The Almighty Union Image Derail

[egbert]

[.Morticia.]

[.Morticia.]

there are many many pictures on this site

this is just some

Unions are not a joke.

Telling lies about unions is telling lies about about these children and their lives.

http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor/

[.Morticia.]

[egbert]

If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves.

- Lane Kirkland

[Coito ergo sum]

[Coito ergo sum]

[egbert]

[Seth]

there are many many pictures on this site

this is just some

Unions are not a joke.

Telling lies about unions is telling lies about about these children and their lives.

Telling lies in favor of unions ignores the fact that child labor was on its way out before labor unions came to power. It was public pressure and acts of the various state legislatures, and then Congress, that ended child industrial labor.

And anyway, that was then, this is now. We have laws prohibiting child industrial labor and regulating strictly when, how, and where children may work, so unions are useless appendages in that regard today.

And that's the point. Unions don't "protect workers" against anything but lower wages. We have an entire federal bureaucracy and a host of laws dedicated to physical worker protection, not to mention state laws and bureaucracies, and unions rarely have any legitimate worker safety complaints they need to strike over. Any worker who is subjected to an unsafe working condition, or who is offended by a sexist joke for that matter, need only appeal to OSHA, MSHA, or the EEOC. No union representation is needed, and those resources are available to the other 85 percent of workers who AREN'T union members.

Unions are, today, almost exclusively about extracting dues from workers to fund political contributions by the union elite in the interests of POLITICAL control, not in the interests of the workers. The only really useful function they serve is collective bargaining for wages and compensation. I have no problem with private sector unions when the business owner can decide whether to negotiate with them or send all union members packing and hire non-union workers.

But I do have a big problem with public sector unions and federal laws that interfere with the contractual relationship between workers and businessmen, like the laws being invoked by the unions and their lackeys in Congress to try to obstruct Boeing's right to move it's aircraft production facilities to Right to Work (non-union) South Carolina rather than expanding their facilities in union-dominated closed-shop Seattle.

This move by Boeing is the natural outcome of the predatory policies of the unions. Boeing does not wish to expand or build new plants in a place where they are shut down every three years by a labor union strike for higher wages and shorter workdays. Perfectly reasonable business planning, but the unions are trying to interfere with Boeing's absolute right to locate its plants wherever it wants by invoking a law that prevents business owners from "retaliation" against unions.

Moving away from a closed-shop state to a right-to-work state is not "retaliation," it's simple economic survival. And the unions will get what they deserve in the process. The union workers in Seattle will be hoist on their own petard.

Were I Boeing, I'd close EVERY plant in Washington state and move everything to a right-to-work state, as a matter of policy.

[egbert]

[Coito ergo sum]

[Coito ergo sum]

[egbert]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpUWM1Et ... ature=fvwp[/youtube]

[egbert]

[egbert]