Your "biggist point" Ron sems to be that you would like to insure that secret ballots are abolished. There is only one reason to want that - coersion and/or intimidation of anyone voting.
People do have the right to join a union and unions have rights protecting their ability to organize. Read the Hobbs Act, for example, if you don't believe me.
You might not like it much as one of the things it protects against is the sort of behavior that would result from passage of the legistlation you are hawking.
Yeah, well, that's fine, Ron, as far as it goes. You won't get a lot of rational argument about your biggest point.
But the battleground really lies elsewhere. For example, the one that John Carroll points out, that anything other than secret balloting will never be accepted in this country, is a major one. And, of course, there are many others, including the fact that unions tend to see protectionism as an all-purpose solution to non-competitiveness.
Anyway, it's not something we can solve here. *My* biggest point is that the reaction against unions you'll see in a group like this is visceral and vehement; it will never be objective nor academic; and nothing you can say or do is likely to change that. You're really prosyletizing to the wrong crowd.
On Sat, 19 Jul 2008 21:17:12 -0400, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed Huntress" quickly quoth:
Yeah; they may be thugs, but you want to associate with better thugs.
Isn't it the teacher's unions who have helped get us into the mess we're in with teaching kids, Ed? Maybe the NJEA is lily white, but I doubt it:
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only shows the more important 241,000 listings. Maybe all of us have our veils.
Go behind the scenes of any convention. Watch the Teamsters union in action for an hour or 6. If a person who is not in the electrician's union kicks an extension cord out of the wall, Union regs say that an electrician must reinstall it, noone else. Only riggers can lift heavy equipment, like heavy cardboard panels weighing a ghastly ten pounds. I had a field day watching the antics and talking with an exasperated union member in LV before the COMDEX convention about a decade ago. Yes, Ed, there is considerable dissention even within their ranks.
"We" meaning the RCM union? ;)
What? Michael'd find your uncles there? Do their 3 unions know about this?
On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 09:09:19 -0400, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed Huntress" quickly quoth:
While your relatives may not be thugs, many union members are. Which of your relatives do you think are thugs?
I did a quick google and didn't find anything of merit. Go ahead. From memory, it came about to keep teachers from being fired over highly political issues. Like unions, it has a few redeeming characteristics nowadays, but it, too, is often being abused.
What unions were designed to accomplish eons ago and what they are doing to us today are two totally different things, separated on one side by morality, fairness, and honesty, and on the other side by criminality and greed. Again, that doesn't apply to all unions, just most, judging by what I've seen, experienced, and heard in my half-vast 54 years. YMMV?
We could say the same about a number of corporate CEOs and hedge-fund managers. The difference is that they tend to use hired hands.
None of them. They're among the most decent people I know, including the ones who are or were members of unions.
You have to dig deep into the history to find it, unless you know people who lived it. In my case, I have relatives who lived it on both sides -- the petty local politicians, and the teachers who joined unions, as far back as
1929.
"Tenure" is an idea that comes from German higher education, where even the research was highly politicized, and the idea spread to universities around the world. The idea was to keep science and other research independent of politics, including academic politics.
In the US public schools, the situation obviously had nothing to do with research or "creating" knowledge in a scientifically neutral environment. It was just a convenient term, with some prestige, that was adopted to describe what amounted to civil service reform.
Through the 1930s, public school jobs, including teaching, were patronage jobs. When a new politician came in a lot of teachers were swept out, and the ranks of teachers were re-populated with the nieces, nephews, maiden aunts and other relatives and friends of the politicians. My uncle faced this in 1929 and again in the early '30s, when he was let go because he had the wrong political affiliations. Fortunately for him his wife's relatives started winning elections and he never had to face that again.
Anyway, the situation was common in cities and even many rural areas throughout the US, and it led to very unprofessional teaching. Anyone who thinks teaching in the US has declined just doesn't know how bad it was. I started elementary school in the mid-50s and some of those patronage drones were still around.
So the balance tipped the other way, and it created a new basis for drones. A second wave of reforms in most states make it easier to fire them now and teachers tend to be a lot better, but the reforms haven't gone far enough, for one simple reason: People don't want to get involved in the real business of politics. So the unions, and particularly their lobbyists, run roughshod. But there is no one to blame for it, except for the people who think getting involved in their local politics is too messy, or too time consuming, to step in and apply counter pressure.
That's the pattern for most of the excesses that have resulted from reforms that originally had a good purpose. The same is true of a lot of labor laws.
Separated by a couple of generations of people who didn't give enough of a damn to get involved. Unions had to organize and lobby to get what they wanted. Then people ignored the lobbies, or just grumbled to themselves, and the lobbies went wild.
Most unions hardly know what to do with themselves today, because they got most of what they wanted long ago, but there are important exceptions. For example, the companies that make cast iron pipe are some of the most murderous bastards left in industry, and they keep unions out by intimidation. Those people need unions.
The broader point should be recognized by this particular group, who tend to care about traditions and who have some knowledge of industrial history. Union people like Ron appear to me to be focusing on the past and won't quite let go of it. OTOH, there's little doubt in my mind that, given global competition, there are some companies that would revert back to their vile labor practices from the past if they could get away with it. Then competition would force other companies into the same practices -- the exact pattern that occurred over 100 years ago. Vigilence is the price of liberty, etc. It's easy to despise unions (my father despised them his entire life) but it's a good idea, IMO, not to demonize them. Labor still needs a supportive counterforce, even if it stays in the background.
Are you condoning corruption in the unions or anywhere else because:
"Corruption is the product of power and opportunity. No segment of society is immune to the incentives for corruption, and no segment of society is free of the kinds of greed and ambition that lead some people to become corrupt. There are corrupt church ministers as well as corrupt corporate treasurers and politicians."
Well, since there are corrupt church ministers...it's all OK???
SHAME ON YOU! Sorry, I can't condone it. Next, tell me my right/wrong detector is too biased or politically incorrect; that I have no right to form opinions about corruption.
Stop putting words in my mouth, Tom. I didn't say I condone it. What I said was that if that's the reason you despise unions, then you'd better despise every major institution in the US -- and the world, for that matter. You'd might as well just hole up and hide out. Or if it really upsets you, you could get involved with changing it...but that's a lot of work.
Oh, cripes. Do we have to watch every word here, like with the idiots on the kook groups?
I know what you mean. You know I know what you mean. And I know you know that I know what you mean. d8-)
Corruption is endemic to all kinds of institutions. Right now it seems to be running especially hot in Congress and in international banking. What I said was, if you're objecting to unions -- corrupt unions, uncorrupt unions, whatever -- because unions are corrupt, then you have a problem, because you won't find any large institutions that don't have some corruption. If you're saying that you only object to the ones that are corrupt, and that you think other unions are just fine, then I have to say that's a darned unremarkable position, because nearly everyone objects to the most corrupt examples of anything.
So it's sort of a self-evident statement that doesn't say anything. But let's be frank about it: you started off saying you object to the whole "union mentality," so it's pretty clear that you object to unions in general. Right? And that's what I'm responding to. Hell, damned near everyone objects to corruption, except for people who are corrupt themselves.
Ok, we'll end the bickering but I don't agree with ANY corruption no matter if it is "deserved" or not. No, I don't object to unions, I told my employees when they wanted to decert that I would demand they form an in-house union in order to present a collective bargaining unit rather than reach a separate peace with each employee individually. When the USW got word of a potential decert, the rushed out 20 goons (no better word) to have "individual" talks with the members. Many told me later that they felt threatened.
Read about unions in Japan. That's how it should be.
On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 23:59:40 -0400, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed Huntress" quickly quoth:
I'd be willing to bet that most of us here DO hold most of the people in charge of those institutions in the highest contempt, Ed. Greed and corruption are just _wrong_, no matter where they lie. We moralist and idealists just can't palate it. If you can, well...fine. Just don't push it on us. We're busy tilting at windmills.
Who in the heck does, Tom? My point is not that I "accept" corruption. Rather, it's that, like death and taxes, corruption has always been with us and probably always will be, and that it's a useless thing to make it a centerpiece in your judgment of any institution's value. Complaining about it is like complaining because the sun comes up in the east, when you'd rather have it come up in the west. If there's so much corruption in an institution that it can't do its job, then it's time to reform that institution's oversight and regulation. And that's true with many unions, particularly the big, old ones that fought the most brutal battles in past decades. They have deep and abiding streaks of ruthlessness and corruption in them.
So, you've had a bad experience that colors your attitude. It would be interesting to know the nature of the "threats" that your employees claimed.
Oh, I've read about them. If you ever read David Halberstam's _The Reckoning_, you know the history of Japan's "unions," which are total captives of factory management. Japan's unions right after WWII started off like US unions, only they lost the physical fight. Management goons broke a lot of bones to get those unions that you think are "how it should be." Now they're as obedient to management as well-trained puppy dogs. And that's why, as Europe's EC analysts said many years ago, Japanese workers were "workaholics living in rabbit hutches."
Contempt doesn't solve problems. It's like voting for a Libertarian: a posture that makes you feel better, but which solves nothing, except to keep you safely away from the messiness of it all.
No kidding, Sherlock. Tell that to all the former State Department officials who become lobbyists for foreign governments. Tell it to the investors who spread bad rumors about a stock while they take short positions. Tell it to General Motors when they make desperate, Hail Mary investments with their employees' pension funds.
In other words, show me a big institution or a big money position that isn't ultimately driven by greed, and that isn't shot through with corruption, petty or grand.
That's fine. Just stay out of the line of fire so something real and good has at least a chance of getting done.
Try Cargill Industries. One of the biggest companies ever. My sister worked for them for 7 years in upper management and states that they are VERY anti-corruption. You only hear about the bad ones, there are many, many good ones.
First, pick the young leaves in the spring and use them in salad. They're really tasty and they give salad a nice tang. In Italian neighborhoods around here you pay good money for cultivated ones. The ones in your yard are just as good.
When they get a little older, pick the leaves and wash them well, and then steam or boil them. They're better than spinach.
Later in the season you can dig up the plant and cut off both the leaves and the root, leaving a little junction the size of a marble ("hearts of dandelion"). These are a real delicacy, much like artichoke hearts. Be warned, though: you have to wash the hell out of them to get the sand out. Steam or boil.
Finally, if you're a real cheapskate, or curious, or if you like chicory in your coffee, dig up the roots, scrub them well, and then roast them until they're fairly dark, just barely lighter than commercially roasted coffee. Grind up the roots and use like coffee. Dandelion is a close relative of chicory.
Now, do you have any cattails on your property? Some parts are edible, you know...
Cargill has been sucking on the ag-subsidy teat for decades. Over a 7-year period they collected over $800 million in export subsidies alone. You don't consdier that to be greed or corruption? I do.
We would have gotten along, I'll bet. Maybe he knew how to make arrowhead roots taste like something. There are so many of them, and they're so easy to get out of the muck, that it's a shame they don't have more flavor.
I'll bet I could have shown him how to get the good part out of a surf clam, too. Nobody eats those things, but they're delicious if you know what to do with them. Oh, and blowfish...
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