Right To Work Laws

How do you feel about them. A couple of known facts. Right to work states have lower average salaries. Right to work states have higher worker on the job death rates. Right to work states have fewer average worker benefits. Those are just a few facts.

 

Without any corroborating evidence, I will also bet righ-to-work states also have lower unemployment, faster growth, lower debt, lower poverty rate, etc.

 

My opinion should surprise no one who has been here a while. People should be able to exercise their freedom to join or not join a union as they choose.

Edited to add: In fact I find it disturbing that the above is not the default and that we have to make laws allowing it.

 

Take a look at the people who are behind these laws. It's always a Republican-led effort in states with little opposition to their tyranny. Just like how they limit voting in areas that are strong for the Democrats, which is irrefutably a corruption of the voting system, yet they ignore that and push for ID laws instead, saying it's the Democrats who are trying to corrupt the system.

Right to Work laws are yet one more way Republicans are crushing the people they say they represent. It's just one more way they are leading the decline of Western civilization. They either don't understand that they are causing America to become a second-rate nation or they are intentionally doing it. Either way, they are idiots for doing so.

 

I can agree that people shouldn't have to pay into unions if they back a political party that you are not interested in supporting but what I have yet to see is a union that is allowed to negotiate higher salaries and benefits but only for the dues paying members. I'd like to see that.

 

Like any other association, club or whatever, that is the way it should be.

 

Do the unions really negotiate salaries and benefits on the behalf of non-members or does the business just choose to make them all the same?

I guess my question is....Do employers have to pay union and non-union members the same and give them the same benefits? If so, that is a bad law. Same thing if unions have to represent non-members in grievances, etc. That would also be a bad law.

 

The worker should be allowed to decide for him/herself whether or not to join a union. If they see value that exceeds their union dues they will probably join but on the other hand it seems a huge number of workers dump the union when given a choice. Is it because they haven't seen the value in union membership? Probably so.

What objection do you libs have to granting a worker the freedom to choose between joining or not joining a union?

 

Unions are the only political organization that represents the workers. Corporations can buy and sell politicians like cheap trinkets. So if unions are crushed, who exactly represents the workers? Who advocates for the individual over the large multinationals? Just curious. Can anybody answer this question?

 

Isn't that what the ballot box is for or do "workers" get something special? BTW, I considered myself a worker. What special treatment was I supposed to get?

 

Interesting article.

Fox Gets "Right-To-Work" Wrong

Fox News contributors Steve Moore and Matt McCall falsely claimed that passage of "right-to-work" laws would benefit workers and the economy in Michigan. In fact, economic studies of similar laws have found that they lead to lower wages and do not increase employment.

On America's Newsroom, Moore and McCall celebrated the passage of so-called "right-to-work" laws recently passed by the majority GOP Michigan legislature. The legislation would prohibit unions from collecting dues from nonunion employees. Moore praised the bill's passage, calling it "huge for the economic future of Michigan." McCall agreed, claiming states that had passed right-to-work legislation had higher compensation and lower unemployment.

In fact, "right-to-work" laws have had a significant and negative effect on state economies, employment, and employee compensation. Multiple studies have found that wages and benefits are lower in "right-to-work" states. The Economic Policy Institute found that right-to-work laws "are associated with significantly lower wages and reduced chances of receiving employer-sponsored health insurance and pensions." They estimated these laws decreased hourly wages by 3 percent for all workers.

Besides leading to lower pay and benefits "right-to-work" laws have had little impact on economic growth. While economists showed "little or no gain in employment and economic growth," The New York Times reported that "six of the 10 states with highest unemployment have right-to-work laws in place."

 

The ballot box? So if unions aren't there to support Democrats, who exactly are the workers going to vote for at the ballot box? Republicans with their long history of supporting worker's rights???? I kind of doubt that.

P.S. Your special treatment was a 40 hour work week, vacation benefits, health care benefits, safe working conditions, and countless other perks unions won for all workers, even you.

 

Yep! And look how much cotton slavery got us. And just think. The telegraph enabled us to get news from coast to coast.

BTW, What do Texas, Oklahoma, and North Dakota have in common beside the best economies in the nation? And then what do California, New york, and Illinois have in common beside the highest tax rates and the weakest economies?

 

Are you just following the leader?

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If a union cannot get enough members then they are probably either not communicating their value to the workers well or they are not providing value to the workers. Either way, people should still have the right to either associate themselves with a union or not as they so choose.

As I have said before, I belong to a union. Granted, my union doesn't directly bargain for my wages or benefits, cannot go on strike, etc and they even supported the guy who initiated our pay freeze. But I still perceive some value to being a member in my current work environment.

 

So, I'll ask this again, what's wrong with giving the worker the freedom to choose whether or not they wish to join a union?

 

I think you need to dig a little deeper in your history than your grandaughter's 5th grade Texas approved history textbook. The cotton economy was not responsible for much, excepting perhaps the invention of a Mr. Eli Whitney (cotton gin...sigh...). Pray do tell, where were the industrial and commercial bases in the United States during the era? Where was the steel, timber, and textile manufacturing (hint: it wasn't in the agrarian backwoods of the south) If the cotton slave system was successful, our country would look a lot more like a pre-industrial society in modern times. Look at patent applications filed from the North and South during this era, you'll find that innovation was sparked by the North, not the backwards agrarian South. Also, I'll point out that the south had poor manufacturing, the poorest railroads in the country, and focused so much on cash crops they couldn't feed their own population (now that is a level of ignorance matched only by the Wrong party).

Nathan S. Balke "The Estimation of Prewar Gross National Product: Methodology and New Evidence" Journal of Political Economy vol. 97 No. 1 Feb. 1989

William F. Fox, A history of the lumber industry in the state of New York (Washington D.C. off. gov. pro. 1902)

William Harrison, Econometrics of the American Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2009)


Basically, in a nutshell, you're totally wrong.

 

Thank you for elaborating on my point. Not that I needed the history lesson, but I am sure you learned something digging it up. Now that you have that figured, what do you think I was forecasting for the future of unions?

BTW, RTW states have an unemployment rate of 6.9%. Use your enhanced math skills and tell me what that makes the closed shop state's unemployment rate.

 

I didn't need to look anything up, I'm the only 1/2 of this conversation with credentials, you're the 1/2 without. I provided the references for your benefit, so you could perhaps deign to learn something instead of wallowing in your own ignorance like a pig floundering in shit.

 

For the past 20 years, the states with the top performing economies, all were RTW and of the states with the poorest performing economies, none were RTW.