toldailytopic: The Wisconsin state government standoff: who's side are you on and why

[Frank Ernest]

Guess you need to take graph reading 101. It seems PL was right about your education level. The scales aren't the same. One starts at 1959, the second starts in the 1900s, so you need to ignore the front half of the second graph with respect to the other. Right around the 1980s in both graphs, productivity goes up (without a corresponding increase in compensation) and union membership starts to really plunge.

Are you sure you wanted to point that out?

 

[Alate_One]

Are you sure you wanted to point that out?

You're missing the point. Productivity was going up steadily and so were wages until union membership started to drop . . . Then wages stopped increasing with productivity. Instead of going up, wages for workers have stayed flat.

And where did the money go? To the executives.

 

[chrysostom]

You're missing the point. Productivity was going up steadily and so were wages until union membership started to drop . . . Then wages stopped increasing with productivity. Instead of going up, wages for workers have stayed flat.

And where did the money go? To the executives.

outsourcing started in the late seventies and it was specifically designed to get around the problem of the unions

 

[Ps82]

Here are the facts:



I stand with the workers!

From what heart felt attitude does your statement come:
What's that question suppose to insinuate... that people who are not in a union don't work?

We are Americans first and union members perhaps second. We should be working together as Americans to fight a WAR on local and national debt and on the possible down fall of our nation.

The union leaders are about holding on to money and retaining power... and they instill fear in some of their members (not all I might add)... and they use intimidation of government officials to get their way.

How can they intimidate government officials?
MONEY ... up coming elections ... extortion.
In my opinion - something that has a good intention up front turns in to only being a baby step above mafia - when they gain too much money and power.

It is my opinion that teachers, government workers ... and everyone in this country need to stand up and be Americans FIRST. See the need... do the right thing.

This debacle that the unions and democrats have caused embarrasses me as an American. I somehow, had thought that Americans had more common sense than some European and other foreign countries ... but once again I've lost another bit of confidence in them/us!

Regarding the banks ... well the liberal within our government have been partners with the banks for years now ... and we see where that has gotten us.

Each encouraging each other to be more more greedy. Thank a few of our liberal legislators for Fanni Mae and Fredi Mac (sp? - you know who and what I mean)

I think Walkers reasoning means that he is tired of all this sort of corruption.

 

[Aimiel]

You honestly think UNIONS are why US education is in the toilet?

No, but I think that it's the biggest sole contributor to there being such a deficit in the abilities of the teachers now in place. Second would be the lack of proper discipline at home, but schools should even be able to overcome this, better than they have but have had their hands tied when corporal punishment was discarded. I remember being spanked in grade school and know I wouldn't have taken teachers seriously had that never happened. I was bigger than most of my teachers ever since about the sixth grade. The school system more than made up for my parents' shortcomings, thank God.

I see the products of the schools and I see students that feel entitled to good grades and easy tests.

Again, I see this as a product of our schools, not the students. They're doing what comes naturally, which should have already been drummed out of them by proper education.

There is no responsibility placed on the students or the parents. Talk about passing the buck . . .

The students take no responsibility because none is expected by the schools. They expect their students to be lazy. It's a natural product of the politically correct nonsense we've been spoon-fed by the media. Proper parenting has to make up the difference, and does, thank God.

 

[Alate_One]

outsourcing started in the late seventies and it was specifically designed to get around the problem of the unions

No, it was designed to get around the costs of labor in general, unions or no. In other parts of the world labor can be paid at a MUCH lower rate than anyone would consider working for in the U.S. Outsourcing became more viable because of better communication technologies as well as cheap oil that allowed goods to be shipped almost as cheaply across oceans, as across the country.

Until the labor markets of the world are equal in their safety, health and standard of living, or people refuse to buy products produced in other countries, outsourcing *will* happen, unions or no. Outsourcing happens because corporations are set up to make the most money possible, that is their purpose. Companies WILL do everything as cheaply as possible, given the opportunity, that is why regulation and collective bargaining are necessary. Blaming outsourcing on unions is moronic, especially when unions made up less than 30% of the workforce even at their height.

 

[Pragmatic_Liberal]

You seem to have overlooked that the current unions are corporations that are just as evil, if not more so, than the ones you are villifying. I want both abolished.

No, I haven't overlooked that. The notions that unions are corporations or that either are 'evil' are fundamentally incorrect and absurdly naive. Abolishing either is inconsistent with market economics, which assumes rational self-interest - part of which is organizing to pursue that interest more efficiently.

I am also not villifying corporations, or saying that they are evil. They aren't. What they ARE, however, is completely amoral (NOT immoral, mind you). That isn't just opinion, is is law. Public corporations are required by law to maximize profit - failure to do so is 'waste', and is a basis for shareholder lawsuit. Unfortunately, corporations tend to pursue only those policies that maximize short-term, rather than mid- or long-term profits, in an effort to boost share prices. This dictates, for example, that oil companies blow millions lobbying Congress to prevent enactment of much need carbon-emissions regulations, and that the health-care industry rabidly oppose trust-busting efforts, no matter how market-breaking their trusts are, or how bad they are for the country's economy as a whole. Some companies do not adopt this foolishly short-sighted quarterly vision of maximizing profit, but they are not all that common - in part because they are targetable for hostile takeover by companies that do, with promises of hefty dividends to shareholders (one likely reason that mergers almost always offer too much for purchased companies, a disputed phenomenon in corporate law circles).

Unions, by contrast, are simply not corporations (again, this is legal fact, not opinion), and are thus subject to no such profit-maximizing regime, though they are certainly subject to good old fashion corruption, as is any human agency (I'm looking at you, Catholic Church). If anything, to cache it in your terms, unions are far less 'evil' than corporations, because they aren't subject to the law of waste. All of that misses the point, though - I'm simply correcting your factual errors.

What is the point then? Markets RELY on this profit seeking behavior to promote efficiency, and organizing increases efficiency tremendously - google 'economies of scale' if you're unsure what I'm talking about here. The notion that we should abolish such organizations (not that we could, as Smith notes in the above-quoted section) demonstrates a profound ignorance of market economics. The only thing that would be worse (and only worse because it might actually happen), would be to abolish only one and let the other have free reign - which is essentially what republicans have set out to do, in an effort to cut into democrats' campaign warchest. Which is in itself a fine example of the problem with short-term single-entity profit maximation, when you think about it, though that's a topic for another post.

PL

 

[nicholsmom]

Should companies be able to *buy* politicians that will give the company anything they want?

"Buy" not so much, but influence absolutely, and here's why: when companies thrive they provide not only jobs but valuable goods and services to the community. That being said, "buy" and "own" cannot happen in a society where voters are vigilant and private voting is exercised. Informed voters are the reins of politicians, and informed consumers are the reins of companies.

Should workers be "owned" by politicians? Politicians that can change benefits and pensions on a whim with no input at all from the workers?

Workers who can fire their bosses cannot be "owned" by politicians, and positions that cannot be filled by just anybody (professional occupations) are not easily turned over. Teachers are well-educated professionals and as such are perfectly capable of negotiating their own terms without a union.

There are plenty of problems. Killing unions doesn't solve them, it just creates different problems.

I only advocate killing unions for public servants who can fire their own bosses at the voting booth, and for professionals who have no need of a union since they are both well-educated and difficult to replace. Engineers and scientists don't need a union, neither do teachers.
Factory workers need unions.

 

[Alate_One]

"Buy" not so much, but influence absolutely, and here's why: when companies thrive they provide not only jobs but valuable goods and services to the community. That being said, "buy" and "own" cannot happen in a society where voters are vigilant and private voting is exercised. Informed voters are the reins of politicians, and informed consumers are the reins of companies.

I agree about informed voters and consumers. It's a pity there is so much disinformation in the media which causes voters and consumers to make choices against their own interest. Corporations have the money to *buy* politicians in a very real sense, especially with money equaling speech.

Workers who can fire their bosses cannot be "owned" by politicians, and positions that cannot be filled by just anybody (professional occupations) are not easily turned over. Teachers are well-educated professionals and as such are perfectly capable of negotiating their own terms without a union.

I don't know about that. Number one is, an individual teacher can't fire their boss. Nor could even a large number of teachers alone do that. The electorate is far more than just government workers. And the electorate at large may not always have the best interests of the worker (whatever sort) in mind.

I only advocate killing unions for public servants who can fire their own bosses at the voting booth, and for professionals who have no need of a union since they are both well-educated and difficult to replace. Engineers and scientists don't need a union, neither do teachers. Factory workers need unions.

Again, public sector workers aren't a majority of the electorate. The public is now often against teachers. School failures are the teacher's fault apparently. I also don't agree that teachers are particularly hard to replace or necessarily "highly trained". I teach quite a number of K-12 teachers at one time or another. Professors and scientists are highly trained but there are far more PhDs being produced than there are jobs for them to take. This makes the vast majority of PhDs rather desperate when it comes to employment and somewhat vulnerable to exploitation.

So you want to get a PhD in the humanities

Why is it that by and large very few factory workers have unions then?

 

[Pragmatic_Liberal]

"Buy" not so much, but influence absolutely, and here's why: when companies thrive they provide not only jobs but valuable goods and services to the community.

Of course, workers ALSO provide labor and valuable demand for goods (or cashmoney, if you prefer) when THEY thrive. The fact that one side is benefitting is NOT a reason to offer them more advantage. Even more problematic is the fact that what is in the short term profit motives of a company is often dramatically AGAINST the interests of the country as a whole, both in the short and long term. Oil is a paradigm example of this. Our dependence on it is is strategic weakness, forces us into extremely problematic foreign entanglements, and is slowly (and quickly, if you ask the gulf region) destroying the environment. Yet, despite oil companies yielding world-record (literally) profits in recent years, republicans who claim to be interested in fiscal responsibility want to larder them with massive (43 billion, if memory serves) subsidies, as if they somehow needed more incentive to produce oil. Why? Because they've been bought. They are serving the interests of ultrawealthy corporations instead of those of the public. There's a word for this system of government: oligarchy. And you, apparently, think it's A-Ok so long as companies contribute their half of the economic whole: jobs and supply of products (your words, up top). Whereas labor, who contribute labor and demand for products, deserve...whatever the companies deign to give them? Do I need to requote Adam Smith above, on the natural advantages of industry over labor?

That being said, "buy" and "own" cannot happen in a society where voters are vigilant and private voting is exercised. Informed voters are the reins of politicians, and informed consumers are the reins of companies.

If only such a society existed. You and the other 99% of conservatives who don't make multiple millions each year have been boondoggled into thinking that organized labor is a wicked conspiracy against hard-working middle class citizens, rather than a good faith opponent of organized industry, and you want to talk about 'informed' voters? Money buys opinions, and thereby votes, as has been amply demonstrated over the last three decades. Why do you think republicans were so hot to see Citizens United turn legal fiction into fact (literally, corporate personhood was a 'legal fiction' before that ruling)? And why, do you think, there has been a complete lack of outcry on the right about what is hands-down the single most activist decision in the last century of Supreme Court jurisprudence (assuming, for the sake of argument, that conservatives actually care about judicial activism).

Workers who can fire their bosses cannot be "owned" by politicians, and positions that cannot be filled by just anybody (professional occupations) are not easily turned over.

I assume that by 'workers who can fire their bosses', you mean public employees. This is a nonsequitor. The ability to vote a politician out of office does not equate to the ability to negotiate a price. Actually, that's a very command-economy (read: communist) notion. Politicians are NOT the people who should be in charge of setting prices (this is, quite literally, the definition of a command economy, and, simply put, it is far less efficient than a market pricing mechanism). The simple reason for this is that they lack the detailed expertise needed to make pricing assessments. For this, we have industry, or, in the case of the government, the bureaucracy, both of whom do have such specialized knowledge. It is with this bureaucracy, not elected officials, that price negotiations should take place with public sector unions. The ability to vote pols out of office has absolutely no bearing on such pricing decisions.

In fact, by deciding to take this task upon himself, Walker has engaged in command-side pricing. He is, quite literally, engaging in the defining characteristic of communism that brought about its downfall. Yet your 'informed' 'pro-market' electorate is, instead of vilifying him for this complete lack of regard for market mechanisms, hailing him as a hero.

In short, while it sounds cute and catchy to claim that the ability to vote politicians out of office obviates the need for collective bargaining rights, you are in actuality advocating command economy pricing by politicians, something which the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has shown to be a very poor way of doing things. I just love it when conservatives all twisted up by republican talking points accidentally advocate for communism without realizing it - pardon me while I mop up the irony.

Teachers are well-educated professionals and as such are perfectly capable of negotiating their own terms without a union.

This is actually a fantastic point, kudos. Sophistication of a party is, among other things, one of the major considerations courts look at when determining how to interpret a contract. Unfortunately, there is a LOT more to consider. As Smith points out (see my original post), even very sophisticated parties are poorly positioned both informationally and powerwise, when bargaining with industry, which has access to immense amounts of industry-specific information, and has both more staying power and more alternatives. You're absolutely correct that sophisticated parties need unions less than less sophisticated parties, but that sophistication by itself isn't nearly enough to achieve pareto-efficient bargains between industry and labor. Absent a union, even highly sophisticated jobseekers like attorneys are price-takers, rather than price-makers, though they're certainly not hurting nearly as much as the middle class (because, in large part, of their sophistication).

PL

 

[Bob Enyart]

Hello, Pan Dulche, you there? I'd like to know your thoughts here...

Hello, Pan Dulche, you there? I'd like to know your thoughts here...

“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining ... We demand this fraud be stopped.”

- Martin Luther King Jr.

PD, when the government makes an uneven playing field slanted toward organized labor, then unions become especially harmful. Let unions negotiate whatever contract they can, but no one has the right to tell my employer that he can't hire me unless I agree to join them.

 

[Pragmatic_Liberal]

PD, when the government makes an uneven playing field slanted toward organized labor, then unions become especially harmful. Let unions negotiate whatever contract they can, but no one has the right to tell my employer that he can't hire me unless I agree to join them.

Is this a mythical government you're talking about? Have you seen what effect the crackdown on unions has had on the middle class, and the upper class? Have you read my posts above, explaining the economics of unions? The notion that the playing field is tilted toward organized labor is patently absurd. Why do you think they caved to Walker's (command) pricing demands for their labor so quickly?

Granted, unions are NOT all up and no down. They cause issues with trade, because they have to compete against outsourced labor which does not have any union protections, and which often works in conditions even worse than those faced by workers in this country before the advent of unions and labor laws. That simply isn't an excuse to break the market in favor of companies, though - that's the same as asking unions to bear the entire brunt of the difference in wages. Cutting tax incentives to outsourcers would, for example, be a much more evenhanded way of handling it, forcing the company to bear some of the economic costs as well, by limiting the benefits they can extract from exploitative labor practices abroad.

PL

 

[Frank Ernest]

You're missing the point. Productivity was going up steadily and so were wages until union membership started to drop . . . Then wages stopped increasing with productivity. Instead of going up, wages for workers have stayed flat.

Um. If your theses bore weight, productivity should have flattened out immediately.

And where did the money go? To the executives.

And so none of the money went to expanding production or hiring more employees?

 

[Bob Enyart]

The notion that the playing field is tilted toward organized labor is patently absurd.

PL, wherever a union can tell my employer that he can't hire me unless I agree to join them, that is an uneven playing field. It is unjust.

-Bob Enyart

 

[some other dude]

PL, wherever a union can tell my employer that he can't hire me unless I agree to join them, that is an uneven playing field.

Is an "even" playing field desirable? Is it achievable?

It is unjust.

To whom? To you, the individual employee? To the other employees who form the union? To the employer?

 

[Krsto]

I find it ironic that I live in one of the most liberal states, Washington, here on the Left Coast, and our teachers and public employees don't have collective bargaining rights. But they do have the ability to lobby the legislature for pay raises and believe me they lobby hard as I found out when a staffer in our state legislature in Olympia. That's all they really need to be able to do. Labor unions in my not-so-humble opinion have outlived their usefullness and have become blood-sucking maggots.

 

[Bob Enyart]

Is an "even" playing field desirable? Is it achievable?

some other dude, yes, it's desirable. But you may not know a lot about me, people who think like me, or our use of terms. In economics, we prioritize truth and justice above other concerns.

A level playing field means a valid legal system with equal justice before the law.

Is justice achievable? It is achievable that some men seek a just society. Is 100% justice achievable among fallen men? No. Neither is it possible to have 100% of adults who don't kill children, but that doesn't change the goal.

To whom? To you, the individual employee? To the other employees who form the union? To the employer?

To God. And if you have a just system, before God, then it is just (i.e., in the vernacular, a level playing field) to everyone else. For example, most politicians do not act as though truth and justice flow from God, for if they did, our Congress could would realize that they could act in the best interest of China, Russia, Libya, Iran, etc. and this would end up being in the best interest of America. A talking head on Fox this week said that whatever we do in Libya, we must prioritize the best interest of the U.S. That confuses the matter.

The best interest of the policeman, is to do right; of the rapist, is to be caught; of the victim, to get justice. None of their true self-interests conflict, from God's perspective. It's just that we commonly think in very low terms, terms that inherently undermine the very concepts of equality, justice, and truth.

Do you see?

Is an "even" playing field desirable? Is it achievable?

To whom? To you, the individual employee? To the other employees who form the union? To the employer?

 

[some other dude]

A level playing field means a valid legal system with equal justice before the law.

That's an interesting definition. How does it apply to the situation of a workforce choosing to organize itself?

To God.

If I choose to form a union with my co-workers and negotiate with my employer, and one of those jointly agreed-upon terms of negotiation is that it will be a union shop, why would God see that as unjust?

 

[WizardofOz]

I find it ironic that I live in one of the most liberal states, Washington, here on the Left Coast, and our teachers and public employees don't have collective bargaining rights. But they do have the ability to lobby the legislature for pay raises and believe me they lobby hard as I found out when a staffer in our state legislature in Olympia. That's all they really need to be able to do.

:noway:
And.....they have not yet starved to death or made a mass exodus to other states that offer bargaining "rights"?

Weird :think:

 

[some other dude]

Here's the latest:

A Wisconsin judge (democrat) issued a temporary restraining order Friday blocking the state's new and contentious collective bargaining law from taking effect...

Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi issued the order, which was requested by that county's District Attorney Ismael Ozanne, a Democrat. Ozanne filed a lawsuit contending that a legislative committee that broke a stalemate that had kept the law in limbo for weeks met without the 24-hour notice required by Wisconsin's open meetings law.