Michigan "Right To Work"

Well said rd.

Persue our dreams without the beast on our backs. Build businesses, create growth and prosperity. But it will never happen with people suckling and clinging on the government tit even harder at just the thought of more freedom and liberty. Classical liberalism and the ideas of The Enlightenment have been lost in the gavage of lefty propaganda digested by schoolchildren since the 50's.[/quote]

Are "people' the only ones suckling and clinging on the government? Could corporate America be doing the same and costing just as much? In building businesses, creating jobs and prosperity is it plausible to do so without handouts to corporations as well? Should businesses/corporations be allowed to move out of the U.S. taking jobs from our own and hide their profits elswhere?[/quote]

By what justification do you claim to be able to "allow" someone to move out of the country or not?

How do you propose ANY business model run that isn't corrupted by government or any system of government which cannot be influenced by business?[/quote]

Jpete..join the Amish community...they are VERY MUCH what you are looking for!

Ahhh ... the "tolerance" of the left. More thuggery in action: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/union-t ... ial-slurs/

Northern Maine wrote:Jpete..join the Amish community...they are VERY MUCH what you are looking for!

Nah. I like my 50" plasma too much.

And how would we ever have these delightful conversations?

Merry Christmas!

jpete wrote:

Northern Maine wrote:Jpete..join the Amish community...they are VERY MUCH what you are looking for!

Nah. I like my 50" plasma too much.

And how would we ever have these delightful conversations?

Merry Christmas!

Jpete... we agree on very little...but have some to agree upon! But know that I genuinely wish you a Merry Christmas as Well! Peace Out!

I actually just enjoyed a Pennsylvania Brewed all Simcoe beer while reading JPete and Northern Maines thread....simply awesome.

Ed.A wrote:I actually just enjoyed a Pennsylvania Brewed all Simcoe beer while reading JPete and Northern Maines thread....simply awesome.

How was that PA brewed beer? Glad to have added to your entertainment!

This entire thing is pretty silly in my book: if I was to come on here and say that as a small business owner of a farm (which I am) and joined a local farm association to promote farming (which I have), there would be support from a lot of people.

The simple fact is, a lot of business owners do exactly that, join associations. They work because they collectively get like-minded businesses together (or just the fact that they are a business) and provide a united front and funding through their "membership dues" and provide lobbying to their business managers...the US Government, in hopes of controlling regulation and taxes. For some reason this is considered perfectly acceptable and yet being Union at a job is not.

They are the same thing.

With Union there is local representation that you vote on, just as a board of directors is voted on in an association for businesses. They are hoping to have some form of control on how their business is run using the collective power of the association to hire lobbyists to influence Capital Hill just as Unions use Shop Stewards and Local Representatives to influence what happens within the shop. And while business owners are ultimately hoping their associations provide for a better business climate, Unionized employees are hoping for better working conditions, better pay and better fringe benefits by working collectively rather than for every single employee to ask for a raise at review time.

What escapes me is that while many business owners openly hate governmental regulation of any kind, they expect workers to be perfectly happy with the government being the only ones to mandate working conditions. Businessmen bark at any minimum wage increases Congress applies, and ironically use lobbyists to do so, yet the increase of workers base salaries have only gone up 15% in the last 30 years while the cost of living has gone up 35%.

Unions have the highest pay scales, not because they point a gun at the temple of the company's CEO, but because it is a negotiated contract. The company can, and will decide if the pay and benefits suggested by the Union are something it can abide with and still make a profit. Company executives should never agree to something that they can not live with...it is a collective bargaining agreement after all and they can say no. You never hear the CEO's of these failed companies saying, "Well we agreed to buy these widgets from our supplier at $3 bucks a piece and now a year later we want that price to be $2 a widget"...it would never stand up to public scrutiny, because the public would say that widget company has a cost of doing business as well. But for some reason it is okay for companies to blame a labor rate set up with a Union and then blame the "supplier" of that labor when their profits tumble.

Is big and small business scum?

Hardly, I will defend them to the end of the world, but there is nothing wrong with having checks and balances and with employees working together to provide a better standard of living. You see that idea all the time on here by Libertarians, Republican's and Democrats alike..."If truck drivers would all get together fuel prices would tumble", is one recently submitted, just as I suggested on a thread that food prices would increase if farmers united...yet when employee do exactly that through Unions, people get irate and bash us.

My in-laws work at a factory in Northern NH whose 300 workers just voted down a Union Shop, and I do not blame them. That company is probably the best for employees I have ever heard of, but I do get upset when my in-laws bash my Union affiliation. They are very fortunate to have a manufacturing environment that is very fair and friendly, but if they were to ever work somewhere else, and at some businesses that are just downright shrewd they would see why some of us who have worked in both shops, prefer to work Union. With 80,000 employees, I cannot image what my employer would be like without a little leadership from the Union.

Are their Union improvements that can be made...I got a whole list of them, but you don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

No but, depending on how dirty that water has gotten, there comes a time to change to fresh. For the bathers sake of course, not the bathie's.

NoSmoke wrote:This entire thing is pretty silly in my book: if I was to come on here and say that as a small business owner of a farm (which I am) and joined a local farm association to promote farming (which I have), there would be support from a lot of people.

The simple fact is, a lot of business owners do exactly that, join associations. They work because they collectively get like-minded businesses together (or just the fact that they are a business) and provide a united front and funding through their "membership dues" and provide lobbying to their business managers...the US Government, in hopes of controlling regulation and taxes. For some reason this is considered perfectly acceptable and yet being Union at a job is not.

They are the same thing.

With Union there is local representation that you vote on, just as a board of directors is voted on in an association for businesses. They are hoping to have some form of control on how their business is run using the collective power of the association to hire lobbyists to influence Capital Hill just as Unions use Shop Stewards and Local Representatives to influence what happens within the shop. And while business owners are ultimately hoping their associations provide for a better business climate, Unionized employees are hoping for better working conditions, better pay and better fringe benefits by working collectively rather than for every single employee to ask for a raise at review time.

What escapes me is that while many business owners openly hate governmental regulation of any kind, they expect workers to be perfectly happy with the government being the only ones to mandate working conditions. Businessmen bark at any minimum wage increases Congress applies, and ironically use lobbyists to do so, yet the increase of workers base salaries have only gone up 15% in the last 30 years while the cost of living has gone up 35%.

Unions have the highest pay scales, not because they point a gun at the temple of the company's CEO, but because it is a negotiated contract. The company can, and will decide if the pay and benefits suggested by the Union are something it can abide with and still make a profit. Company executives should never agree to something that they can not live with...it is a collective bargaining agreement after all and they can say no. You never hear the CEO's of these failed companies saying, "Well we agreed to buy these widgets from our supplier at $3 bucks a piece and now a year later we want that price to be $2 a widget"...it would never stand up to public scrutiny, because the public would say that widget company has a cost of doing business as well. But for some reason it is okay for companies to blame a labor rate set up with a Union and then blame the "supplier" of that labor when their profits tumble.

Is big and small business scum?

Hardly, I will defend them to the end of the world, but there is nothing wrong with having checks and balances and with employees working together to provide a better standard of living. You see that idea all the time on here by Libertarians, Republican's and Democrats alike..."If truck drivers would all get together fuel prices would tumble", is one recently submitted, just as I suggested on a thread that food prices would increase if farmers united...yet when employee do exactly that through Unions, people get irate and bash us.

My in-laws work at a factory in Northern NH whose 300 workers just voted down a Union Shop, and I do not blame them. That company is probably the best for employees I have ever heard of, but I do get upset when my in-laws bash my Union affiliation. They are very fortunate to have a manufacturing environment that is very fair and friendly, but if they were to ever work somewhere else, and at some businesses that are just downright shrewd they would see why some of us who have worked in both shops, prefer to work Union. With 80,000 employees, I cannot image what my employer would be like without a little leadership from the Union.

Are their Union improvements that can be made...I got a whole list of them, but you don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

Pull the plug and let them all go down the drain. Sure get a union job and coast at work. I'd pit a non-union plumbing shop against a union shop any day of the week, for production and quality . There is no incentive to do better or work faster in a union job. You can spue all you want , worked both, seen it in action.

NoSmoke wrote:Unions have the highest pay scales, not because they point a gun at the temple of the company's CEO, but because it is a negotiated contract. The company can, and will decide if the pay and benefits suggested by the Union are something it can abide with and still make a profit. Company executives should never agree to something that they can not live with...it is a collective bargaining agreement after all and they can say no.

I was going along till you made the statement above, this is where I must disagree. I had a chat with a union worker about four years ago, "He said I know the economy is tough and the shops not making much money, but If we don't get a raise were striking." How can you deal with a person or union with that mentallity?



Eric

NoSmoke wrote:This entire thing is pretty silly in my book: if I was to come on here and say that as a small business owner of a farm (which I am) and joined a local farm association to promote farming (which I have), there would be support from a lot of people.

The simple fact is, a lot of business owners do exactly that, join associations. They work because they collectively get like-minded businesses together (or just the fact that they are a business) and provide a united front and funding through their "membership dues" and provide lobbying to their business managers...the US Government, in hopes of controlling regulation and taxes. For some reason this is considered perfectly acceptable and yet being Union at a job is not.

They are the same thing.

With Union there is local representation that you vote on, just as a board of directors is voted on in an association for businesses. They are hoping to have some form of control on how their business is run using the collective power of the association to hire lobbyists to influence Capital Hill just as Unions use Shop Stewards and Local Representatives to influence what happens within the shop. And while business owners are ultimately hoping their associations provide for a better business climate, Unionized employees are hoping for better working conditions, better pay and better fringe benefits by working collectively rather than for every single employee to ask for a raise at review time.

What escapes me is that while many business owners openly hate governmental regulation of any kind, they expect workers to be perfectly happy with the government being the only ones to mandate working conditions. Businessmen bark at any minimum wage increases Congress applies, and ironically use lobbyists to do so, yet the increase of workers base salaries have only gone up 15% in the last 30 years while the cost of living has gone up 35%.

Unions have the highest pay scales, not because they point a gun at the temple of the company's CEO, but because it is a negotiated contract. The company can, and will decide if the pay and benefits suggested by the Union are something it can abide with and still make a profit. Company executives should never agree to something that they can not live with...it is a collective bargaining agreement after all and they can say no. You never hear the CEO's of these failed companies saying, "Well we agreed to buy these widgets from our supplier at $3 bucks a piece and now a year later we want that price to be $2 a widget"...it would never stand up to public scrutiny, because the public would say that widget company has a cost of doing business as well. But for some reason it is okay for companies to blame a labor rate set up with a Union and then blame the "supplier" of that labor when their profits tumble.

Is big and small business scum?

Hardly, I will defend them to the end of the world, but there is nothing wrong with having checks and balances and with employees working together to provide a better standard of living. You see that idea all the time on here by Libertarians, Republican's and Democrats alike..."If truck drivers would all get together fuel prices would tumble", is one recently submitted, just as I suggested on a thread that food prices would increase if farmers united...yet when employee do exactly that through Unions, people get irate and bash us.

My in-laws work at a factory in Northern NH whose 300 workers just voted down a Union Shop, and I do not blame them. That company is probably the best for employees I have ever heard of, but I do get upset when my in-laws bash my Union affiliation. They are very fortunate to have a manufacturing environment that is very fair and friendly, but if they were to ever work somewhere else, and at some businesses that are just downright shrewd they would see why some of us who have worked in both shops, prefer to work Union. With 80,000 employees, I cannot image what my employer would be like without a little leadership from the Union.

Are their Union improvements that can be made...I got a whole list of them, but you don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

Are you REQUIRED to join the Farmer's Association in order to be a farmer?

You say the union "negotiates" but what if the company doesn't want to? Can they just let the contract expire and hire all new non union replacements? Or does the government hold a gun to the CEO's head and tell him he MUST negotiate?

The fact that union wages went up "only" 15% while everything else went up 35% is just a testament to how much fake money the government has pumped into the system. Nothing more.

Higher costs lead to higher prices. It's that simple. And if the labor cost get too high due to forced union contracts, then the company has to make a decision and that generally ends poorly for the people the union was supposed to protect.

Ask me how I know.....

Are you REQUIRED to join the Farmer's Association in order to be a farmer?

You say the union "negotiates" but what if the company doesn't want to? Can they just let the contract expire and hire all new non union replacements? Or does the government hold a gun to the CEO's head and tell him he MUST negotiate?

The fact that union wages went up "only" 15% while everything else went up 35% is just a testament to how much fake money the government has pumped into the system. Nothing more.

Higher costs lead to higher prices. It's that simple. And if the labor cost get too high due to forced union contracts, then the company has to make a decision and that generally ends poorly for the people the union was supposed to protect.

Ask me how I know.....[/quote]

Jpete...was wondering if in your situation you had a choice to be a union member or not? I don't have a hidden agenda in this question...I'm just curious.

Northern Maine wrote:
Jpete...was wondering if in your situation you had a choice to be a union member or not? I don't have a hidden agenda in this question...I'm just curious.

In as much as I didn't have to work at the place I did, then obviously no. No one "forced" me to work there. But I was working as a garage mechanic with a degree in machining because I wanted to be a machinist and they were hiring.

In order to work there, as a machinist, yes, I had to be a member of the bargaining unit.

And for the record, I'm not in any way, shape, or form against collective bargaining. I'm against the unfair advantage the government gives union at the bargaining table.