Labor Unions

[guest301]

What do you guys think about the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)? Do you think it will come up for vote in the Senate? It's some pretty big legislation that will level the playing field for workers that want to organize. I personally would like to see it passed but don't think it will be voted on.

Here's what it is, if you do not already know:

http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca/

If passed, it will be very intersting to see how those votes will go down. I can just imagine when you're going to vote, a big goon will be standing their looking over your shoulder you to make sure you don't make a mistake on your vote.

I don't think Obama will try to pass this his first year in office, way too controversial.Obama doesn't want to make the early mistake that Clinton made his first few months with gays in the military and Hillarycare. He will of course sign it if the Dems in congress ram it through in the first year.

 

[Bronk]

If you look back at history, you have to see that relying on the vast majority of the rich and powerful to do the right thing and pay their workers a solid, living wage and create working conditions that are safe is not going to happen. It only makes sense for workers to protect themselves and look out for their own interests by forming unions.

However, unions and management have developed an adversarial relationship. Management sees labor in terms of cost not resource, and the unions have no sense of real life economics and just want to squeeze the company for more and more, if not money or benefits then other things. If they had realized that they were in the game together, things might have worked better.

As it is now, it is the unions who are in decline while the capitalists ship the jobs overseas or import cheaper labor, the kind of people who can "underlive" most Americans.

I say this as a former member of the Communications Workers of America (I used to be a cabel splicer for telephone companies).

 

[Solomon Kane]

I think the main need is for a secure moderate civil liberty to attempt to form unions. I don't think every employment situation requires a union, but there should be an effective liberty to attempt to form them should need arise.


The problem, IMO, is that that civil liberty is threatened by unjust foreign competition. How can you compete against unorganized third world labor working for a dollar a day?


Time to restore some of the tariffs we had in the 50's, slash government spending, and reduce tax rates further.