Making the case to disband ALL public unions and enact a national right to work law.

[brett636]

Re: Making the case to disband ALL public unions and enact a national right to work l

Are you a UPS Teamster? If so, why would you want to attack public employee unions? Guess what...the private sector unions are also on Republican radar and they are the next target. I hope you like working for $15 per hour with crap benefits, because that's what you get with Right To Work (for less) laws and anti-union companies who will take full advantage. Oh, and your pension? Forget about it.

There is a certain distinction between my situation and the people I am attacking and that is I am a member of a private sector union. Why do you think the teamsters don't sit down with UPS management at contract time and demand a $100/hr. wage? Because there are market constraints that both the union and management have to abide by or they will simply negotiate everyone at the table out of a job. This is not the case for public employee unions because both sides are negotiating with other people's money. The unions take the taxpayers money and give it to the people whom they are negotiating their pay and benefits with, and if they don't get what they want they withdraw support and money and give it to someone else who will give them what they want. In effect the employees have a direct effect on their boss's job and since neither side is working with their own money they can get damn near everything they want making it a very lopsided and corrupt relationship at best.

 

[wkmac]

Re: Making the case to disband ALL public unions and enact a national right to work l

That first art "labor struggle" is one of my favorites.

I agree. Kevin's research into the labor struggle pre-Wagner/Taft Hartley is very good. Kevin and Tom Knapp (a former union official himself) @ C4SS have written much on the subject of labor and it's free market roots prior to 20th century gov't interventions, mostly to benefit large scale employers.
I might take unionism as we know it today much more serious if they began to look to it's roots and at least talk of re-capturing those lost traditions. Even cooperatives and mutual aid societies could go a long way in not just strengthening the union movement but even make for a better quality of life not just for union members but employers as well.

Most everyone at UPS agree that going public was a huge mistake in making ourselves a servant to Wall Street interests ahead of our customers and ourselves. Prior to that we were headed towards in some respect an older tradition of a true employee owned company as hourlies could buy stock. If our present union were to actually look back to the traditions of unionism, the union and the membership would look seriously at working with management folk to craft a strategy towards buying back the company and going back private. Employee owned and employee run companies are of an older tradition long lost and sadly I might add.

jmo