Posted on 04/26/2017 5:52:38 AM PDT by C19fan
Eddie Ybarra and Francisco Martinez, both in their 40s, work side by side building the walls of two of the newest condo buildings in downtown Los Angeles. They drive pickup trucks to work, park in adjacent lots and both take their lunch break around 10 a.m. That’s about all they share.
Ybarra, born in Los Angeles, has built a solidly middle-class lifestyle on more than two decades in the carpenters’ union, earning $40 an hour on top of a pension, healthcare and unlimited vacation days.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
No, this is propping up unions.
Ping
Union promotion editorial. Blames union busting not immigration.
It’s a pro union propaganda piece. They’re claiming that not being able to join a union drove wages down.
Ruth Milkman, a sociologist who has studied the history of construction in Southern California.
Any bets a background check on this so-called sociologist will sho her to be nothing but a Leftist paid hack.
Every sociologist I’ve ever met is a left wing hack. I’ll take that bet and raise you.
Unions only work when the unions are allowed to use Mafia enforcement tactics to intimidate employers and nonunion workers. Unions are the opposite of a free market.
If you want immigrants and their low wages out of the equation step up enforcement against employers who fail to verify citizenship and don’t pay the required taxes on their employees. Unemployment insurance and the like are all taxes on hiring people. Hiring illegals is about more than wages as they are often paid the same. The driving functions are taxes and labor regulation. I was having a drink with the owner of a company when he got a call from one of the labor regulation offices. He rolled his eyes in disgust saying, “I hired an accountant and a firm to do payroll to try and cut down on the fines and even with a full time staff doing a great job they still find ways to ding me.” (Some Florida offices are “self funded” meaning they only make their payroll when they fine somebody. In order to do that they generate mountains of regulations, some of which are “criminal” and the violation of them require a prison sentence. Unless, you pay the fines. The government has become the Mafia but with major medical and dental plans.)
Because they work for cash under the table
This article’s logical conclusion is that immigrants should have unions and make union pay. Unions are also the logical outcome of immigrant labor and trade restrictions. Unions thrive at any grovernment created point of scarcity. Ports, public schools, public constructions, arenas, and any industry that is government protected. The whole idea of restrictions in trade and immigrant labor restrictions is to create higher prices.
It’s a paradox MAGA may result in resurgent uionionism which will then lead to a Dim/Socialist comeback. But this time we will go full Venezuela.
What is most interesting is that the Mexicans don’t want to join the unions and get high wages. They want to start their own small business construction companies instead - they are entrepreneurs and capitalists!
Meanwhile, when the unions try to recruit apprentices in US high schools, they get few takers - the kids all want to go to college, and look with scorn at manual trades.
I don’t think so. Even though they may be trying to prop up the unions, if you think about it, it shows how unions priced themselves out of the market.
They did not make the point you said they did. They did not blame immigration for the lower wages. Their story was the construction industry LED an advance into non-union lower wage workers, FIRST. The immigrants followed as the lower-wage non-union jobs were not picked up sufficiently by locals, who mostly thought the wage to low for them for the work - even though the supply of other jobs was also decreasing. It then became a cycle, of more contractors succeeding without the union workers, and their higher wages, and more locals still not attracted to a situation where the wages had declined. Thus, more immigrants gravitated to the jobs, because they were a job, and even though the wages were below what locals wanted.
THAT was the LA times line/story.
I think it is neither totally right, or totally wrong. With family in Southern California, I have some folks I know who’d say the LA article was mostly right. They got out of high school with no college prospects. Went into construction but the union jobs diminished. Then got consistent work, leaving the union and hiring on as a subcontractor, not an “employee” himself. At first it was O.K. but then the pay was getting less and the competition willing to work for less was growing, and taking work form him. He left construction.
I disagree to a point. If workers cannot band together to protect themselves then capitalism descends into a Dickensian nightmare. The best situation is when unions have enough power to promote safe working conditions and fair compensation but not enough power to command the business. Private sector unions have a place while government worker unions should be outlawed.
The truth is Unions don’t give a crap where their members come from, legal or illegal, just so long as they can suck in the dues to pay the vultures at the top and have money to support democrats.
This would be true if labor unions were against illegal immigration (which they once were). Logically, if labor unions wanted to protect union wages, they would oppose competition from illegal immigrant labor.
Today's labor union leaders are more interested in towing the Democratic party line than representing their own constituents, so they're now in favor of amnesty for illegals and liberal immigration laws.
duh.
Go to BLS. Not many construction workers are in a union. Heck only 10% of the non - government workforce is in a union.
“The best situation is when unions have enough power to promote safe working conditions and fair compensation but not enough power to command the business.”
All the things that were huge abuses of the Capitalist system in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the working class have been remedied by Federal and State agencies and labor legislations. For example, the state of Florida dictated the only way to fire people and not get sued. Council, write up an improvement plan, council and state differences between performance and plan and then on the third occurrence or the agreed date the employee can be fired. Lots of paper required. Now, not every grievance gets addressed and not every grievance results in a lawsuit. However, not all grievances are real.
Interestingly enough, most of the people I fired seemed relieved. One even shook my hand and said thanks. So, not all the idiocy in a labor relationship is due to the employer. Employers now need protection against government funded racial suits, bogus injury suits and a host of anti-employer legislation. Is it any wonder employers take their operation outside the reach of these regulations?
But with OSHA and a plethora of agencies arguing on behalf of the employed, there is zero need for a union. Unions are, by their nature, adversarial and in my opinion totally change the employer’s social and political dynamic toward the negative.
Hate to rain on this parade but Unions brought this on them selves with the constant strikes and pay increases that priced them out of the market!!!
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