There are a LOT of "poor" people out there who work far harder than you could ever imagine. I suspect that the VAST majority of those you deride as "poor people" work harder than you have in your entire life.
Obviously this is true of many, though Jorge is still hung up on his privileged upbringing and SAT score. His development was sadly stunted by being sent to a private college which futher reinforced his eltiism.
Exactly, what does this have to do with taxes? Secondly, the airline industry is basically set up for failure, they have fixed costs they can never reduce in good times or bad that have nothing to do with unions. when planes are only half full they lose money, when they are full, they make money. but the same crew, the same number of flights, the same oprations are always the same. the auto industry is hurting because they've never adjust to competition from overseas, they had the us market to themselves for 40 to 50 years and in the seventies it all changed. also, the US consumer is fickle, GM and Ford bet long on big gas guzzlers, the increase in gasoline costs has hurt them. but yet in other threads you are pretty damn happy with your high gas prices. Long Story short, this is another scapegoat for you hanging on to your dinasour industries. there is a way for american companies to keep up, and it doesn't involve hanging on to the past as you want. it has to do with innovation. we are actually still pretty damn good at and you need to stop crying chicken little about obama, unions, cap and trades, so forth and so on.
OP's quesion has noting to do with your tax dollars or ecocomy, TJ. Thanks for highhacking the thread.
Do we know the details of the proposed Acts? It is supposed to be protecting and remedying for unionized activities.
Thanks, glynch, for the insight on the unionization side. I don't doubt there's some dirty tricks in fighting unionization. But, I don't think this would be the right solution. I think more directly addressing tactics for stalling and intimidation would be better. This bill seems like a recipe for ratcheting up the tension in a shop considering unionization. Workers will have employers and union organizers leaning on them.
The EFCA is about a lot more than card check. As glynch said, companies are easily able to illegally bust unions and union organizing efforts because the pentaly for doing so is miniscule (back pay minus whatever the fired worker earned since). EFCA beefs up the penalties for union-busting. To understand why card check is important, you have to realize that many companies have a history of preventing unionization by illegally delaying union votes or by bargaining in bad faith. Any punishment they receive for their activities can be written off as a cost of doing business. The ideal of a secret ballot ignores the reality of the massive power disparity between labor and management.
Employers can lean on workers by firing them, i.e. by undercutting their way of life. Union organizers don't have anything close to that power.
When the NWA mechanics were on strike the union leaders were turning down offers from NWA management without consulting the union members or allowing them to vote on the proposals.
What I say is true, unless a couple of the mechanics I personally know lied. I was responding to your comment in general. Union organizers/leadership do have power. Granted that prior to a union being formed, they don't wield near the power that management does, but afterwards, they can be quite powerful.
How was your post in any way responsive/relevant to mine? What does the power of an already-formed union have to do with the power of a pre-unionized workforce within the context of this thread? Well, duh... that's the point of a union.
Good point. You do need a smiley. Hard to blame the unions in those notoriously unionized investment and banking firms.
Possibly true. Union leaders are not saints. Industrial democracy on the whole tends to be more equitable and much more democratic than rule by CEO's.
I don't know if I'm convinced of that. A lot of peer pressure could be brought to bear on a worker from pro-union friends or even from a simple with-us-or-against-us class mentality. Being ostracized by your peers can be more or less powerful than a firing, depending on your circumstances and temperment. I won't mention violence, which I hope is a thing of the past, and that is available to unions and management. But, that's all beside the point anyway. That's like saying Pakistan should have nukes becaue India has nukes. Sure, it'd equalize things, but it'd probably be better for everyone if neither of them had nukes. So, why not come up with some legislation that de-escalates the situation instead of throwing more weapons into the ring?
Interesting analogy, and the EFCA does a little of both (pump up union organizers' power while making some of managements' illegal tactics less effective). I'd love to see a solution that preserves the secret ballot, but past experience shows that such solutions are easily circumvented by companies willing to take on penalties for illegal activity as a cost of doing business.
