Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: hchutch
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.

70 posted on 10/08/2002 11:19:56 AM PDT by Willie Green
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies ]


To: Willie Green
The AFL-CIO chased "the bosses" out of the country in the 1970s...and then wondered why their members became unemployed.

Manufacturing is largely non-union now BECAUSE of the excesses of industrial unions. And the remaining private-sector unions seem to be hell-bent on pricing their members out of the market.

78 posted on 10/08/2002 11:24:18 AM PDT by Poohbah
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 70 | View Replies ]

To: Willie Green
No, to an extent, blue-collar union workers have as well. It simply comes down to how much is a worker worth to an employer. If workers here demand wages that would cause the final product a company produces to be so high that people will not buy it, then the company goes bankrupt.

"These portfolio-patriots are hypocrits and undermine our domestic economic stability and national security."

The same could be said about folks who resist efforts by companies to IMPROVE their productivity (making more goods at the same price, or making the same amount of goods at a lower price). Look at this beef with the longshoremen as an example. The port management companies want to use technology to improve the tracking of the stuff going in and out (bar code scanners).

A big problem is the fact that our companies are taxzed and regulated, but another big problem is the fact that a labor union can literally stop efforts to improve productivity in their tracks, and cripple a business by forcing it to use 1930s techniques when competitors are using 21st century techniques.

The people running a corporation have a responsibility to the folks who invested money in that corporation (the shareholders or "portfolio patriots" you call hypocrites) to protect their investment, and preferably, to make a profit so that there is a RETURN on that investment.

What you seem to want is, in my opinion, a form of socialism where labor is protected from the adverse consequences of defending outdated techniques at overpriced wages in the name of "job security". I'm not willing to go for that.

We need to eliminate corporate taxes (which are only passed on to the consumer, along with the salaries for the tax lawyers and accountants used to minimize the tax burden), we need to eliminate the burdensome regulations that set absurd standards that imposts costs that far exceed the benefits of the regulations, and we need to allow companies to replace union labor with people who would be willing to do the job at the price the company is willing to pay.

The answer is not protective tariffs. The answer is to get government and the labor unions out of the way.
129 posted on 10/08/2002 12:35:23 PM PDT by hchutch
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 70 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson