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March 09, 2007 05:38 PM UTC
83 Comments
First off, I doubt anything so drastic as moving the convention will happen. There was a long process to select Denver, and the other finalist, New York, appeared at the end to be very eager NOT to have the convention there. Dean selected Denver despite labor concerns of our state not being union friendly enough, so this won’t come as a complete surprise.
If for some reason the convention does get moved from Colorado, I would think that this would be PR nightmare for the Democrats. It would certainly leave a bad taste in voters’ mouths toward Democrats all around, and I don’t see how it would help the cause of labor.
My other thought is that this is more evidence that the Dems in the legislature and Ritter share some blame for poor planning regarding the union bill that everyone agrees was largely symbolic anyway. Ritter should have communicated to Madden and Romanoff that this bill should be tabled until later in the session The legislature, for their part, should have realized that this bill should have been delayed for the sake of other more substantive issues for workers in this state (a good example would be health care reform legislation).
Legislative leadership communicated with Ritter regarding the time-table for this bill, and they were reassured that Ritter wanted it to move forward on the fast-track it was on. As soon as the bill arrived in the Senate, Joan Fitz-Gerald asked again if the Governor wanted the bill slowed down, and she was told ‘no’ – move the bill.
Ritter has no one to blame for this but himself.
If he didn’t want the bill, he should have said so (and never made the promise to begin with) and he certainly should have asked to have it delayed, if he didn’t like it.
Fits-Gerald rammed this one through for her own interests. She wants labor on her side in the CD-2 election and was willing to sacrifice their bill as well as some of Ritter’s credibility to get it. That is a total load of bull that Fitz-Gerald asked him if he wanted it slowed down and he said no. You are either highly misinformed, or you have ulterior motives as well for twisting what happened so badly.
Maybe Ritter wanted to hurry up and kill it to get it out of his hair.
Trust me.
you are completely wrong—the bill got held up in the senate with a GOP attempt at a state verison of a filibuster, she held together all the Dems in the senate, who got grief from the press as well as the senate Republicans, all with the assurances from the governor that he was going to sign the bill. The bill gets to his desk, and business whines, and he backs down. It was a do-nothing bill which basically just showed solidarity with labor, and he chickened out from signing it. This is Ritter’s fault—if he didn’t want the bill, he could have told leadership, who could have it killed in committee.
In reply to someone else.
http://www.denverpos…
Read it. The assurances that you guys keep talking about just weren’t there. Labor new it, the media new it… but apparently you folks in the legislature convinced yourself otherwise. Just because some vague agreements were reached doesn’t mean that when it was launched first thing out of the starting gate it wasn’t somehow being rammed through. It was pushed through first thing. This was a partisan move to try and show who had control. Ritter had to veto this to keep from being walked all over.
or have ulterior motives.
I know for a fact which conversations took place with whom and when.
A meeting with Ritter in December with Fitz-Gerald, Romanoff and labor agreed that the bill would be fast-tracked right out of the chute.
Moreover, the question from Fitz-Gerald regarding slowing the bill down, once it reached the Senate did occur and the answer was as I reported – no.
Suggest you touch base with Dem Senators regarding this. It will be confirmed. It is pretty common knowledge among Senators and the lobby.
If you were personally there and heard Ritter say, let’s push it through fast. Then fine. I wasn’t in the room. It was my understanding that was not how process went. If you were TOLD by someone what was said, then I propose that neither of us know for 100% certainty what happened. But besides any closed door meeting that may have occurred, Ritter’s position was not to push it through fast.
I hope I never have to say that again, but Roger is right about the timing and conversations that occurred. Ritter flat-out changed his mind late in the game on the labor bill.
I’m glad he did. It was the right choice.
Labor should just shut up and instead of armtwisting workers to support it by open ballots (how Bolshevik is that?), they should be enticing them by showing benefits, training, and how to get along with management to get things done.
Middle Road is no doubt an employer with in a power mind set. I do not think it would have mattered much how fast or slow this bill moved. I think that is a cloud in the way of the main fact. Big Business is the prevailing force that runs this country and THAT is the primary reason that union membership is just 12%. Unions need to accept some of the blame, but look at the vibrant economies in Europe. They don’t bust unions. The laws in this country are designed to do that and we are tired of getting SOLD OUT by our own. Gov. Ritter said he would sign this and backed down. I am not confident that common ground can be reached. We have to expect Republicans to take the low road, but not the DEMS. If the DEMS want us to bolt the state party, I say we go. I do not think that will happen, but labor is not going away.
Unions are still badly needed. The gap bewteen rich and poor in this country have never been greater. An recent report from the AP further states, ” The United States lags far behind virtually all wealthy countries with regard to family-oriented workplace policies such as maternity leave, paid sick days and support for breast-feeding, a new study by Harvard and McGill University……I intend to write more on this soon. In the meantime, Read Senator Dorgan’s new Book – “Take this job and Ship it”
…don’t care a wit about the ‘working man’ any more. All they care about is their rapidly declining power, and being able to force more people into paying dues so they can remain relevant. MiddleroadDem is probably a former Dem union supporter that’s as sick of their BS, and now realizes what a liability they are to the Democratic party.
But if unions are made up of working men and women, why wouldn’t they care about themselves?
Illogical.
If you are referring to union management, they are put their by those working men and women.
Unions are the most democratic institutions we have, in terms of where the power is and how it is granted to others.
“The most Democratic….” and yet they find a secret ballot too cumbersome for their needs? Get serious. Labor’s time, in their current corrupt, bullying form is past.
A secret ballot would NOT be too cumbersome if the vote was allowed to happen without union bustings tactics. The New York Times called it like it is with a recent editorial. The most pervasive influence on western society comes from multi-national corporations. UNIONS provide a needed balance to that. Remember checks and balances? Unions are needed now more that ever. And we are not going away.
But ya’ll need to spend a few bucks on the P.R. battle.
“And we are not going away.”
Yes, you are. The irrelevance of Labor in this state is really becoming apparent even to Democrats.
Because you say things like this:
“A secret ballot would NOT be too cumbersome if the vote was allowed to happen without union bustings tactics. “
THis is the single most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read on this blog, and I hope you understand how completely ridiculous it is.
People are smarter than that. There is no possible philosophy that suffers from a secret ballot except one that people aren’t interested in supporting.
I’ll give you $20 if you’re not a salaried union official.
That’s what I thought.
Pay up. I am NOT a union official. I am a VOLUNTEER like most of us in the labor movement. But why would that matter? That would not change the facts or make a difference either way, no matter how wrong your position is.
Union busting now has the full backing of the government and for most important things they are denied their most basic power… the strike. When an employer can replace strikers with permanent replacements, striking loses effectiveness. The law has removed almost every protection for unions and highly favors big business. It is amazing to me that they have survived as well as they have in this environment where the deck is stacked against them. If the playing field was level, you would see a sharp rise not only in union numbers but power as well.
I do not think you understand the process or even care what that process is. I stand by my position. IF unions were allowed to conduct ballot elections WITHOUT being subjected to coercive anti-union (busting) tactics unions would not free choice application votes. Most (or a large number) employees readily join unions when they know their jobs are SAFE. The government workforce proves that.
As for your opinion, about “the irrelevance of Labor in this state”, that remains to be seen. If labor is irrelevant, then why are blogging about the issue? Why then is there so much opposition to DEMOCRATIC unions being able to organize? Unions officers are elected unlike CEOs.
Democratic unions are one of the best paths to empowerment for common people. Due process in the American workplace is taking a nose dive as the labor movement loses ground; and that is no accident. Busting unions and targeting activists is the first step to preventing democratic workplaces.
years. Labor unions provide employees lawful input into their lives at work. Such democratic principles should be a common goal of a just society.
Unions are needed today more that have been in the 75 years.
David R. Francis, of The Christian Science Monitor recently wrote that “a third of American working women are given no paid leave, and a quarter of men get no pay from their employer if they take a week or more off for rest and recreation”. The article went on to state that ” this difference, the three economists hold, is not due to long-standing European culture. In fact, Europeans worked more than Americans as late as the 1960s. Nor can it be explained by higher tax rates in Europe with its socialized healthcare. Instead, they found that the greater power of trade unions in Western Europe accounts for the “bulk” of vacation time enjoyed by European workers”. An recent report from the AP further states, ” The United States lags far behind virtually all wealthy countries with regard to family-oriented workplace policies such as maternity leave, paid sick days and support for breast-feeding, a new study by Harvard and McGill University researchers says. The new data comes as politicians and lobbyists wrangle over whether to scale back the existing federal law providing unpaid family leaves or to push new legislation allowing paid leaves’.. I could list many more examples, but this illistrates my point.
I was commenting on how unions are run, not organized.
The ballot of organization is the result of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act and subsequent policy decisions. Do you understand why those ballots are secret? Do you understand that employers used to break legs and kill union organizers and members?
I sincerely hope you are enjoying the many benefits that organized labor has brought you, LB.
“Do you understand that employers used to break legs and kill union organizers and members?”
Did you know that unions have done deeds every bit as bad?
Come on, it’s a running joke in our society because of their ties to crime and “protection”.
One of the many problems with the labor movement is that they justify their position by referring to conditions in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Labor has been guilty of many more egregious transgressions than employers have since WWII.
Union greed has in fact prompted the backlash that is outsourcing. Why would a corporation pay a lazy union member twice as much to get half as much work done when it could go outside the US and get it done cheaper and more efficiently?
Here’s a twist – if unions can reform the way they do business, I see a valuable need for them in the future. They need to stop being only a PAC whose focus is purely on the sustenance of their leadership, and focus on creative ways of representing hard working Americans. Now, the impression and much of the reality is that unions create lazy, unreasonable workers making much more than their market value.
It seems they have lost all of the functionality they added to a free market system and retained only the greedy, bullying, lecherous aspects that define unions for so many now.
When the powerless come into power, they do tend to do the same things that their persecutors did. No better example than Israel. Yes, there are union thugs and powerseekers, but that doesn’t mean that the idea of laborers bargaining collectively is passe’ or should be gotten rid of. It’s the only power lowly workers have.
If classic unionism has run its course, I’m all for listening to alternatives. But so far, most discussion here and in the larger America has been a variant of “get rid of them.”
And don’t forget that “greedy, bullying, lecherous aspects” hold equally, if not moreso true for corporate power.
as in the more extreme case of Marxist revolution, is that union leaders are no longer “workers,” and no longer represent the interests of workers. In fact, no individual naturally or inherently represents the interests of any group of individuals: The mere fact of becoming a representative changes their social location, and thus their interests. The same is true in many situations: The leaders of third world countries (or any non-democratic country) do not represent the interests of the general population of those counties, but rather of a small elite that supports their rule, and of more powerful countries of which they are clients. Draw out the analogy, and you’ll see on which side union leaders’ bread is really buttered.
Selling out to BIG business was the wrong choice.
then his or her staff is not doing their job. This was a staff error and it was made at the expense of their boss. Not a great start for a guy who came in with such momentum after beating Beuprez in November.
I think much more poorly of Ritter than I did before. When it seemed like he was blindsided, his actions made sense. But this – agreeing all along and then ducking out at the last minute – makes it sound like he just got rolled.
I don’t know if he is referring to one of Ritter’s staff when he says Ritter said something. But Ritter himself never did. The worst that he can be blamed for is poor management of the whole thing.
on more than one occasion in public meetings during the campaign that he would sign such a bill.
Ritter personally said in December that he wanted the bill to be fast-tracked.
Ritter’s chief of staff and lobbyist, assured Joan Fitz-Gerald when she asked about slowing the bill down, that the he wanted it to move ahead. As I said, this is common knowledge among people at the capitol, particularly in the Lobby.
You can try to get Ritter off the hook on this one if you want to, but it flies in the face of what actually happened.
I am not a labor lobbyist, but I am Democrat so I do have some concern about what has happened here, not so much about this bill but what it portends about the trust factor with Ritter and his relationship with members of his own party in the General Assembly.
We already know that he is waffling on promises he made to folks on the Western slope about oil and mineral money. And he has already had problems with regard to selecting his cabinet.
I don’t have a dog in the fight over the labor bill because it does not impact me or any clients/interests I have other than from the trust factor. I have clients now questioning me as to whether the Governor’s word can be trusted.
If he didn’t want the bill, he should have said so, or if he wanted it slowed down until some kind of compromise could have been worked out, he should have said so.
Had he done any of that we would not be having this discussion today.
I don’t necessarily disagree that a veto was not in order. I don’t think the bill made much difference one way or the other, and personally I don’t care about the Labor Peace Act. I do care about how politicians or elected officials handle how they do what they do, and Ritter did not handle this very well.
More than I do Fitz-Gerald. So once again, if you were IN these meetings then you know more than me. If you were hearing this after the fact from Fitz-Gerald or her staff then I’ll believe what I heard.
And if you care to ask folks at the General Assembly about what happened they will tell you – including Andrew Romanoff and Alice Madden.
You apparently don’t like Fitz-Gerald, and that is fine, but don’t discount the truth just because you don’t want to believe it.
As of Thursday afternoon, Ritter was telling people he was signing the bill, it was not until Friday morning that he apparently changed his mind.
Every thing he said and every signal he sent up until Thursday night indicated he was okay with the bill and was going to sign it.
He had numerous opportunities to stop and/or slow down this bill, but did not. As I said in my original post, he brought this on himself. If he did not want it, or wanted to revisit priot to final passage, he should have said so.
The people who were either ‘in the room’ or are knowledgeable about this are not lying about what happened. I am not the only one who knows and is willing to say what happened here. Deny if you want, but you will at some point have to get your head out of the sand.
People in the administration were complaining that it was being shoved through. This seems at odds with Ritter agreeing to jam it through. If your version of the story is true, then either Ritter was not communicating what he wanted to his staff (i.e. wanting it jammed through according to you) or his staff wasn’t communicating what Ritter actually wanted to the right people. All of these things can exist at the same time. From the legislative side it seems like he is agreeing while on the executive side he is not intending to agree. I don’t see this as my head in the sand. It just sounds like a miscommunication to me. I think blaming Ritter’s inexperience is fair. I think saying that this wasn’t rammed through by legislative leaders, is not fair. Heck, even the Unions knew before the Thursday that you mention that he was probably going to veto it… but the legislature didn’t?
Here is an article that may refresh your memory from that Wed.
http://www.denverpos…
One part says:
“”No matter what my campaign has been before, whether I said I support or opposed something, there still should be some dialogue. There should be some input. There should be a discussion,” he said in an interview last week.
“And I think it was really unfortunate that right out of the chute a significant interest group (business) was able to say they didn’t have much of a discussion.”
Ritter said that while he and his staff have regular conversations with Democratic House Speaker Andrew Romanoff and Democratic Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, specific bills were not part of early meetings.”
NOTE: The interview was conducted “last week” which at the time would have been more than a week before the bill was vetoed. Please read this article as it refutes much of what you are saying.
The union hacks keep lying that the bill wasn’t important. It was critical to the economic future of the state.
If the Dems want to take the convention out of Denver, great. It’s a huge loss leader that never will pay for itself.
The way the unions are hammering the Dems in the legislature and Congress, they’ll be so far down in the pols by convention time that the Dems won’t want to hold a convention.
Political conventions are obsolete and should be scrapped.
this was a done deal. The decision had been made and all the disagreements smoothed over. Now the AFL-CIO is making threats to have the Dems move the convention. To where? New York’s Madison Square Garden? This can do nothing but hurt their side. It will reinforce the image of the Union Boss telling his paid politicians what to do. Especially after all the delays in announcing the convention location in order to fix the union problem.
The Governor’s response was interesting, will he fold for the second round of this bill? I think he wants to avoid the appearance of being in the unions pocket. They, of course, want to give the impression that they run things.
I would like to hear from the supporters of Big Labor on this site. Please tell me how this move helps the Democratic Party.
I don’t know what big labor thinks it is doing. But since every other comment is anti, I’ll do my best. I can think of two things:
(1) Maybe labor is trying to position Ritter to agree to something else. Perhaps they think he will agree to some other bill that they want much more to make the whole mess go away.
(2) I don’t know quite how to formulate this, but I always wonder what Christian conservatives accomplish by forcing Republican candidates to pay homage – go to Bob Jones University and suck up to Jerry Fallwell and such. It seems counterproductive to me. But the Christian conservatives do have a very high profile and a lot of power in the Republican party. So I guess it works for them. Maybe labor wants the same clout in the Democratic party. Maybe they think playing nice hasn’t worked and now they are going to get in a brawl, even if they get hurt too – just to show they are willing to do it.
between the Evangelical Christian movement and Big Labor is that the Evangelicals have been growing in numbers while the unions have been shrinking. Otherwise your comparison is pretty apt.
If you ever lived east of the Mississipi River you would understand how entrenched unions were in the political weave. There was a time the AFL-CIO wielded power over the Democrats that Pat Roberts and Jerry Falwell could only dream of. And they became just as bad for the Democratic Party as the Evangelicals are for the Republicans. Now they are more like an over the hill boxer, throwing wild punches in the hope of landing that lucky strike that will put them on top again.
What a circus. I am thoroughly enjoying watching this one unfold.
Good riddance
This is the downside of pluralism, or a political system driven in large measure by the organized “special interests” that, hopefully, represent the range of interests of the population as a whole. This is the system that de Toqueville marveled at, and thought would serve as a bulwark against “the tyranny of the majority.” And it has been remarkably robust. But it has many flaws.
1) Interests are not organized in proportion either to the number of their adherents or to their support in the general populace. Obviously, those interests with more access to material resources, and those interests with organizational structures already in place, have an advantage.
2) It is a system which gives disproportionate voice to small, highly organized, fanatical fringes.
3) As the economist Mancur Olsen argued in a book titled “The Rise and Decline of Nations,” it is a system which facilitates a lot of energy being diverted from the production of wealth to the struggle over the distribution of wealth, which undermines a nation’s competitiveness (and explains the otherwise paradoxical phenomenon of stagflation, oddly enough).
When underrepresented and mistreated interest groups succeed in organizing in pursuit of social justice for their members, there is not mechanism that kicks in once social justice has been achieved and social injustice favorable to them begins to be attained. For instance, the NAARP certainly had just concerns about the treatment of the elderly in the United States a few decades ago, but has more than obtained social justice for its members, and now frequently (and successfully) fights for exorbitant diversions of wealth to its members. The elderly vote!
Organizations representing the interests of one faction, when successful, race past “reasonable,” and keep on going. The NRA’s defense of the availability of weapons clearly designed for urban violence is one example. Labor’s frequent intransigence is another.
I’m not saying that labor never has just concerns. But organized labor, like organized anything, is not designed to achieve social justice: It’s designed to get all that it can, and to throw its weight around when it doesn’t get something it sought.
Another way in which this dynamic plays out is in Congress, with each Congressman motivated to please his own constituents, a situation which leads to pork-barrel politics and the whole “earmark” problem. Congressman are driven to look for ways to divert resources to their district (and senators to their state), regardless of how well those investments serve the country as a whole. As we all know, it’s a recipe for enormous waste in government spending. This is just the most “concentrated” version of the more general dynamic I’ve been discussing here: A tendency, especially in pluralistic political environments (or non-consolidated political environments), for a lot of resources to be diverted toward zero-sum battles over obtaining them, rather than invested in non-zero-sum ventures that actually produce more wealth.
I know that this was more abstract than the discussion you were having, but I just felt like putting it into a broader context.
Wadhams must be salivating at the thought of so many easy targets all in one place. Can anyone say “fish, barrel… smoking gun”? It would be a dreadful shame to move the convention now… I am really looking forward to seeing moderate Colorado Dems mortified at the fire and brimstone they are about to experience.
This is only the sort of bluffing and posturing Sen. Salazar and Mayor Hick gave us right before the DNC awarded Denver with the convention. Salazar wanted to get credit for ‘saving’ a convention that was all but guaranteed to go to Denver. The thing is this, the DNC had no choice. Nobody wanted Denver for this thing except, well, Bill Richardson. The Dems really wanted New Orleans–the devastation of which will be a key component of the Democrat agenda–or Minneapolis. New Orleans isn’t ready and Minneapolis was swiftly usurped by the crafty GOP. Bloomberg didn’t want the convention and so Denver was the last resort.
So, let not your heart be troubled, Tofu Fest ’08 will be right here in the Mile High City. The unions will likely get some sort of a promise or compromise and they’ll back down on the threats. I’m with you, though, Coloradans think Bill Ritter’s your average Democrat. What they don’t realize is that the man is more like Atilla the Hun when you measure him up to the behemoths of the liberal establishment. I can’t wait for Macchiato Mark Udall to have to be chillin’ with the likes of Michael Moore and Al Sharpton and then trying to sell himself to Colorado as a moderate. This will be a fabulous time for the GOP to sit back and watch the Democrats in Colorado fizzle in the purple haziness of the Pepsi Center.
Your claim to know the motives and inner thoughts of Salazar and Hick crosses the border into ridiculous.
Everyone knew that Denver was getting the convention. Salazar and Hick wanted to pull more money in and buffer their image at the same time.
…would they relocate it to? I don’t remember a big line of people excited about mythical revenue and a law enforcement nightmare.
It’s like having your drunken, abusive distant relative come stay on the couch in your living room for two weeks. He’s bringing his loud, know-it-all union buddy and his crazy leftie conspiracy vegan buddy over to camp out on your lawn, too.
Hehehehehehe.
I thought Labor spent the last month and a half saying that the Republicans made a bigger deal out of this bill than it deserved, and it was just a small change? If that’s true, then why are they throwing such a tantrum about it. Why not save the big threats for bills they think are truly important?
Labor never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity to do the right thing. It always takes every opportunity to shoot itself in the foot and anger American workers and turn them off to joining a union. If they succeed in turning the DNC away from Denver, they’re influence in the Party is finished. What cowardice, yes cowardice at not signing the letter.
If Labor does succeed in booting the DNC from Denver, please see the article below, with the definition of a Pyrrhic Victory.
http://en.wikipedia….
In principle I like what labor has done for our country. 40 hour work week, a middle class, no more child labor all good things, BUT they make it so hard to support them when they completely overplay their hand at every turn.
The DNC is not going to move, and because of their tantrums they are forcing everyone else to dig in. This whole thing can be worked out, but now they are putting Ritter in a spot where he’ll look like their puppet if he reverses himself.
Exactly. The legitimate, progressive, and humanistic advances you cited are all many decades old. But, for the most part, labor passed the point of getting a just piece of the pie and kept on going. That’s the nature of the case. Somehow, we have to figure out how to defang organized interests once they get too powerful, including both big business and labor. I have no idea how, within a democratic framework, to do that, but until we come up with something, this is going to be the story over and over again.
By electing people who make it clear they won’t be a rubber stamp even with financial support. Big business and Labor have no power without politicians who bow to them as paybacks for campaign contributions.
The vast majority of voters permit themselves to be swayed by the name-recognition and other advantages bought with the dollars that political campaigns receive from these groups and, much more importantly, the vast number of voters are swayed by the money and jobs their representatives bring into their state or district! How many senators or congressmen ever agree that an obsolete military base in their home state/district should be closed? And if they did, what would be their chance of re-election? Our own tendency to disintegrate into squabbling camps grabbing at our collective resources is in many ways exacerbated by our political system.
I agree that the second aspect of the problem -i.e., the systemic pressures in favor of pork-barrel politics- is the more intractible. While politicians need big campaign donations to launch successful bids for office, they can (and to some extent do) take them from the groups they were planning on supporting in any case. The point is, we have to be less oriented toward supporting groups, and more oriented toward refining our political-economic system to achieve collective goals that may sometimes benefit some groups over others, but only as a means to the end our collective quality of life.
If a military base is closing and the legislator works to stop the closure, he is helping many constituents; families at the base, and businesses/workers who make their living off the base. In this case, business and labor might support his efforts as well as a large number of his constituents. Juxtapose this to a scenario where few constituents would be happy with or even effected by a bill (Like a union shop bill or an oil company bill that negatively effects landowners) and you can clearly see where the interests of the donor take precedence over the interests of the constituents. One bill of this sort here and there wouldn’t mean much either way, but when a pattern of votes develop that benefit the few with deep pockets over the many in that district, the people should look to make changes. Complacency with the status quo is as problematic to the system as are big donors trying to buy votes.
But, as is my wont, I free-associated my way into a deeper version of the problem, that is, that even when representatives please a majority of their constituents, as opposed to deep-pockets that are a minority of their constituents, they may still be engaging in a simmilar dynamic on a national level: That is, diverting resources to a minority (the state or district that benefits from the military base), at the expense of the majority (the nation that invests in military bases not as gifts to states and districts, but as part of a hopefully efficient national defense infrastructure). The latter problem is not solved by voters voting their interests: In fact, it is exacerbated. My point? Who knows.
Is Labor trying to pretend they still have the power that they used to.
And if Ritter signs the bill later, they can pretend that this stunt worked.
It’s like the old high school quarter-back pretending he’s still good at football even though he’s four hundred pounds and lives with his mom.
The prom queen left him for a newer model.
and Haners+Middle’s high school football and prom queen lines are REALLY cracking me up!
Does Labor really want to prove that Dems are in their pocket with a move like this? Seems dumb to me but maybe it’s an acceptable idea. Can you imagine this scenario from the other side?
“Encana’s chairman has asked for the Republican National Convention to be moved because the Governor refused to sign a bill that would ease drilling restrictions in residential neighborhoods.”
Yeah, that would go over like an oil filled pinata.
YOU crack me up!
That I had over the “Yeah, that would go over like an oil filled pinata.” comment just made my monday
You’re not supposed to put oil in them? No wonder no one comes to my daughter’s B-day parties anymore….
(personally, I liked the whole nose and face dialogue even more.)
but I’m happy to make Haners’ day!
and have 1 or 2 hundred dollars of union dues a month deducted from my wages-you can bet I’ll sign a right to work petition.
That’s the reality that Ritter realized, and the AFL-CIO better realize.
My dad can be found firmly placed in the case-by-case basis on the union argument. He has personally fought against unions and won, but he said something that really stuck out for me. He said: “No shop has ever become a union that did not deserve it.”
Something that I think everyone needs to realize is that unions do not swoop into shops that are well run, fair, and reasonable and turn them against their bosses. My guess is, at least for me this would be true, that if a union was to gain a toehold in a company that I worked for, I would have already left the company due to the conditions. Moreover, I think it is necessary to take a look at where unions are growing, not losing steam. Unions are not, at least to my knowledge, making entries into small business. Nor are they gaining ground in white collar, non-intensive jobs.
You have presented a false dichotomy with the two choices presented. There is always the third, find a new job option.
The question is, should they be allowed to legally force other workers to pay dues against their will. I should not have to quit my job because a majority of my fellow employees decide to unionize, nor should I be forced to pay into an organization that I didn’t want in the first place. Unions should be able to bargain for their own members. If non members do not get as good of a deal because they are non members, then they can think about the benefits of membership.
The problem with this very reasonable position is “the prisoners dilemma,” or “collective action problem,” or “free-rider problem.” Whenever their is a population that has a situation in which each person’s contribution to a public good (e.g., each union member’s contribution in union dues, time, and energy to the public goods of the concessions that Unions win for all employees in the shop) benefits those who do not contribute, there are strong incentives not to benefit without contributing. All societies do things to counter this: Paying taxes is obligatory, etc. One possible solution, of course, is to make membership voluntary, and benefits limited to members. That would have pretty much the same effect as making membership mandatory!
I meant “to benefit without contributing,” rather than “not to benefit without contributing.” I make an incredible amount of typos in these posts!
No one is being forced or fleeced against their will. If a non member sees that Joe Blow in the next cubicle is getting paid more for the same job and has better benefits, he might weight this out against the losses of income from Union dues and decide he would be better off joining. That should be his choice, not the Union’s or legislator’s choice.
So why isn’t that the way it’s done?
My guess is that there is some “equal protection/fairness in the workplace” type legislation that states you can’t discriminate against non union workers by paying them less for the same job. Maybe some of the better versed labor law posters in here can clarify this question.
The employer probably wouldn’t want a two or more tier system for wages and benefits.
My suggestion a while ago is let the non-union folks negotiate their own terms annually, individually. Since most folks are poor negotiators anyway, they might suddenly see that paying a thou or whatever a year in dues is ultimately money in the pocket.
The main point of my argument was the quote from my dad. Unions arent going to get in if there is not cause, and any employee can rally his/her colleagues against any injustice they feel the union may inflict.
Ok, so I replied with a simple answer to what I considered a simple, false dichotomy. If a person does not want to join a union they can rally the troops against them. I need to review the law, and maybe someone can clarify for me, but as it stands, and after the two votes have passed, dont all become members of a union? If this is true, the difference between the old way and the bill are one vote.
Unions have to be able to negoitate contracts. It is very difficult to negotiate effective contracts for members only. That is disparate and impossible in many cases. What is wrong with majority rule in the workplace? It works in government. Think about it. How come people have to pay homeowners association dues when they never use the pool, ect and often disagree with the elected homeowners board? How come we have to pay fees when we go to our local health club? Simply, because if we are choosing to accept the benefits of the organization, then we should have to pay for them. Unions should not have to represent non-members for nothing.
Those were the points I was making on this site when the bill was a hot topic.
Good employers seldom have a union appear at their door.
Bad employers often deserve it.
Employees can find another job if they don’t like it. Isn’t that what capitalism and freedom is about?
Going through many hundreds of old family photos last week in Florida, I found one of my dad on strike, walking the picket line. The business? A photo lab in NY about 1938!
I went to see edwards and was discussing it with my dad and he brought that point up. I must have missed you saying it earlier.
If people dont like it they can also rally their colleagues against the union. Its like people who bitch about the government, but dont vote. If you dont do anything to stop a union than leave, or be quiet.
I think your Dad is right, most of the time. Unions generally crop up when things get really bad. My only beef is forcing unionization or union dues on everyone. After Governor Gregoire took office in Washington State, legislation was passed that required all state employees to join the Union, pay non representation fees, or be fired. I doubt this was a case of needed Union representation, much more likely a big wet kiss for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions for Dems and for Gregoire’s recall count. The next year, the Union, pro workers that they are, pushed to get hundreds of state employees fired for non payment of dues. In addition, the increased pay that the unionized state employees received was eaten up in union dues and increased benefits contributions. The Union made out like a bandit while union members lost money and some were fired. If this is good for American workers then I’d like to know what bad is.
I have it on good authority that the Communications Workers of America began “Communicating” with CDOT and other state workers in February. Pamphlets were passed out in parking lots, robocalls were made, and the CDOT Chief Engineer sent an email to all CDOT employees saying CDOT does not oppose or support the actions of the CWA, but any such activities need to be done on the employees own time-yada yada yada.
Do you think this might have something to do with the veto?
but if they overreach here and pass legislation that requires state workers to join or be fired, the crying will be louder than Amendment 41 is currently causing. Would make a great campaign issue for R’s though!