[hchutch]

You want Exhibit A as to why companies go offshore, look at the unions themselves.

They are pricing labor out of the market of American businesses. There is only one of two options at that point. Either American business goes offshore, or they look elsewhere for employees.

[Willie Green]

You want Exhibit A as to why companies go offshore, look at the unions themselves.

We can do that, if you'd like.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics -- Union Members Summary

In 2001, workers in the public sector continued to have unionization rates that were about four times higher than their counterparts in private industry. The unionization rate of government workers was 37.4 percent, compared with 9.0 percent among private sector employees. Union membership rates of government employees have held steady since 1983, while those of private nonagricultural employees have declined. Local government, which includes many workers in the heavily unionized occupations of teachers, firefighters, and police officers, had the highest unionization rate, at 43.1 percent. Among the private nonagricultural industries, the union membership rate was the highest in transportation and public utilities (23.5 percent). The construction and manufacturing industries also had higher-than-average unionization rates, at 18.4 percent and 14.6 percent, respectively. The nonagricultural industry with the lowest unionization rate in 2001 was finance, insurance, and real estate--2.1 percent.

Among the occupational groups, protective service workers continued to have the highest union membership rate in 2001, at 38.0 percent. Precision production, craft, and repair workers and operators, fabricators, and laborers also had above-average unionization rates, at 21.5 and 19.9 percent, respectively. These workers typically are employed in the highly-unionized industries of construction and manufacturing. Professional specialty workers, a group that includes teachers, also had a higher-than-average union member- ship rate, at 19.1 percent. The rate was lowest among sales occupations (3.5 percent).

So the union boogeymen are predominant (not surprisingly) in GOVERNMENT jobs, including teachers' unions and "protective" services. (To this burden, one should probably add the professional guilds that are not usually formally recognized as "unions": licensing organizations such as the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association.
In contrast, the manufacturing sector is largely 80% NON-UNION.

Yes, we can look at the unions.
But to be on target, one has to be objective about which unions we're talking about.
The primary offender are those in the government bureacracy.

Those superficial RINOs who argue for "free" trade, merely to avoid the economic restrictions placed on domestic production by our own government are guilty of cowardice in the face of the enemy. They have abandoned the 80% of our industrial work force who are non-union, simply to enlarge their own wallets. These portfolio-patriots are hypocrits and undermine our domestic economic stability and national security.

[Scott from the Left Coast]

They are pricing labor out of the market of American businesses

Yeah, like the $120K for an uneducated longshoreman (who's afraid of advanced technology, like, uh, barcodes).

You've put your finger on the crux of the immigration problem too. American labor has already priced itself out of the market, which is why so many industries that cannot move, like agriculture, depend on illegals to stay afloat. In my state, a minimum wage hamburger-turner at McDonalds makes almost $8 an hour. You can get high-technology, skilled, workers in Thailand or China, people who make silicon chips, program software, construct the mouse and keyboard I'm typing with right now, for well under $1 an hour (and in some cases for under a dollar a day).

Do the math.