Posted on 04/10/2008 3:46:40 PM PDT by george76
From this link....
N.Y. Union Membership on the Rise
The U.S. Labor Department reported that the percentage of unionized workers jumped 3 points to 25.2 percent in New York—the highest in the nation.
A big part of the reason why Upstate's looking like a ghost town and we're probably gonna lose 2 House seats after the next census. People and jobs can't flee fast enough.
Note to the nation: Can't say you weren't warned.....
The first thing Mitch Daniels did in 2004 after taking the Gov office in Indiana (after 16 yrs of Democrats) was to boot the UAW out of representing state workers. They had come in via executive order of Evan Bayh.
State unions on verge of membership explosion
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1999913/posts?page=7#7
Hello West Virginia. When you get done in Colorado, please come here and help us get our "Right to Work". That's one of the main reasons the West Virginia is 49th or 50th in all the good indicators, and 1st or 2nd in all of the bad ones. It also doesn't help that we've had 74 consecutive years of Democrat control in our legislature, and the we're known as a "Judicial Hellhole".
Corporations can't get far enough away.
There is a silver lining :-) Choose well.
Doesn’t bother me. Most employers don’t want to go through new employees all the time. Anyone that wants to make a career at chicken licken isn’t thinking.
Let all those in the lower end jobs, which are the majority by the way, twist in the wind. And when they do it to them, they'll eventually do it to you.
I’m 53 and grew up through all those kind of jobs here in CO. It is the fairest free market system. No one is twisting in the wind who doesn’t volunteer for it. The biggest crunch for my early working life was what Carter did to the economy on the Federal level. $2.00 an hour was a good starting wage and workers were a dime a dozen. The employers owned the job market. But if the job was worth keeping it was worth working to keep and if the employee gave an honest day’s work few employers would want to fire them. I guess that’s too tough a concept for the wussie generation of socialists we’ve raised up today.
Free market? Oh, you mean the the free market where employers prefer hiring tens of millions of low wage, illegal laborers, all on the backs of the working middle class, as the tax payers watch their wages, neighborhoods, standard of living go into a ditch, while they are forced pay to medicate, house and subsidize the employers low wage workers? Is that the free market you're referring to?
Unions suck! Every union carpenter I have ever known, all one of him, sat on his butt waiting until everybody with seniority was hired before he was put to work.
You're the one that brought up the free market system. The same free market where multi-billion dollar business get bailed out by the tax payers? The same tax payers that are forced at gun point to support and subsidize tens of millions of illegals, so thousands of employers can get their low wage labor.
Free market? Rules? Laws? Market forces?
If ya can't stand the brutal naked truth, maybe you shouldn't be here.
I can stand the truth I just don’t have much patience for nitwits.
You respond with childish name calling?
How typical.
After your previous two nutball posts what difference does it make?
This single paragraph, from the article, sounds like just what our son has hoped for (but we're not in Colorado):
"The initiative, which is backed by a group called A Better Colorado, would ask voters to amend the state constitution to say that union membership and the payment of union dues or fees could not be mandatory."
Our 23 year-old son is a 5th year Apprentice who will soon be a Journeyman in the National Fire Sprinkler's Union. His current base hourly wage is $32 per hour, but his bring home pay is woefully less. Deduct the Union Dues, $600 to $700 per week Union BCBS Health Insurance, some other fees which I don't understand, and taxes and he ends up with about $12 per hour (when he works 40 hours). Of what's left he has his personal living expenses and has to afford $150 per week in gas to drive to various job sites, plus put something into savings in case he gets laid off. So, our son earning $32 per hour is constantly "Union Poor." It's not a matter of budgeting his money, it's a matter of not having enough left after the Union takes "their cut" in a two-for-me-and-one-for-you fashion.
On the co$t of Health Insurance there's a devil in the details somewhere, imo. Our son is single (no wife, no kids) and pays the same premium that someone with a family of 5 pays. He's not allowed to NOT pay for Union BCBS Health Insurance and buy a separate Individual Plan at a substantial savings to him with a lower deductible, because he's helping pay for all the retired union members insurance premiums.
Based solely on our son's Union experience I would be inclined to favor "Right-to-Work" to eliminate the co$tly Union mandates. Why would that be a bad thing?
IIUC, your son's union installs fire sprinklers -- and that is all they do. Right?
Installing sprinkler systems is no (or very little) different from plumbing or pipe fitting (for which there are already unions). If that is the case, then there was only one reason for creating a "National Fire Sprinklers Union": to create another set of cushy jobs for dishonest scumbag union officials.
IMHO, the only thing better than Right-To-Work laws would be disbanding and outlawing all unions -- and executing (or, at least imprisoning) all union "officials".
Thanks for your insights, TXnMA.
Our son is a “Sprinkler Fitter”. He installs fire sprinkler systems and maintains existing systems via bid contracts. All they do is fire sprinklers, new & old, wet & dry, and conversions.
We became aware of the high co$t of his Union after he asked us to help him make ends meet several times. Finally we asked to see his pay-stubs. Wow!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.