Animavore wrote:Seth wrote:Animavore wrote:Seth wrote:American labor regulations have made unions entirely unnecessary insofar as the legitimate complaints about working conditions, hours of labor and suchlike police-power regulation are concerned. Unions remain only as an artifact of history, and their only purpose at the moment is to coerce business into providing wages and benefits that are favorable to labor. What's fucking evil about this is not the unions themselves, I have no problem with workers getting together to negotiate, it's the government's intervention and support of labor unions to the detriment of the interests of the companies. Government no longer simply prevents violence, which is a legitimate police-power function, now it intervenes on behalf of the workers and uses government force to coerce business into knuckling under to union demands for higher and higher wages and more and more perks and benefits. And THAT practice is bankrupting our economy and needs to be ended.
Government's only role in union/company negotiations must be to prevent violence, nothing else. Labor should be allowed to peacefully strike, and business should be allowed to fire every union striker and hire anyone they choose. The dynamic between the two is between the two, and government should not favor either side. If the strikers become unemployed, that's the consequences of their actions for demanding more than the company is willing to give. If the company goes under because it cannot find or keep a stable, skilled workforce because it refuses to offer adequate wages and benefits, that's the consequences of the company's actions. In the end, it all works out and a happy medium is reached where the workers get enough, and the company can still make an adequate profit to satisfy its owners and investors.
This is complete bullshit. There was already a time when this was the case, around 100 years ago, and look how companies treated people.
Companies need to have regulations enforced because they sure as shit ain't going to do it themselves. The evidence is in history itself.
If we could trust people to do the right thing such government intervention would never have happened in the first place.
What sort of regulation is the actual question? Regulations to protect workers from illness and injury, or regulations to favor their economic interests over that of the company?
You have to be specific if you expect your arguments to be valid.
When do workers ever expect regulations in favour of their economic interests over that of the company?
Every single fucking day of the week around here.
The interests should be in line with the company that they benefit from a company they help make.
You would think. But nooooooo. Their corrupt union bosses divert their dues to leftist, Marxist, Communist and Progressive political causes while coercing companies to give workers more money for less work. Many "retirees" at GM have been on union-coerced pensions that pay them more than they made while working for longer than they actually worked for GM. Then they worked with that fucking Marxist Progressive swine inhabiting the White House to seize GM and literally turn it over to the unions, after completely defrauding the SECURED BOND HOLDERS who, by LAW and long standing precedent were due first crack at GM's assets when it was dissolved.
Fucking asswipes at the AFL-CIO and automotive union HQ need to be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.
If the company is allowed to just sack people and pay what they like companies almost always opt to pay workers as little as possible whilst hoarding as much for those at the top as possible. History shows this. It still happens. If we had things your way we'd still be working in sweatshops.
No, we wouldn't, because unlike the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, where children were put to work in textile factories because the jobs they had to do only required the intelligence and training of a child, today's industry is much more sophisticated, and there are laws which prevent "sweatshop" working conditions and child labor.
Businesses operate on free market principles, and they don't "hoard" moneyar "at the top" because capital is required to keep businesses running and expanding. Sure, they don't want to pay any more for labor than they absolutely have to, but by the same token, labor has power when the skills required are more than minimal because the rarer the skill set required the higher the wage to find and keep skilled workers.
Is unskilled labor paid little? Yes, of course it is because it's unskilled. The best way to escape that condition is to become skilled at something and move up in the hierarchy. It's stupid to expect that unskilled labor will be paid the same as skilled labor. Even Marx didn't go that far with his idiocy. Ben Franklin said that the best way to raise people out of poverty is to make them "uncomfortable in their poverty." Minimum wage burger-flipping jobs are not intended to be career choices for anyone. They are rightfully entry-level jobs that unskilled, inexperienced people, mostly youth, can work at and get paid as they build their work history and skills and fund advancements in their education. Every time the minimum wage is increased, entry-level kids lose their jobs, which are given to more experienced workers who are more reliable and can take on greater responsibility with less supervision.
The march of technology has made Industrial Revolution sweatshops a thing of the past in the US. Unskilled assembly labor positions have been globalized and exported, and that's a GOOD thing, because even the people laboring in a Nike "sweatshop" south of the border are doing much better than they WERE doing before the plant opened up and offered jobs that, in their community, are both high-paying and relatively stable. In other words, for the residents of some village in Costa Rica or Mexico, a Nike factory is a Godsend, and it beats the ever-living crap out of poking holes in the ground to plant subsistence-level crops and taking in each other's washing, when there's anything to wash.
That they don't get paid the same wage as a high-tech computer-chip technician in the US is utterly irrelevant. They get paid what their labor is worth, which is more than they were getting paid before, which was nothing.
And if we had illness or injury it would be, "Tough shit. You can't work. Bye bye". So your two examples of regulations above go hand in hand, they are not mutually exclusive.
Why is an employer obliged to hold open someone's job if they cannot perform the work required? If the employer is responsible for the injury, the employee can sue to recover damages. Furthermore, worker's compensation plans are paid into by the employer by state mandated to cover just such situations. But if the worker is permanently disabled, why is the employer obligated to keep them on the payroll forever?
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"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
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His posts read the same as yours coito...same fervent anti communist BS laced with doses of pretend "freedom" and "liberty". I stay at this forum largely because I get some people who disagree with me on some issues. Most other forums I have been a member of consist of nothing but agreement and, yes, it gets boring...but...there are some world views which really don't need a rebuttal, their content does the rebuttal itself.
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