public unions versus the public

[moralist]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxe34WqKcT4&feature=em-subs_digest

A clear concise explanation of public union employee practices where disability has become the new welfare.

[Robert Baratheon]

In my home city of Providence, RI, the pension system has been pushed to the verge of bankruptcy by the police and fire unions. In the early 90's, eight out of every ten police officers in the city retired on disability, which gave them a totally tax-free pension and health care for life with 5-6% compounding cost of living adjustments not tied to inflation (a doubling time of about 12 years). The nearby city of Central Falls actually did file for bankruptcy due to its pension obligations. The city of East Providence has been put into a bankruptcy-like receiver process, and Woonsocket is preparing to file shortly.

There have been a number of egregious cases in the news over the past few years - one "disabled" firefighter with an alleged shoulder injury was caught on camera lifting heavy weights in a local Gold's gym. After a city investigation, his disability was renewed and he continues to collect today. The implicit defense from apologists is typically that they "risk their lives" so they deserve to perpetrate whatever frauds they can get away with and the public should simply defer. Some actually continue to assert the disabilities are legitimate. I think these people are doing incredible damage to the public trust left in our society, but ultimately I blame the system which has created all the wrong incentives and fails to adequately safeguard against human nature.

Private unions aren't inherently better or worse than public unions, although the public unions can sometimes "elect their employer" and exacerbate what some call the "union life cycle." Unions bankrupted the U.S. steel, automotive, and airlines industries, as they are now bankrupting many of our municipalities. Making unions voluntary through right-to-work legislation solves many of the problems - turns out most workers want little to do with them when given the option. My wife and I save $1100/year in membership dues by not joining the unions in our workplaces. It's the mandatory nature of unions in most states and the special protections and privileges bestowed upon organized labor by the federal government that have created much of the problem.

[caroljane]

It is indeed sad that a living wage and job security can be achieved by labour unions, and that the entire world economy is being destroyed by them. Obviously their time is past, as no one today deserves or should expect a living wage, much less the continuation of any wage, unless they continually surpass the expectations of the free markets, those infallible arbiters of excellence.

[Robert Baratheon]

Daunce - Most individuals pool resources with others and can therefore live comfortably earning less than what progressives typically call a "living wage" based on all manner of erroneous assumptions about living situations. Household living seems to be consistent with humanity's most natural state of social existence and is in no way a bad thing. Paying everyone $20/hour would only devalue the dollar; cut teenagers, low-skilled workers, and immigrants out of the labor market; or both. In any event, there are far more efficient and equitable ways of raising wages than empowering labor unions, which are notorious for corruption and promoting laziness and incompetence.

[caroljane]

It is funny to read this on the very day that I read that McDonalds has admitted that nobody could actually live on the minimum wage, however many hours they worked. They counsel their employees how to `Budget`and `plan.` Yeah.

Unions like all institutions have corruption and inefficiency. But they are the only institutions I know of that are bottom-up, based on the rights and the needs of the workers, period full stop.

[moralist]

It is indeed sad that a living wage and job security can be achieved by labour unions, and that the entire world economy is being destroyed by them. Obviously their time is past, as no one today deserves or should expect a living wage, much less the continuation of any wage, unless they continually surpass the expectations of the free markets, those infallible arbiters of excellence.

Whenever a "living wage" becomes an entitlement in itself without being the earned merit of productivity... it's game over.

[moralist]

It is funny to read this on the very day that I read that McDonalds has admitted that nobody could actually live on the minimum wage, however many hours they worked.

Minimum wage is a perfect match for minimum skill, minimum productivity, and minimum responsibility.

[BaalChatzaf]

It is funny to read this on the very day that I read that McDonalds has admitted that nobody could actually live on the minimum wage, however many hours they worked.

Minimum wage is a perfect match for minimum skill, minimum productivity, and minimum responsibility.

There are people who hold down more than one job.

[Robert Baratheon]

Unions like all institutions have corruption and inefficiency. But they are the only institutions I know of that are bottom-up, based on the rights and the needs of the workers, period full stop.

In my experience, unions in the United States tend to be very top-down and authoritarian. In most states, workers who don't want to fund them are required to do so against their will. This creates a gap between membership and leadership concerns, and the two find themselves frequently out of alignment. Leadership tends to be very well compensated, typically enjoying six-figure salaries, bonuses, fully funded pensions (even as their members are losing theirs), and free health care. Unlike public institutions, most union compensation and political activities aren't FOIA-able and remain hidden from public view. Union leadership faces perverse structural incentives counter to member interests, always being pushed toward antagonism and away from cooperation in order to maintain the adversarial environment under which unions thrive to justify their own existence.

Unions also tend to not be as egalitarian as they claim. In Animal Farm fashion, some workers end up "more equal" than others in the union pyramid scheme. When the benefits cuts arrive, as they inevitably do in a unionized workforce when the host organization can no longer cover costs, it's the new workers the union screws rather than spread the pain out equally. As I like to say, even when union leadership is successful in driving out Farmer Jones, it's only a matter of time before membership finds themselves looking in through the farmhouse window and can't rightly tell pig from man around the dining table.

[moralist]

It is funny to read this on the very day that I read that McDonalds has admitted that nobody could actually live on the minimum wage, however many hours they worked.

Minimum wage is a perfect match for minimum skill, minimum productivity, and minimum responsibility.

There are people who hold down more than one job.

Yes. That's how to double the minimum wage. If a person can't produce more with their work, the solution is to work more.

[caroljane]

Of course, that's it! How dumb of me not to see the obvious. A night job and a day job - never to bed and early to rise - we will soon all be wealthy and wise!

[moralist]

Of course, that's it! How dumb of me not to see the obvious. A night job and a day job - never to bed and early to rise - we will soon all be wealthy and wise!

Yes. That is the road to success.

Nothing motivates a person to increase their productivity more than having to do more work. For as they acquire more skills and are able to take on more responsibility, they naturally earn more money commensurate with their increased productivity and are free to work less if they so choose.

There can be no freedom without economic freedom... and it is up to each slave to work to earn the money to buy his freedom.

[anthony]

I don't know how minimum wage is calculated in America (North or far North), but usually the underlying premise is "human dignity". That is, by receiving the wage necessary to fund a home and a family - and all other 'rights'. But you don't have the right to a job, you have the right to seek and negotiate one. You have all rights to whatever you can afford - but no 'right' to force an employer to sustain your life choices. (Marriage and children, included) That's a claim, not a right.

The grand-sounding "human dignity" heard increasingly lately, takes away human dignity from the very people who can be discovering it the only way: for themselves - and makes them dependents on government and unions.

Minimum wage is a great wrong, based on the mostly out-dated perception that the capitalist businessman is not concerned about a secure and content workforce.

[moralist]

I don't know how minimum wage is calculated in America (North or far North), but usually the underlying premise is "human dignity". That is, by recieving the wage necessary to fund a home and a family - and all other 'rights'. But you don't have the right to a job, you have the right to seek

and negotiate one. You have all rights to whatever you can afford - but no 'right' to force an employer to sustain your choice of lifestyle. That's a claim, not a right.

The grand-sounding "human dignity" heard increasingly lately, takes away human dignity from the very people who can be discovering the only way: for themselves - and makes them dependents on government and unions.

Minimum wage is a great wrong, based on the mostly out-dated perception that the capitalist businessman is not concerned about a secure and content workforce.

I agree.

There are two systems:

1. Unearned Entitlement

2. Earned Merit

...and it's no mystery which imparts human dignity and which is human degradation.

[jts]

I am puzzled that there is such a thing as a minimum wage, meaning it is illegal to work for less than x money per hour. How can people be so stupid? Evidently such people exist or this stupid law wouldn't exist.

It should be obvious to everyone with half a brain that if a guy is not worth the minimum wage, then either he will be unemployed or the employer is losing on him.

Even if he can't make a living on less than the minimum wage, he should not be prohibited by force of law from doing what little he can for himself (plus whatever voluntary charity).

And he should not be prohibited by force of law from learning a skill and getting PAID (even tho it's not enough to live on), which is a better deal than school, where he has to pay, often with a loan, and it's usually a government school where what he learns is often of little value.

[moralist]

I am puzzled that there is such a thing as a minimum wage, meaning it is illegal to work for less than x money per hour. How can people be so stupid? Evidently such people exist or this stupid law wouldn't exist.

It should be obvious to everyone with half a brain that if a guy is not worth the minimum wage, then either he will be unemployed or the employer is losing on him.

Even if he can't make a living on less than the minimum wage, he should not be prohibited by force of law from doing what little he can for himself (plus whatever voluntary charity).

And he should not be prohibited by force of law from learning a skill and getting PAID (even tho it's not enough to live on), which is a better deal than school, where he has to pay, often with a loan, and it's usually a government school where what he learns is often of little value.

You made your points so clearly...

...and that's exactly what I did. Instead of becoming a slave to student loan debt just to sit like an inert lump in school listening to the leftist drivel of tenured government funded failures, I got paid to work as an apprentice while I learned a useful trade and then I started my own business debt free.

[anthony]

I am puzzled that there is such a thing as a minimum wage, meaning it is illegal to work for less than x money per hour. How can people be so stupid? Evidently such people exist or this stupid law wouldn't exist.

It should be obvious to everyone with half a brain that if a guy is not worth the minimum wage, then either he will be unemployed or the employer is losing on him.

Even iŦ heĠcan't make a living on less than thť minimum wage, he shoulŤ not be prohibited by force of law Ŧrom doiŮg what little he can for himself (plus whatever voluntary charity).

And he should not be prohibited by force of law from learning a skill and getting PAID (even tho it's not enough to live on), which is a better deal than school, where he has to pay, often with a loan, and it's usually a government school where what he learns is often of little value.

Sensible and right. I'm seeing here in SA the minimum wage, coupled with strike-driven increases (irrespective of a worker's personal productivity, or not) sometimes becoming no wage at all - when companies and industries close down due to grandiose Statist/Union insistence on human dignity. It seems this is preferable to allowing people to work for economical wages, which many would choose to do. Widespread misery and rising unemployment is quite OK, when the State is seen to be doing the *right thing*, somehow. Not to forget, these are the lovers of The People!

Result, the opportunities for young workers to become skilled, as you point out, are stifled, and efficiency of employees falls away due to their job sinecure.

[Dglgmut]

Unions like all institutions have corruption and inefficiency. But they are the only institutions I know of that are bottom-up, based on the rights and the needs of the workers, period full stop.

The rights and needs of the workers are not the "bottom". The bottom is value creation, which is what qualifies action as "work".

If you are digging a hole and filling it back up, that is not work, that is a waste of time and effort.

For those workers to have their needs (which are as relative as our expectations, by the way) met someone needs to be producing. And for that production to be valid people need to voluntarily spend money on it... which makes Capitalism the most democratic system there is.

Not to mention Hostess, or have you forgotten about that already?

[Dglgmut]

It is funny to read this on the very day that I read that McDonalds has admitted that nobody could actually live on the minimum wage, however many hours they worked. They counsel their employees how to `Budget`and `plan.` Yeah.

Do you have anything constructive to say? What is your solution? If McDonald's workers started a union demanding $20/hour McDonald's would close--would this help?

[anthony]

Yes, the "bottom" here, is the one who puts up his ideas, his capital and takes the risk - the initiator of a business.

That's bottom up. Someone who creates something where there was nothing.

It involves the metaphysical (again), I think, in that in the leftists' way of seeing, any business concern is a metaphysical 'given'.. An entity that somehow came into being, and will always exist - like a mountain. Jobs too, are a given, therefore. To mention that it's all metaphysically man-made would contradict all their neat misconceptions of the duty of the Capitalist to a worker.

[Dglgmut]

I asked a socialist if in their ideal economy a worker could take his paycheck and use it to pay someone to do labor for him, and that if they could not use the money however they chose, is it really property at all... Didn't get a reply.

Socialism is the most subjective theory, because each socialism will have different rules for how one can and cannot use one's property based on what that particular socialist deems "fair". Should you be able to make a will in which your children will inherit your wealth? Many socialists say no... Can you give ANYTHING to your children? Now we get into serious subjectivity...

Somehow the people who actually put effort into making their lives better are beyond empathy... they are no longer human because they choose not to suffer.

Suffering is what brings us together... yeah... maybe socialism is a mental illness.

[Darrell Hougen]

It is indeed sad that a living wage and job security can be achieved by labour unions, and that the entire world economy is being destroyed by them. Obviously their time is past, as no one today deserves or should expect a living wage, much less the continuation of any wage, unless they continually surpass the expectations of the free markets, those infallible arbiters of excellence.

Carol,

Labor unions didn't "achieve" a certain wage, they unethically used force to coerce employers to provide it.

"Living wage" is not a valid concept. Almost any wage is sufficient to support life in a free economy and people have certainly survived in the past on much lower wages.

It's not about what a person "deserves," it is about what he has earned.

Free markets tend to push up wages over time. Even a person who doesn't contribute anything in terms of knowledge or understanding benefits from the efforts of those that do.

Darrell

[caroljane]

It is indeed sad that a living wage and job security can be achieved by labour unions, and that the entire world economy is being destroyed by them. Obviously their time is past, as no one today deserves or should expect a living wage, much less the continuation of any wage, unless they continually surpass the expectations of the free markets, those infallible arbiters of excellence.

Carol,

Labor unions didn't "achieve" a certain wage, they unethically used force to coerce employers to provide it.

"Living wage" is not a valid concept. Almost any wage is sufficient to support life in a free economy and people have certainly survived in the past on much lower wages.

It's not about what a person "deserves," it is about what he has earned.

Free markets tend to push up wages over time. Even a person who doesn't contribute anything in terms of knowledge or understanding benefits from the efforts of those that do.

Darrell

One man's unethical coercion is another man's successful contract negotiation.

Living wage is indeed not a valid concept. But it works so darned well in practice.

Most workers do not have enough time to wait for the free markets to push up their wages before the rent is due.

[Darrell Hougen]

It is indeed sad that a living wage and job security can be achieved by labour unions, and that the entire world economy is being destroyed by them. Obviously their time is past, as no one today deserves or should expect a living wage, much less the continuation of any wage, unless they continually surpass the expectations of the free markets, those infallible arbiters of excellence.

Carol,

Labor unions didn't "achieve" a certain wage, they unethically used force to coerce employers to provide it.

"Living wage" is not a valid concept. Almost any wage is sufficient to support life in a free economy and people have certainly survived in the past on much lower wages.

It's not about what a person "deserves," it is about what he has earned.

Free markets tend to push up wages over time. Even a person who doesn't contribute anything in terms of knowledge or understanding benefits from the efforts of those that do.

Darrell

One man's unethical coercion is another man's successful contract negotiation.

Living wage is indeed not a valid concept. But it works so darned well in practice.

Most workers do not have enough time to wait for the free markets to push up their wages before the rent is due.

So, you're defending the use of force? Let's hear it for the thugs!

"Living wage" works as propaganda --- a little abuse of the language in service of a highly questionable end.

Workers don't have enough time? What about the people that don't have and can't get union jobs? The high wages of the unions come out of the pockets of ordinary people that aren't in unions. What about their rent?

Darrell

[Dglgmut]

One man's unethical coercion is another man's successful contract negotiation.

Living wage is indeed not a valid concept. But it works so darned well in practice.

Most workers do not have enough time to wait for the free markets to push up their wages before the rent is due.

Unions are not coercive unless they are somehow supported by the government.

As for markets pushing up workers' wages, that's not true. In a free market wages decrease over time--as the population increases and money supply remains the same. However, the cost of living should decrease at a faster rate than wages, and therefore the purchasing power of wages would effectively increase. This is a result of increased productivity (technology).

Unions may very well be a legitimate way to keep employers in check, like blacklists, as long as they have no connection to real coercion. Unions are like the counterpoint to monopolies.

Any non-violent attempt to increase workers wages is acceptable, as would be any non-violent action from employers to cut costs.

We should not focus on one or the other, but accept that there must be forces working against each other in order to attain any sustainable solution.