Yes, exactly union membership is about choice.

Similar to the choice of millions of dissidents to stay in Stalin's USSR and actually "choose" to move to the gulags, or the jews' "choice" to remain in Nazi Germany.

Another great choice situation in the world we live in is parents' ability to choose to send their children to subpar schools staffed by UNION teachers, who churn out woefully underprepared oversexed, immorally infused children. All at taxpayer expense.

What a wonderful world.

2 (what's happening to me! - agreeing w/PBPenske??).

At least in Chicago, there is no choice. Bring in non-union labor to a union job and see how fast the electricity "accidentally" gets turned off.

Self-defence. Much like Decker, I would rather be a killer than a victim.

I have seen it happen in DC too, although when you say "electricity "accidentally" gets turned off" I am assuming you mean that some of the non-union labor and maybe someone from the GC (eg: project manager) get beaten to bloody pulps and put in the hospital, right?

What is the problem?
 

Why is it people dislike unions so much on this board? Looked at from 10,000 feet, unions only exist in places where a majority of the employees vote them in. The laws protecting unions are the result of decades of compromise, which settled on a majority rule system in the workplace. A majority can vote the union in, a majority can vote the union out.

I have been a member of a couple of unions, one of which was one of the apparently particularly hated unions of teachers (University faculty and staff in this case). Yes, the union provided protection to teachers, some of whom were capable and some of whom were not. But it was more the civil service laws, the seniority system, and the tenure system that raised the problems with protecting less qualified or capable teachers in that particular case than the union itself; indeed, since that was a relatively young union, it would have been happy to cut back on seniority since the younger members were more activist.

But the union also provided very significant protection, and helped significantly improve the system by increasing pay enough so we could attract some real stars. In the absence of the union, I think the legislature would have been content with a University filled with mediocre products of its own system being paid the least possible.

And, at the end of the day, democracy rules. Just as a majority can decide to fund or not fund schools in the broader political system, a majority can decide to form or to dissolve a union. Yes, there may be rules along the edges that favor the incumbents, but I would no more view that as a reason to get rid of the system for unions than I would for our broader political system.

So, there was good and bad, but most of the sins laid at the union's doorstep were much more products of civil service.

What is the problem?
 

They inefficiently add costs and distort markets. Let the free market for labour decide. People can share info and join together as they choose but employers are free to ignore those "unions".

DEmocracry?!?! In a democratic referundum in America, unions would go the way of the dinosaurs faster than Clinton's pant's dropping at a Sorority party.

What is the problem?
 

I think that every person who spouts off on the "free market" as the be-all and end-all should try to live as a worker in such a "free market" system.

I'm sure that you will have a new appreciation for the worker's freedom of job choice after a period of time making Nike sneakers for $2 a day in Indonesia.

okay- time to vote
 

Ohhhhh, Hank. Between this and LGF, you're simply overdosing on this shit. Keep it up, and It'll clog your arteries and you'll be dead in 5 years.

Here. Take one of these:

http://www.pharmatia.net/@_images/lipitor.jpg

And then read some more interesting perspectives on it all. From the London Telegraph comes the following op-ed piece:

• Riots in France could spread through Europe
  (Filed: 08/11/2005)
  
  The French have long held up their integrationist approach to immigration as a model. Countries with different policies can be forgiven, therefore, for Schadenfreude at the powerlessness of that model to contain rioting over the past 12 days. Yet the rapid spread of the disturbances from the Parisian suburbs to cities such as Toulouse and Strasbourg offers little ground for complacency to neighbours with large immigrant populations, rigid labour laws, self-serving political elites and sluggish economic growth. The torching of cars in Berlin and Brussels over the weekend is a warning that the violence could become more generalised.
  
  ***
  
  France is marked by fin de régime rivalry between Mr Sarkozy and Dominique de Villepin, the prime minister. Germany faces the sclerosis of a grand coalition. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi is more discredited than ever. In Britain, while Tony Blair defiantly bangs the security drum, the electorate waits for him to step down. And all this is taking place against a chronic inability to boost sluggish growth. 1968 or 1848 it may not be, but there is in western Europe a general feeling of malaise, of disillusionment with politicians, expressed by low voting figures. On this, the riots rocking France could feed.

So what this REALLY means is the end of Old Europe. Bonus!

Gattigap

What is the problem?
 

Perhaps, all the mean cost of a single family house in Indonesia is probably not $500K, so there is some relativity that mitigates the paucity of those wages.

Also, you are making an apples and oranges argument. If I lived in Indonesia I don't know that I would be making sneakers on an assembly line in the same way that I don't I engage in hamburger flipping for $7/hour at my current job. What are lawyers or similar professionals in Indonesia paid?

What is the problem?
 

there's no question that unions allowed the middle class to be created here. without the labor movement most of us would not be college educated, and it is likely there would be much less legal work since most people would be too poor to buy anything. That said, unions have become too focused on helping the unions move forward at all cost rather than considering market realities.

Example: the UAW defending people's right to fuck off all day at $30/hour. This hamstrings the big 3 into being non-competitive and they really have no way out. Delphi (formally GM's parts division) just went bankrupt. a main reason is unskilled workers were being paid $28/hour from old GM contracts. Meanwhile Delphi is competing against companies making parts in Mexico at next to nothing per hour. the unions wouldn't get real and help Delphi deal with this so it goes into bankruptcy to get out of its contracts. I like the American worker making money, but there are real world realities.

Vote no on Proposition 73
 

And the ability to countermand the tyranny of the majority was the precise reason our Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution in order to ensure an independent judiciary and a Bill of Rights that would be interpreted to preserve the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all, even those who don't share the same opinion.

What is the problem?
 

The unions inefficiently add costs and distort markets? That may be true to some measure. However, historically, the unions gained their greatest strength in those industries where the employers distorted markets by colluding to deny benefits to workers and artificially maintain wages at a below-market rate.

I know, you're going to ask how a wage can be below-market if someone is willing to take a job at the given wage. But efficient markets are based upon the base premise that information and bargaining power are equal. Where workers were faced with the Hobson's choice of working for a subsistence wage or not working at all, then there was no real market in the classical sense.

Industry is paying the price for its past sins when it confronts powerful unions with bargaining power that exceeds that of the employer. Over a long wave cycle, however, the curve should eventually smooth itself out without government intervention.

And after all, a good conservative is never in favor of distorting governmental intervention, correct?

What is the problem?
 

Fair enough. In defense of the UAW, there have been numerous examples of unions agreeing to reductions in wages and benefits in hard times, only to be screwed when the times aren't hard anymore. It seems like they were wrong this time with Delphi, though.

And to those who think that workers can freely choose whether to start a union at their place of employment or not, ask one of your labor and employment colleagues what "traditional labor practice" means at your firm.

Vote no on Proposition 73
 

Shh. If you explain to Penske that the Constitution was drafted to protect the rights of the minorities he's going to start spouting about how he's a poor downtrodden white conservative in Seattle. And then he'll start with a whole new crop of Photoshops and who knows where that will lead (more importantly, where it would end).

What is the problem?
 

I'd be interested in this. I thought union elections could be prompted by a group of employees, though they'd be fought by the employers through an established process. But I won't claim to know anything really about contemporary labor laws.