you have been able to purchase goods and services unimaginable 50 years ago, for next to nothing. Through trade with China, you can buy cheap consumer goods that enable you to save money that you can put towards retirement, or kids college, etc etc.

With all due respect, to say that we shouldn't have global trade is to say that capitalism doesn't work, and that we need government price controls on all goods and services, through fiat.
That's the only way to fix prices to what you think they should be.

Stop and think about it. If Hanes had kept their operation here, and the competition had not, could they sell their product at twice the selling price?

Nope.

Should they stay here, bleeding money, for the sake of their employees?

[marxmarv]

"Think about it. Your entire life, you have been able to purchase goods and services unimaginable 50 years ago, for next to nothing."

An alternate way of looking at this is that I'm able to purchase goods and services completely unnecessary 50 years ago that are now just about mandatory through the miracle of advertising-driven social forces, network effects and the frantic pace of business itself.

"Through trade with China, you can buy cheap consumer goods that enable you to save money that you can put towards retirement, or kids college, etc etc."

I can save money by not buying a $20 salad spinner or $300 TV. As for retirement, I do in fact trust the government to manage my money better than the stock market. Think of Social Security as the ultimate value fund if you must.

"Stop and think about it. If Hanes had kept their operation here, and the competition had not, could they sell their product at twice the selling price?"

Hanes? Probably not. Hanes underwear are made for guys with small junk anyway. They might have been better products with Inspector 12 on the job, but these days the foreign sweatshop pride in workmanship shows right through (and that's not all).

[hippie chucker]

Now, imagine you are one of those capitalist pigs who is running, I don't know, a small landscaping company. Your 10 employees, who you've known for years, agree somewhat reluctantly to become part of a union.
All of the sudden, through union activity, you suddenly must pay that 30% extra to your workers.

Your customers, business owners themselves who hire you to do maintenance on their business properties, who did not get a corresponding 30% increase that the working poor did, suddenly do not have the money to hire your company.
They themselves are struggling with the new employee payroll burden, you see?
What do you do? How do you continue to operate?

What becomes of these newly minted union employees? What becomes of this business when the economy dips a bit, further straining the owners ability to get work?

What does the business owner tell his wife, who is counting on that income to put their kids in a good college when the time comes?

[BruceHNV]

Honey, I must not have realized how offended and opressed my workers felt about all that unpaid overtime, yelling, and and refusal to pay what the competition was paying. I can't believe that I was so weak and nonpersuasive that in arbitration with the union I failed so miserably to hold the line on wages.

I guess we'll have to dissolve the corporation and start over. This time, though, I swear I'm not gonna drive the new guys into the arms of a union. I'm gonna treat 'em right.

[HuffJo]

I'm a fan of BruceHNV - not Hippie Chucker. I work for an auto dealer with 35 employees, 12 of which are in the local auto mechanics union. These 12 employees receive paid sick days, personal days and holidays, health insurance and a pension plan. The rest of us do not. The company owner is a cantankerous old Republican (circa 1935) who I get along with well enough and enjoy sparring with politically. As I was leaving work after one of our little pre-election debates he exclaimed to the other office girls: "And THAT is why women should not be allowed to vote...or drive!". The other day he said,"Jo, do you know the difference between you and I? When you leave here today you will have profitted." Does that mean he sees no value in what I do for him and I am just skimming his profits?? I am there at work every day (Christmas and New Years Eve included) keeping his books. billing his customers. paying his vendors, answering his phones and assisting his customers. You would think I was sitting home on his dime watching Jerry Springer and popping out a litter of octuplets every nine months! And, honestly, if he is not clearing $500 a week he should probably close the doors.

American workers need protection. We are on a race to the bottom and the GOP is greasing the slope.

[hippie chucker]

Bruce,
You seriously would voluntarily pay your guys union scale, pay into their pensions, pay them paid vacations......to cut grass?

When your competition is not?

How could you get business? How could your selling price, which would be MUCH higher than that of your competition?

By the way, you ASSUMED this landscaping business was not paying overtime and was yelling at workers.

You just simply cannot admit that raising an entry level persons wage results in firing.

[JohnBryansFontaine]

Let LRIOnline (below) spew all the anti-Union BS they want: they're street cred is lower than the NY Post's

Instead, support the Employee Free Choice Act with an EFCA Bumper Sticker:

https://unionshop.aflcio.org/Stickers_C42.cfm

[Kassandra]

You can compare Communism and Fascism by the same rule of thumb. Socialism isn't Communism, anymore than a competent government is Fascism. Everything else is shades of gray, but the GOP Koolaid drinkers don't/won't see that their "leaders" have hoodwinked them against their own best interests.

A middle class doesn't just happen, it has to be CREATED and it is created by good wages and fair working conditions. I seriously doubt many here would like to return to the America of the turn of 19th century sweatshops. but that's what the GOP wants you to do; become serfs;slave labor; the labor that built this country. Want that again? I don't and the last election showed most Americans don't want to be slaves either.

The two; Communism and Fascism are very similar in that both are authoritar­ian/totali­tarian. And that's where the current GOP ideology want US to go. Need I say more?

..........­..........­..........

[hippie chucker]

Kassandra.
A middle class is created by the natural forces of free markets and capitalism. It is certainly not created by unions.

Ask yourself-how is it that millions in China and India are now able to afford cars? Is it because of benign Democrat/Union rule in China and India? Or is it the fact that market forces are at work, continually driving the cost of goods down so that more and more can afford, well, more and more?

To suggest the GOP wants us to return to sweatshops is utterly ridiculous. We can both be as partisan as we want to, but to say that and believe it is to deny the essential good in other people....

[onlinesavant]

So you're saying we in this country operate in "free" market? If that is the case, how is there a government created, publicly endorsed denomination that is the de-facto currency for the determination of value for goods and services? How is it that the value of goods and services are built on a government-backed foundation of infrastructure, education, and research? I mean you are communicating on this government created internet. To suggest that those that permeate the regressive party would'nt endorse sweatshops if given the chance is ridiculous. They were the one's who fought the formation of unions in the first place. Typically, you don't know history, so you make stuff up.

[helix711]

It seems to me that if markets are "free", then people with lots of money are able to use that power to gain even more money. It implies a natural shift where the rich only get richer, and as the old adage goes, this means the poor necessarily become more poor. The wealth gets distributed upwards. The middle class disappears.

Sometimes I feel like "free market" is just a euphemism for turning the world into a giant sweatshop.

If it is true that millions in China and India are able to afford cars (though so many more millions remain in dire poverty), maybe it is because "market forces" have outsourced a lot of American jobs that are cheaper overseas, thus the widening of the gap between rich and poor in America.

"Market forces" fail to take the long view...they don't see that workers need to be treated with respect and need to have reliable healthcare, good education, and the ability to support their families. None of that shows up on a quarterly earnings chart. It's inhumane...human tragedies become just another part of a giant monetary calculation.

[LeftRight]

That's why there's never a strong middle class when there's not a strong union, right?????

There are three ways that you can create a strong middle class. One is by removing a large percentage of the workforce, making labor scare, making it more expensive. Two is by having a HUGE influx of capital, which will result in it eventually trickling down to the workers (a generation or three later). This only works when there's ACTUALLY new capital, such as when Europe began taking everything that the Americas made, and only lasted for a generation or two. The third way is by unionization!

[BruceHNV]

"Communism" in theory and practice are very different.

"Communism" in practice is found the world over in authoritarian regimes. It's not communist. It's tyrannical.

"Theoretical" communism is more nearly practiced in the very free and idyllic Israeli Kibbutzes.

[bkca]

The public employees union here in CA has become like political royalty. Nobody ever gets fired or downsized. They have lavish pay, benefits, and pensions. Furthermore, they can retire, draw their pension, and immediately be rehired by the same office, "double-dipping". And while all of our 401Ks take a hit and we struggle, the unions could care less. The reason? Oh, they're guaranteed an 8% return annually on their pension fund. And if the fund drops due to a bad market? Guess who makes up the difference? Why, it's the taxpayers!!! All so we can have more useless workers at the DMV. So thanks for nothing, Art.

[BruceHNV]

Any valuable tool can be abused. Gun nuts know this.

Because a hammer has been used to hit someone over the head, hammers should be banned.

[hippie chucker]

Well, when hammers get together, and elect hammer shills into congress that help other hammers join the club, and further extort money from the US Treasury, yeah, its a problem.

Bruce, its not 1923.

If you work hard, you could actually do ok in our society.

My family was on food stamps growing up. I left high school in the tenth grade to go to work. I worked hard and own several properties and a business. All without union membership, which I refused as a lad in my 20's.

Even during the Depression, 75% of people still held their jobs, or a job, without union monopolies..

[Kassandra]

Very few people care about what happens to anyone but themselves, unless they are evolved human beings. Your point?

[sonoffestus]

You're right, unfortunately there are so many "knuckle draggers" residing in the States.

[lj9283]

Here in Florida public employees (non union), can get a payout for early retirement (some over 250,000), collect a monthly pension from the state, and return to their same job 30 days after they "retire".

[LeftRight]

Which rightwingnutjob site did you read that one on?? Cause I GUARANTEE that's not true!

[lj9283]

According to an Associated Press survey of 386 US Based Fortune 500 companies, the average salary of the CEO was the equivalent of over 364 times the pay of an average American worker.

For other countries around the world the average salaryof the CEO as it relates to an average worker in that country was:
Japan 11x
GreatBritian 24x
Canada 20x
Australia 22x
France 15x
Germany 13x

In the decade that ended in 2006, CEO pay rose roughly 45 percent, adjusted for inflation.
In that same decade the pay of the average worker was up 7 percent from 1996.

From Since 2001 - 2008, as worker productivity went up, 96% of the income growth in this country went to the wealthiest 10% of society.

It seems that “rugged individualism” doesn’t hold a lot of rewards for the average American worker.

[marsglow]

The GOP hates unions because they interfere with the ability of the owners to screw everyone. That's it, short and simple.

[hippie chucker]

So if you saved some money, and risked everything to start a small business...you would welcome with open arms a large increase in the money you paid your employees, that you could be using to put your kids in a better school, or pay for their college, or buy a bigger house so you can have your mother live with you?

Really, you would rather give the money away, that you've risked everything for? When your're already paying what other companies around you pay for the same work?

[lj9283]

How much in sales does this "small business" do per year?

[BruceHNV]

You're making things up. Wage increases do not appear out of the blue with no control of the employer.

[kissy kai]

I agree, people if these corporations and companies keep taking there business over seas., dont even think about sending your products back to the USA. because no one will have money to by these products, BUY AMERICAN AND SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL UNIONS, WE NEED MORE UNIONS NOT LESS.

[historymatters]

Lots of good facts and data in this post. Nicely done!

[LarksTongue]

I'm just back from the trenches of craigs list politics usa. The anti worker rhetoric is heavy there, in case anyone is interested in pushing back.

[hippie chucker]

Yeah, craigslist is just chock full of Rovian capitalist pigs, who get paid to advance the military industrial complex's agenda from a secret underground bunker in one of the CIA's rendition prisons.

[Aloisius]

Unions are like companies - they have to be regulated if they get too big. I think many people fear something like the union strikes in France where unions have essentially a monopoly on workers. Monopolies are always anti-competitive and generally bad for the economy and should be broken up for heavily regulated.

For many types of unskilled labor, I think unions make perfect sense. After all, the average employee working on an assembly line can't really differentiate themselves from others in any significant way and because you're so expendable, it is hard to negotiate increases in salary.

Now, unions for skilled labor make absolutely no sense. A perfect example of this is the teachers' union. Teachers often require a bachelors degree in the area they are teaching and also have to be effective at their job. There are many ways to differentiate yourself as the difference in performance between a good and bad teacher is significant. Plus, good experienced teachers are hard to replace, so dismissing a teacher because they asked for a raise is much more difficult. The idea that a teacher can't benefit from being significantly better at their job than their colleagues is ridiculous.

But then I work in the tech industry where the idea of life-long jobs, pensions and 40 hour work weeks went the way of the dinosaur long ago.

[lj9283]

So no protection against H1 Visa body shops low balling your job to you employer is a good thing?
Wouldn't it be a good thing if your 401k started day 1 of every job your worked?
Wouldn't it be good if group health care insurance alternatives were available outside the job when you got laid off or worked as a contractor (so you could stay within 30 day windows and not have to worry about pre-exisitng conditions)?
Wouldn't it be nice if there was some type of worker "payout" required if your employer decides to ship your job to India, so that he has to consider that "payout" into his "operational savings"?

So many people have such a closed mind as to the possibilities of what "Organized Labor" could be in the 21st Century.

[Aloisius]

Well considering the truly staggering gap between good and bad tech workers, any kind of collective bargaining on salaries is frankly, stupid. Plus, most all of us have health insurance, are treated well, work in good conditions and are paid well above the national average.

If you work harder or better than your colleagues, you deserve more money. If you come up with some brilliant way to save the company millions, you deserve more money. The technology industry is a rewards-based environment where mediocrity is punished.

And since COBRA was enacted in 1986 in the US, the health insurance thing is taken care of. If I get laid off, I can roll my health insurance over and pay for it myself.

if my job gets shipped off to India, I will get another job. There is little job security in this industry. You have to keep on your toes, be up to date and always have a marketable skills. Since there is little expectation of job security, the "omg I could lose my job at any time" boogieman pulled out by organized labor advocates carries little weight. I change jobs on average once every 3.5 years. It isn't that scary.