Hate to hear that...NOT.
In a world where the lowest-paid supermarket workers earn a living (albeit modest) wage, the need for union membership is near nil.
I guess the current economic boom is a figment of my imagination
traditional pensions are nearly gone
Nobody's stopping workers from investing in 401(k)s and IRAs. The sooner Social Security and other funds paid for by taxpayers are gone, the better.
employer-paid health insurance is disappearing
Companies aren't supposed to be providing health insurance anyway.
the minimum wage is not a living wage
You damn skippy it ain't!
and workers have fewer options in disputes with management.
More good news.
Actually that doesn't really make me sad at all.....because those who don't vote are usually the LEAST informed....IMHO.
ping for later
Right, except to have freedom to choose whether to belong to a union. If they don't want to join, have thugs make them join. Ann probably also thinks that all the workers of Cuba love Fidel. The Israelites who waxed nostalgic for the fleshpots of Egypt were Democrats.
This agency of government ought to be abolished, I'd think. Workers should be able to join unions if they please and employers should feel free to fire them if they do, as they should. Currently they cannot fire them, at least openly. I'll be happy to see the parasitic unions go:
http://www.neoperspectives.com/unions.htm
Oh, cry me a river.
Unions have served their purpose in the past, but I don't think we're in danger of reverting to 19th century working conditions if the Unions disappear. Far from protecting the average worker, the unions have become nothing more than a legal wing of organized crime. My brother, a union electrician, tells me the horror stories from the union hall, where the well-connected cronies of the bosses are taken good care of while the average working stiff gets the crumbs. The cost of doing business in the city is almost double that of the sunurbs, mostly due to the unions (and the Lib/Dem fetish for taxing and regulating everything).
I don't begrudge a guild of professionals trying to get what they can for thier work, but the current setup is just a disgrace.
If the workforce is cowed and unmotivated I think the author should look at the union activities rather than those of the Bush administration. Any any worker who cannot compete in this economy doesn't deserve a job.
The economy is strong, unemployment is low, and unions are losing membership... sounds like Bush is doing something right.
The pubbies control the SCOTUS? Really? When did that happen?
Our Little Miss Writer above should hardly be surprised to see the GOP treat unions as their enemy, as the AFL-CIO alone has donated over $900 Million more to Democrats than to the GOP over the past decade.
She also lies about "stagnant" salaries (they are increasing even faster than inflation) and omits our booming economy, booming stock market, and full national employment (unemployment down to just 4.6%).
Over the long term, she can't win with lies and omissions, either. Her factual arguments must stand on their own or else she will lose regardless.
It is not only "big business," whoever that is, that wanted a major change in the membership and the culture of the NLRB. Even ordinary citizens, such as I, tired of the NLRB behaving as a shill for the capos of Big Labor.
No institution in recent decades has been more contemptuous or destructive of the civil rights of American workers than labor unions, and the NLRB has been a passive observer, if not an active supporter of these decades of trashing workers' rights. Even the Reagan administration failed to take corrective action, vis-a-vis the NLRB.
Hee hee hee hee.
If unions were needed, they would be growing. The facts are that unions are more irrelevent because they spend less and less time actually trying to help workers and more and more time trying to gain power and money so they can enact more and more liberal laws through legislators they spend more and more money to buy.
Oh, like union membership ever motivated anyone! Competition is a good thing, which is why unions don't want anything to do with it.
At leaast they put it on the opinion page...
"the minimum wage is not a living wage"
NO!? REALLY?! I truly don't know what original intent behind the minimum wage was, but here's the fact: Jobs are paid according to what they are worth to the company. There are a lot of factors influencing this decision. If the job is minimum wage, that's its value to the company. Therefore, if one is working in a minimum wage job and one doesn't like it, one needs to do something about it. Badgering the company to pay you $100,000 per year to be the mail clerk isn't likely to work. If you're in some one-horse, low margin company, the owner may be the only person who makes a decent wage. There is an answer to this conundrum: Get some skills, become a plumber or an electrician. Go to college, learn to be an accountant or an engineer. But don't whine because you want to smoke dope all night and not better yourself.
There was a time, when I was young, not that long ago, when minimum wage jobs were held by high school kids or people getting their first job. Now some group of morons wants to make them a "living wage." What a crock. What a jacked-up understanding of basic economics.
Excuse the rant, this just gets my goat...
Actually, we have proof that the Treasury has received record revenues BECAUSE of the increased economic activity the tax reductions fostered. What a bald-faced lie this statement represents. Not only do these people live on a different planet, they think they can transport us there simply by uttering blatant falsehoods.
"labor unions" were a communist construct anyway! The proper
way to relate to labor is to give the worker a stake in the company so that he or she will have a motive to increase productivity: Worker/management relations should be controlled by contract.