Unions and politics

[Froggie]

If the unions spent all of the money give to politicians and political parties on organizing, then unions would not be in decline. They are obsessed with minimum wage. In my opinion minimum wage becomes a bench mark and it should be abolished. Minimum wage is a draw for illegal immigrants. Employees are not sanctioned for hiring illegal If they were to pay less than the minimum they would have federal and state agencies on top.

I think that if minimum wage were abolished tomorrow wages would increase for most workers. And unions would have no difficulty recruiting new members. Union members would tend to shop and eat at establishments that had unions.

At Walmart the cashier asked if I had found everything I was looking for?? I replied, that i had been looking for the UNION LABEL and hope some day to find it. Abolish minimum Wage laws and Walmart will be unionized.

 

[Wally]

The problem is how we spend the money. Leadership is in bed with the far left, so labor is ignored as a given.

Remember when the Teamsters endorsed Reagan? What if we did more of that, supporting pro-labor candidates on both sides.

 

[Bagels]

Remember when the Teamsters endorsed Reagan? What if we did more of that, supporting pro-labor candidates on both sides.

And how'd that work out for the Teamsters? Although Reagan was pro-labor, his legacy lives on as a union buster. Reagan has been viewed as the inspiration by the Right in states that have attacked workers rights in recent years.

 

[Brownslave688]

If the unions spent all of the money give to politicians and political parties on organizing, then unions would not be in decline. They are obsessed with minimum wage. In my opinion minimum wage becomes a bench mark and it should be abolished. Minimum wage is a draw for illegal immigrants. Employees are not sanctioned for hiring illegal If they were to pay less than the minimum they would have federal and state agencies on top.

I think that if minimum wage were abolished tomorrow wages would increase for most workers. And unions would have no difficulty recruiting new members. Union members would tend to shop and eat at establishments that had unions.

At Walmart the cashier asked if I had found everything I was looking for?? I replied, that i had been looking for the UNION LABEL and hope some day to find it. Abolish minimum Wage laws and Walmart will be unionized.

I have zero reason to believe this. Without a minimum wage companies would pay even less. All a union does is raise the "minimum wage" Top rte for a driver now is $32-33 an hour. This is the minimum the company must pay a driver. Do they ever pay more? Why? Because any company will always pay the lowest they can and still fill positions.

 

[Froggie]

It seems that unions were strongest when government was weakest. Your UPS pension has No cost of living allowance. You might expect to live to be 90 years old. Most of the services seniors use nursing care, house keeping will continue to rise if the inflationary effects of minimum wage unchecked. The Libertarian in me wants the government out of contracts and unions in charge.

If the Union were to negotiate a COLA for retirees more would retire earlier. As it is most are afraid of retirement and 30 yrs of reduced purchasing power.

No reason to think that incensed minimum wage is going to make your retirement better. Good wage are paid because your company makes money and you make them share it.

 

[Brownslave688]

And if u put a COLA into our pension either the pension would go broke or wages would go down because of the extreme amount that would need to be pumped into the pensions.

 

[Froggie]

There is a positive correlation between government involvement in the work place and the decline of middle class. And the Unions were responsible for protecting the middle class. It is untended consequences.

​There was Zero chance that the world was round.

 

[Brownslave688]

I'm not saying more unions are a bad thing. I'm
Saying the economics behind your reasoning doesn't work.

 

[Froggie]

You are correct.

 

[Froggie]

When I studied economics in college it was listed as a social science not mathematics. My premise is that if you threaten peoples minimum wage they will come together and fight to keep their standard of living. And the best way to keep a standard of living is with a union. I have never hear of a union saying that they want minimum wages for their workers.

 

[PiedmontSteward]

If the unions spent all of the money give to politicians and political parties on organizing, then unions would not be in decline. They are obsessed with minimum wage. In my opinion minimum wage becomes a bench mark and it should be abolished. Minimum wage is a draw for illegal immigrants. Employees are not sanctioned for hiring illegal If they were to pay less than the minimum they would have federal and state agencies on top.

I think that if minimum wage were abolished tomorrow wages would increase for most workers. And unions would have no difficulty recruiting new members. Union members would tend to shop and eat at establishments that had unions.

At Walmart the cashier asked if I had found everything I was looking for?? I replied, that i had been looking for the UNION LABEL and hope some day to find it. Abolish minimum Wage laws and Walmart will be unionized.

While I have very mixed feelings on labor unions supporting most Democrats - politically - it's not like the IBT is shoveling dues money at them. That's why we have DRIVE, which is an extra check-off that members can voluntarily give on top of their dues. That being said, we still lost over 50,000 members last year. The "1.4 million members" number that's touted is really more in the neighborhood of 1.2 million and falling from a high of over 2.1 million in the early 1960's.

Part of this is due to the economy, a few successful de-certification campaigns, and a lack of substantial organizing. Right-to-Work has also had more than half a century to take hold and is beginning to spread to states beyond "the solid south." Another big part of this is the fact that the IBT Organizing Department has had a lot of internal issues over the last few years; the 20-worker dinking and dunking organizing campaigns I keep reading about from IBT are great, but it's not enough to keep us alive. We really need to be organizing core industries and we definitely need to stop being afraid of giving FedEx Ground/Freight (both of which can be conventionally organized under the NLRA) a headline.

How is a higher minimum wage a draw for illegal immigrants? The same employers that hire illegal immigrants will also black mail them via their undocumented status to pay them even less. I have a pretty libertarian view of labor's role in society and simply abolishing the minimum wage alone wouldn't bring us back to the glory days of the 1930's; that would take abolishing Taft-Hartley; which made RTW laws in individual states possible and the secondary boycott illegal. Hoffa's use of the secondary boycott in the 1930's was legendary -- if a company refused to allow its workers to organize a warehouse, then every union trucking company under Teamster control nearby would refuse to move their cargo. The power dynamics between labor and capital were completely different back then -- a company couldn't dig in its heels and refuse to negotiate if they wanted to survive.

 

[TxRoadDawg]

The only thing the minimum wage does is devalue the dollar and reduce overall purchasing power. I've always been a firm believer that if I wanted more money I needed to either needed to increase my skill set ie education and worth to an employer or find more hours of work ie second job.

 

[Bagels]

The only thing the minimum wage does is devalue the dollar and reduce overall purchasing power. I've always been a firm believer that if I wanted more money I needed to either needed to increase my skill set ie education and worth to an employer or find more hours of work ie second job.

Never before in the USA have wages been so low in relative to cost of living (and real compensation has been declining for the first time in history). In fact, the average annual take home pay of a 10-year FT Walmart associate barely covers a years' worth of groceries for a family of four. Given this, ya think they pay the costly co-premiums for insurance? I agree with your argument (regarding wage hikes) to an extent, but the reality is that there's not enough skilled/professional jobs for everybody in this country, and we still need people to work in grocery stores, flip burgers at McDs and clean our toilets. Walmart, in fact, employs over 1 million in-store associates. Shouldn't these jobs pay enough to cover basic necessities -- food, shelter, health care,etc.? As it is, through our tax dollars, we're already subsidizing these people.

Nor do I believe that hiking minimum wage will devalue the dollar. Walmart can certainly afford to pay its employees more without raising prices -- it just chooses to pass the increasing profits along to its management & major shareholders. Not the mention the Walmart effect ensuing among its competitors. Consider the compensation of my area's dominate grocery store (union shop) before Walmart came into town & after it started to dominate:

Before 2009/After 2009:
Wages topped at $14 after 7 years -- Wages top at $12 after 10 years
66% of staff must be FT -- 33% of staff must be FT
no-cost health care option for FT/PT pay 30% -- FT pay 20% of cost + 50% of spouse/dependents / PT pay 50% of their cost
2-6 weeks vacation (grandfathered) -- 1-3 weeks vacation
up to 10 sick/personal days -- 2 sick/personal days

Ya don't think this is happening elsewhere....?

 

[Froggie]

How is a higher minimum wage a draw for illegal immigrants? Pretend that you are in a debating class and you are asked to take the position that I have taken. The earth is not flat. The problem with politicians is no imigination.

 

[Brownslave688]

How is a higher minimum wage a draw for illegal immigrants? Pretend that you are in a debating class and you are asked to take the position that I have taken. The earth is not flat. The problem with politicians is no imigination.

Pretend like u have answers and not just more questions.

 

[The Other Side]

I love these minimum wage parrots who simply believe the garbage that is told to them by the right wing kooks. Lets see, if we abolish the federal minimum wage, wages are going to increase, says Froggie.

Ok, lets put that to the test. Lets say today the Fed Min wage is abolished. Tomorrow morning, Lousiana, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama have NO STATE minimum wage, so they could effectively pay $1.00 an hour for a job. If anyone would take the job for that money, they could have it and the employer would be within the law to do so. With no minimum wage laws, these states could attract every single illegal alien in the country to their states.

Why would a company pay anything higher than the fed rate if they were not under any pressure to do so by the state or Fed goverment?

Its all about profits, Right? So , employers could advertise low wage jobs and attract those people desperate enough to take them.

In other states, like Georgia & Wyoming, the state minimum wages are below $5.50 cents an hour and employees younger than 18 are paid less than 4 bucks and hour. Had it not been for the federal minimum wage, these states would pay the least by law.

The argument that no minimum wage would mean higher wages is foolish at best. The fair labor standards act of 1939 was enacted to equal the playing field for all workers in this country.

The argument that there is no longer a need for the minimum wage is simply a disguise for corporations to improve profits at the expense of the american workers.

Peace

TOS

 

[Overpaid Union Thug]

I love these minimum wage parrots who simply believe the garbage that is told to them by the right wing kooks. Lets see, if we abolish the federal minimum wage, wages are going to increase, says Froggie.

Ok, lets put that to the test. Lets say today the Fed Min wage is abolished. Tomorrow morning, Lousiana, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama have NO STATE minimum wage, so they could effectively pay $1.00 an hour for a job. If anyone would take the job for that money, they could have it and the employer would be within the law to do so. With no minimum wage laws, these states could attract every single illegal alien in the country to their states.

Why would a company pay anything higher than the fed rate if they were not under any pressure to do so by the state or Fed goverment?

Its all about profits, Right? So , employers could advertise low wage jobs and attract those people desperate enough to take them.

In other states, like Georgia & Wyoming, the state minimum wages are below $5.50 cents an hour and employees younger than 18 are paid less than 4 bucks and hour. Had it not been for the federal minimum wage, these states would pay the least by law.

The argument that no minimum wage would mean higher wages is foolish at best. The fair labor standards act of 1939 was enacted to equal the playing field for all workers in this country.

The argument that there is no longer a need for the minimum wage is simply a disguise for corporations to improve profits at the expense of the american workers.

Peace

TOS

Your whole argument hinges on the assumptions that companies would actually attempt to hire someone at $1/hr, would all hire illegal aliens, and that illegal aliens would actually be dumb enough to work for $1/hr. LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now back to reality.......

I don't fully agree with completely abolishing the minimum wage. I do believe it would be beneficial to the economy if the the wages were varied by industry and based on local cost of living and the costs of doing business and other factors instead of having just one blanket minimum wage.

And concerning unions and politics..... unions should re-evaluate their strategy when it comes to how they support a candidate or party. Unless they want to relive the embarrassment of ObamaCare again. It seems like they just blindly throw their weight behind "democrats" and always end up scratching their heads and wondering what happened afterwards. Or maybe they should stay out of politics. To me it seems that no political party has really done anything for unions anyway. Nor should they.

 

[PiedmontSteward]

And concerning unions and politics..... unions should re-evaluate their strategy when it comes to how they support a candidate or party. Unless they want to relive the embarrassment of ObamaCare again. It seems like they just blindly throw their weight behind "democrats" and always end up scratching their heads and wondering what happened afterwards. Or maybe they should stay out of politics. To me it seems that no political party has really done anything for unions anyway. Nor should they.

The last time the Democratic Party was willing to do something for labor was in regards to the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have let labor unions organize a job site simply via card check. But the Obama administration had already shot their wad with Obamacare and couldn't get enough Democratic senators on board, so it died on the floor of the Senate. While Obamacare does some good things, I think the EFCA would have done more over time to enable faster organizing and giving workers the leverage to demand better health benefits; it's a lot harder to deprive a worker of benefits under a collective bargaining agreement than it is otherwise as we've seen with the 30 hour work week exemption.

The Obamacare tax on Taft Hartley plans - if not waived before it kicks in over the next few years - will probably cause labor to seriously reconsider Democratic support. And that waiver sure as hell won't be going through unless the balance of power is shifted back to the Democrats in Congress -- which is pretty unlikely, considering the extent that Republicans have gerrymandered congressional districts when they retook dozens of state houses in the 2010 mid-term elections. Can you imagine the circus that would play out on Capitol Hill if Reid or Pelosi tried to introduce a bill to spare "big labor" from one of the tax hikes slated under Obamacare?

It would be a lot easier to make the jump if the Republican party hadn't grown so openly hostile to labor from the 1950's onward (alongside Southern Democrats) and there was a viable third party on the national level. Richard Trumka (president of the AFL-CIO) recently admitted that labor's tactics over the last 30 years have failed and that we have to go in a new direction in order to survive.

 

[Bagels]

Your whole argument hinges on the assumptions that companies would actually attempt to hire someone at $1/hr, would all hire illegal aliens, and that illegal aliens would actually be dumb enough to work for $1/hr. LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!

He's slightly exaggerating, but there's little doubt that if minimum wage were abolished, companies such as Walmart would drop starting pay to $5-$6/hour in pockets of the country. For competitive reasons, its large breadth of competition would quickly follow suit. McDonald's franchises (and their competition) would drop their wage as well, seizing the opportunity to hire more workers for less money. And Right Wingers would rejoice because more jobs were created. Who cares if they barely pay enough (e.g. $11K/year for a FT worker) to cover gas to & from work? That's not what matters.

In my state, big businesses lobbied the Right to defeat a bill that would've increased minimum wage to $7.75/hour (50c higher than the Federal minimum wage). Companies like Walmart proclaimed that it was sentimental, anyway, since few of its workers earned anything close to minimum wage. During the Great Recession, Walmart forced thousands of its employees here to accept pay cuts that dropped many long-time employees to minimum wage.

 

[Overpaid Union Thug]

Your whole argument hinges on the assumptions that companies would actually attempt to hire someone at $1/hr, would all hire illegal aliens, and that illegal aliens would actually be dumb enough to work for $1/hr. LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!

He's slightly exaggerating, but there's little doubt that if minimum wage were abolished, companies such as Walmart would drop starting pay to $5-$6/hour in pockets of the country. For competitive reasons, its large breadth of competition would quickly follow suit. McDonald's franchises (and their competition) would drop their wage as well, seizing the opportunity to hire more workers for less money. And Right Wingers would rejoice because more jobs were created. Who cares if they barely pay enough (e.g. $11K/year for a FT worker) to cover gas to & from work? That's not what matters.

In my state, big businesses lobbied the Right to defeat a bill that would've increased minimum wage to $7.75/hour (50c higher than the Federal minimum wage). Companies like Walmart proclaimed that it was sentimental, anyway, since few of its workers earned anything close to minimum wage. During the Great Recession, Walmart forced thousands of its employees here to accept pay cuts that dropped many long-time employees to minimum wage.

Again.......ASSUMPTIONS.