Michigan pushes right-to-work measure(24th state in the nation to adopt R-T-W)

[twoguns?]

I'm through with this thread, I'm not "crying" anymore, you all can have your union bashing party without me from now on.

Discliamer: You all pertains to the unions bashers, so if that's not you disregard.

Yea its best to just say your peace and let it go, thereuntofore....No Butthurt!
Their minds are made up or they just had bad experiences with Unions.
EZBake, I believe has the right answer.
(there are some in here that will bait you ,Just, to see if youll bite)
Now git back to werk the rest of youse!
Breaks OVER

 

[dru]

They took ur jerbs!

 

[RugersGR8]

Union thugs and goons doing what they do best---tearing up Clint Traver's hot dog stand. The goons tore up the hot dog stand of the Black Hot Dog vendor(called "The Hot Dog Guy"---63yrs old and who has been in business since 1996) calling him "Uncle Tom", calling him the "N" word, etc. These actions just go to show union thugs/goons doing what comes natural and what they will resort to when they feel their agenda(s) are threatened.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/mi-union-destroys-hot-dog-cart-calls-owner-an-uncle-tom-over-right-to-work/article/2515746
MI Union destroys hot dog cart, calls owner an ‘Uncle Tom’ over right-to-work
December 12, 2012 | 12:49 pm

.."Clint Tarver’s hot dog cart, which he has operated since 1996, is another casualty of the union protest against the right-to-work law. Union members destroyed the cart and called Tarver an “Uncle Tom,”(the "N" word) among other racist epithets, for serving right-to-work proponents."..

 

[Hobbes]

Yea its best to just say your peace and let it go, thereuntofore....No Butthurt!
Their minds are made up or they just had bad experiences with Unions.
EZBake, I believe has the right answer.
(there are some in here that will bait you ,Just, to see if youll bite)
Now git back to werk the rest of youse!
Breaks OVER

They're good at it too, what with all their experience and all.
I'd go so far as to say that some of them are master baiters.

 

[RugersGR8]

http://www.mlive.com/lansing-news/index.ssf/2012/12/lansing_business_owner_alleges.html
Lansing business owner alleges racial abuse, loses equipment in Right to Work protests at state Capitol
By Angela Wittrock
December 12, 2012 at 1:34 PM, updated December

 

[TedKennedy]

Here's an interesting article by Pat Buchanan. One of the last true conservatives, IMO.
http://buchanan.org/blog/the-fall-of-the-house-of-labor-5424

Kind of illustrates my point. Unions aren't all good, but RTW champions are not necessarily the American Patriots some wish they were.

 

[Werewolf]

Here's an interesting article by Pat Buchanan. One of the last true conservatives, IMO.
http://buchanan.org/blog/the-fall-of-the-house-of-labor-5424

Kind of illustrates my point. Unions aren't all good, but RTW champions are not necessarily the American Patriots some wish they were.

Unions are dying because, in America, economic patriotism is dead.

Soooo...

Walmart is killing the unions then. I may have to shop there more often.

Economic patriotism? Puhleeeez! When it comes to making economic decisions people are fairly rational at the micro level. They fill their shopping baskets with goods that provide the most value for the least cost. That's just the way it is whether you're a chinaman or a 'mercan.

Making buying decisions based on where something is made isn't rational. One maximizes value to cost. Basic economics. It's that simple.

Unions created the situation that priced US manufactured goods right out of the market by demanding wages and benefits that exceeded the equilibrium cost of labor based on the supply and demand for it. Unions could get away with that when the cost of going off shore for manufacturers exceeded the benefit. When it no longer did (globalization if you will) it was, "hasta la vista, baby, we (manufacturers) are outta here".

Why?

...because businesses make rational economic decisions too.

The unions made their beds. Now they can lie in them.

Aside: One wonders how many of the rabidly pro-union members here are also regular patrons of Walmart? Do y'all make sure every purchase is a product made in America?

Just askin'....

 

[SMS]

Soooo...

Walmart is killing the unions then. I may have to shop there more often.

Economic patriotism? Puhleeeez! When it comes to making economic decisions people are fairly rational at the micro level. They fill their shopping baskets with goods that provide the most value for the least cost. That's just the way it is whether you're a chinaman or a 'mercan.

Making buying decisions based on where something is made isn't rational. One maximizes value to cost. Basic economics. It's that simple.

Unions created the situation that priced US manufactured goods right out of the market by demanding wages and benefits that exceeded the equilibrium cost of labor based on the supply and demand for it. Unions could get away with that when the cost of going off shore for manufacturers exceeded the benefit. When it no longer did (globalization if you will) it was, "hasta la vista, baby, we (manufacturers) are outta here".

Why?

...because businesses make rational economic decisions too.

The unions made their beds. Now they can lie in them.

Aside: One wonders how many of the rabidly pro-union members here are also regular patrons of Walmart? Do y'all make sure every purchase is a product made in America?

Just askin'....

There it is. And forcing folks to join the union won't fix it....

 

[TedKennedy]

Y'all crack me up. Rabidly pro-union?
Acknowledging that unions have povided needed change in the past, and do have some redeeming values, is hardly "rabidly pro-union".

Looking at our economic situation objectively, there's plenty of blame to spread around, on all three sides.

We are, I believe, on the eve of a financial crisis. The unions didn't create that, businesses didn't create that. Government policies have shaped our economy, and business has taken advantage of laws that allow them to get cheap labor. Unions have tried to hold on to a higher wage, a holdover from the days when America was THE economic giant. Ain't gonna happen.

 

[stick4]

The right-to-work dilemma

By Charles Krauthammer, Published: December 13

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...e2ce2c-4567-11e2-8061-253bccfc7532_story.html

For all the fury and fistfights outside the Lansing Capitol, what happened in Michigan this week was a simple accommodation to reality. The most famously unionized state, birthplace of the United Auto Workers, royalty of the American working class, became right-to-work.

It’s shocking, except that it was inevitable. Indiana went that way earlier this year. The entire Rust Belt will eventually follow because the heyday of the sovereign private-sector union is gone. Globalization has made splendid isolation impossible.

The nostalgics look back to the immediate postwar years when the UAW was all-powerful, the auto companies were highly profitable and the world was flooded with American cars. In that Golden Age, the UAW won wages, benefits and protections that were the envy of the world.

Today’s angry protesters demand a return to that norm. Except that it was not a norm but a historical anomaly. America, alone among the great industrial powers, emerged unscathed from World War II. Japan was a cinder, Germany rubble and the allies - beginning with Britain and France - an exhausted shell of their former imperial selves.

For a generation, America had the run of the world. Then the others recovered. Soon global competition - from Volkswagen to Samsung - began to overtake American industry that was saddled with protected, inflated, relatively uncompetitive wages, benefits and work rules.

There’s a reason Detroit went bankrupt while the southern auto transplants did not. This is not to exonerate incompetent overpaid management that contributed to the fall. But clearly the wage, benefit and work-rule gap between the unionized North and the right-to-work South was a major factor.

President Obama railed against the Michigan legislation, calling right-to-work “giving you the right to work for less money.” Well, there is a principle at stake here: A free country should allow its workers to choose whether to join a union. Moreover, it is more than slightly ironic that Democrats, the fiercely pro-choice party, reserve free choice for aborting a fetus while denying it for such matters as choosing your child’s school or joining a union.

Principle and hypocrisy aside, however, the president’s statement has some validity. Let’s be honest: Right-to-work laws do weaken unions. And de-unionization can lead to lower wages.

But there is another factor at play: having a job in the first place. In right-to-work states, the average wage is about 10 percent lower. But in right-to-work states, unemployment also is about 10 percent lower.

Higher wages or lower unemployment? It is a wrenching choice. Although, you would think that liberals would be more inclined to spread the wealth - i.e., the jobs - around, preferring somewhat lower pay in order to leave fewer fellow workers mired in unemployment.

Think of the moral calculus. Lower wages cause an incremental decline in one’s well-being. No doubt. But for the unemployed, the decline is categorical, sometimes catastrophic - a loss not just of income but of independence and dignity.

Nor does protectionism offer escape from this dilemma. Shutting out China and the others deprives less well-off Americans of access to the kinds of goods once reserved for the upper classes: quality clothing, furnishings, electronics, durable goods - from the Taiwanese-manufactured smartphone to the affordable, highly functional Kia.

Globalization taketh away. But it giveth more. The net benefit of free trade has been known since, oh, 1817. (See David Ricardo and the Law of Comparative Advantage.) There is no easy parachute from reality.

Obama calls this a race to the bottom. No, it’s a race to a new equilibrium that tries to maintain employment levels, albeit at the price of some modest wage decline. It is a choice not to be despised.

I have great admiration for the dignity and protections trade unionism has brought to American workers. I have no great desire to see the private-sector unions defenestrated. (Like FDR, Fiorello La Guardia and George Meany, however, I don’t extend that sympathy to public-sector unions.)

But rigidity and nostalgia have a price. The industrial Midwest is littered with the resulting wreckage. Michigan most notably, where its formerly great metropolis of Detroit is reduced to boarded-up bankruptcy by its inability and unwillingness to adapt to global change.

It’s easy to understand why a state such as Michigan would seek to recover its competitiveness by emulating the success of Indiana. One can sympathize with those who pine for the union glory days, while at the same time welcoming the new realism that promises not an impossible restoration but desperately needed - and doable - recalibration and recovery.