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It has to be as unpleasant to pretend the world is as simple and binary as you make it appear. So why do you insist on that pretense? Are those voices in your head saying the things you keep mis-attributing to the rest of us forcing you to look at things that way?Quote:
Originally Posted by GGT
Fuzzy appealing to emotion, how quaint. :donkey:Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
I'd love to see constructive ideas from either party, that truly addresses our national educational problems and shortcomings. Focusing on teachers' unions or public unions is one of those "binaries" that falls short of a long term comprehensive goal. Must be those voices in my head, Shirley. :donkey:
Does he even understand what unions are for? In contrast to the Internal Affairs department?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
There is no legal definition of thuggery, it's not a criminal classification. And I think legal intimidation by government employees is legal thuggery, primarily because they are government employees and their threats of private boycotts inevitably spill-over to the public services they are providing.Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
BS GGT, this thread has been exclusively about public sector unions. My entire beef is with public sector unions, I have much fewer qualms about the legal status of private sector unions.Quote:
Originally Posted by GGT
Yes, they are a means for public workers to apply political pressure for more money and obscure work rules at the expense of the taxpayer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro
This may surprise you, but 85% of the US private sector is non-unionized. So far the world hasn't ended.
You're not even attempting to have a valid fact based discussion. You take a question and run with barely related talking points, even when you completely miss the mark :(Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
You both are asking for a snippy summary when you suggest that I don't know what public unions do and how they interact with government. I know what they do, I get a front-row view every M-F.
:bulb: I didn't ask for anything, much less a snippy summary, I only pointed out another failed attempt to oversimplify and generalize as you continue to push your anti-union agenda. You crossed the line with the thuggery remarks way back, but you really jumped the shark with suggesting unions favor illegal activities.
That's correct, we're talking about English. "Thug: A tough and violent man, especially a criminal" "Thug: a cruel and vicious ruffian, robber, or murderer," they all go on like this. The secondary definition always seems to be the proper name for a member of the Thuggee cult. We got the word from the Hindi "thag," for sly, fraudulent, cunning, and dishonest, again all not things one associates with boycotts.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
Again, union members have proven willing to use physical intimidation tactics. There is a time and place for referring to "union thuggery." A boycott, whose only relation to such activity is that unions *along with pretty much every other mass-based organization in existence* are willing to use it as a tactic, isn't it. That you think it is demonstrates that you've gone completely over the bend.
I guess he also wants us to ban Greenpeace and other NGOs who also called repeatedly for boycotts due to particular issues. Maybe next he wants to tell us that Greenpeace consists of thugs?
I do have to say that it's a bit ironic to see left-wing groups take the same kind of a "either you're with us or you're against us" stand that they condemned Bush for.
A "ruffian" is a bully. Are these public union officials not bullying people? You can try and dig yourself into a semantic hole all you want, ultimately the issue is about government employees unduly intimidating people into supporting their pay scale.Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
I think it's mostly within reason if private sector unions want to engage in these kinds of boycots. But I think it's an entirely different story when government workers do it. I've made this distinction dozens of times now, but you seem to be ignoring that.
Scenario: members of the local Police Benevolent Association association show up at your front door and ask you to put a sign in your front yard that says, "Cops deserve better pay." You refuse. They take down your address and two weeks later you get a latter saying that the police won't accept your "neutrality" and assume you want cops to make less money. And they are going to tell every cop on the force that you think the police should be paid less.
How is this not undue intimidation from government employees? That's thuggish enough for most people.
For the twentieth time, I am drawing a very clear distinction between government unions and NGOs/private sector unions. Greenpeace can try whatever boycotts they want, best of luck to them. But government workers shouldn't be allowed to do that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro
A ruffian is a physical bully. Again I must reference how violence is always part of the meaning in the use of "thug." *except, apparently, to your incredibly sensitive sensibilities, which seem to interpret peer pressure as violence* Something we have seen unions use, but which is not anywhere in evidence HERE.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
At this point, the ultimate issue is about how you have lost every last one of your marbles.Quote:
ultimately the issue is about government employees unduly intimidating people into supporting their pay scale.
You can go in and out of semantic holes all you want, intimidation isn't always violent.
Once again, is the scenario I outlined not entirely legal intimidation?
Quote:
Scenario: members of the local Police Benevolent Association association show up at your front door and ask you to put a sign in your front yard that says, "Cops deserve better pay." You refuse. They take down your address and two weeks later you get a latter saying that the police won't accept your "neutrality" and assume you want cops to make less money. And they are going to tell every cop on the force that you think the police should be paid less.
Intimidation isn't always violent, but thuggery is. There is absolutely no point discussing anything else with you until you acknowledge how batshit insane it is to call a common political tactic, the go-to standard for legitimate economic pressure, "thuggery." If you can't see how warped that is, then you can't see anything else either.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
It's really "batshit insane" to consider intimidation a form of thuggery?
Have you taken a step back recently? I mean, I know you're into the semantics, but holy shitsnacks.
I'm with him on this one. Also he wasn't referring to intimidation, well at least not in the form of "Nice house, it'd be a real shame if something were to happen to it."Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
It's batshit insane to keep referring to boycotts, a commonplace, legitimate, non-violent means of applying economic pressure, typically for political ends, as a criminally violent endeavor. If you can't acknowledge that it's not "thuggery" then you can't form a rationale conclusion about anything. The very best you're aspiring to is being the stopped clock that's right twice a day, approaching accuracy by accident.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
Can't discuss those while ignoring political agendas and tax money. They're connected and that's the gist of your beef. Let's not forget the nit picking and semantics, defining power or thuggery. You've gone over the bend and lost your marbles, while I hear voices in my head, according to Fuzzy fur balls. Yeah. :bored:Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
Everything is connected. Let's talk about everything at once.
A brilliant idea. By making all topics and discussions about everything, things will finally be so vague and amorphous that everyone else will become confused and jumbled, leveling the field.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
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Originally Posted by Illusions
Fuzzy is raising a petty and semantic argument. What isn't intimidating about what these public employees have done so far?Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
For the 20th time, I think it's fine if private sector workers want to do this. When a bunch of government workers come by and talk about boycotting your business if you don't support them getting a pay raise, it fundamentally undermines the relationship between people and their government.
Why this is such a difficult concept to grasp is beyond me.
Why does someone's employer change how we should view boycotts? I know your rationale for public employees not being allowed to strike, but a boycott's a boycott. All you've done to elucidate that is your obviously wrong position that any public employment action is criminally violent.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
As I've said before, your view that it's thuggery is more than sufficient to demonstrate that you have absolutely no rational basis for any of your thoughts on public employees or their organization.
Why is it so difficult for you to acknowledge that this hasn't been criminally violent? Why do you have to invent this fantasy that political advocacy is tantamount to being mugged?Quote:
Why this is such a difficult concept to grasp is beyond me
I never said it was violent. I said it was thuggery. I'm not alone in using that word, but we can play the semantics game forever. If you had actually asked why I object to this particular type of boycot (instead of arguing the nature of the word "thug" and "bully") I would have elaborated.
Just as I don't think public workers should be able to strike, I don't think they should be able to organize into state-recognized interest groups. I object to the pressure public unions can exert on a variety of fronts, and one of those is the subtle implication of the delivery of government services.
When a group of government workers band together and threaten the interests of people who don't support their agenda, it makes day-to-day neutral and efficient governance very difficult. If policemen are going door-to-door demanding people publicly support their payscale, those who refuse (or accept) have every reason to believe they will get different treatment from police. That's not acceptable.
Because you still refuse to demonstrate any hint that you recognize reality, thuggery IS violence. If you say something is thuggery, you're saying it is violent. If you're just echoing a Wall Street opinion piece word for word *without attribution for several days* well that just demonstrates that in addition to denying reality, you can't take a moment to consider its accuracy or lack thereof.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
There is absolutely nothing about being state-recognized that affects their boycott. Boycotts are typically generated by someone calling on the public in general. As for the implication that the boycott has an implication on the delivery of government services, do you have anything to suggest this affects standing government contracts? Because that's the only mechanism by which you can even imagine this involving government services. And we both know the answer to that question, don't we? Not that you won't insist on some "subtle" effect. After all, you just said that having a policeman tell you he doesn't like your politics means he's just going to sit and watch as you get mugged.
So wait, let me get this straight, in Dreadnaught's America, since my dad is a postal worker, and thus a government employee, he is not allowed to not shop or stop shopping somewhere, if he disagrees with how they do business, and it would be thuggery, or committing violent or brutal acts in the manner of thugs, to tell the business why he was doing so, and what they could do to placate his issues?
...really? You're completely serious about this? And you think that this is a sane and rational position to take? Or is it magically fine because its just him, and would suddenly transform into thuggery if it was more people who agreed with him? Is there some invisible cutoff point, for instance, 99 is okay, but 100 is thuggery? Perhaps you could discuss this with Kathaksung...
No, no, no. He's allowed to stop shopping somewhere. But he's not allowed to talk with his coworkers about that because, God forbid, that might give them ideas. Dread wants the workforce to be fragmented in order for them to be as powerless as possible. He recognizes that a unified group of people has more power than a group of people with the same idea but going about it individually - and that's a threat to him. Because individuals rarely can enact broad policy changes. Groups of people can.Quote:
Originally Posted by Illusions
However, if we were to ban unions for that reason, we'd also have to ban lobbyists, political parties and ultimately abolish the government totally and utterly. Because every one of those is the representant of a group of people.
I am a member of or vote for a political party because I think they represent my will best (or at least have the most in common) and because I know that my individual single voice has next to no power in politics. The will of a group of organized people will always be stronger than the will of a group of unorganized people.
It's the same with unions - only that their scope is smaller than that of a political party.
What Dread wants amounts to direct Democracy. That might have work in ancient Athens with it's mere voter population of a few thousands. It won't work in countries with a voting population in the hundreds of millions.
From the WSJ:
Steel pipes? Monopoly power? :rolleyes:Quote:
Having lost their fight in the legislature, Wisconsin unions are now getting out the steel pipes for those who don't step lively to their cause. A letter we've seen that was sent to businesses in southeastern Wisconsin shows that Big Labor's latest strategy is to threaten small businesses with boycotts if they don't publicly declare their support for government union monopoly power.
If your cops really treat people differently because of their politics, and respond differently to calls made by them, there is more wrong with your police department than 'union thuggery'.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
Besides, in another thread it was said that there should not be any anti discrimination laws, people should just boycott businesses. But government workers are exempt? That doesn't leave a very effective boycott. Which reminds me, police also protect racists and other extreme groups when they have protests, even though they disagree (strongly) with their politics. But they would not protect a business they boycott due to union rights? While they protect the KKK? Yeah right.
Monopoly power actually makes some sense, since IIRC, Wisconsin is like California. You have to pay dues into a union whether you're a member or not, and government workers are all in "union shops", so there's only one organization which you can get to represent you. The public employee unions have a monopoly on that labor.Quote:
Originally Posted by GGT
You're right, Flixy. I'm not sure why Dread mentioned cops in this anti-public union sentiment (that seems to have spread like a virus :eek: ) There might be some of that in the Wild West or southern small towns, at least based on anecdotes people here have posted about, more like who gets ticketed for speeding or let off with a warning. But not in major urban hubs like NYC for things like responding to burglaries or violent crime.Quote:
Originally Posted by Flixy
I wonder if he meant state sanitation workers (who pick up garbage or plow snow) might show preference to certain areas or shop owners? After this winter it looked like that could be the case, where entire neighborhoods were stilled snowed in after two days. That would still mean more entrenched problems that go beyond unions.
It may be semantic, but it isn't petty. When a word is chosen for it's negative connotations rather than actual descriptive accuracy, indeed when it is chosen because of it's negative connotations inspite of a lack of descriptive accuracy , then that person is trying to make a point without going to the trouble of proving it and this is worth pointing out.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
Wouldn't that be a monopoly by the union only on its members, though?Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
It's not any union membership 'monopoly of representation' that would be a problem if cops or fire fighters don't respond (because they don't like that bank's or Quik Trip's politics), but corruption.
You're right to roll your eyes, the correct word is monopsony. :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by GGT
Everyone is very radically misinterpreting my views on this. As Fuzzy pointed out, government workers have monopoly power. When they unionize, they exploit that monopoly power. They also politicize the delivery of their services. The Western world has seen an extreme of that in some Western European countries that have been riddled by civil service strikes for decades.
The US hasn't had too many government strikes and our federal government has basically resisted collective bargaining for labor costs for decades. But our state government unions have been able to win enormous, budget-busting concessions by exerting a huge amount of political influence that is unique to their particular role in society. That kind of influence can spill-over outside the confines of government until we have government employees using their state-funded union dues to have a very deep and (I believe) inappropriate impact on our society.
I suspect at his core Fuzzy agrees with this given the state he lives in. And I think this is unique to unionized government workers. I don't think the same situation exists with private-sector unions or any other political group.
To address a few of the specifics:
1) Fuzzy: There's nothing subtle about allowing policemen to knock on your door as policemen (uniformed or not) and ask for political support. That crosses a very big line, yet it's also completely legal. I'm not sure why you don't see a problem with day-today government being politicized.
2) Illusions- The postal service isn't exactly a government agency.
3) Flixy- There would be something very wrong with our police. But I prefer to remove the mere temptation and possibility of politicizing our government workers.
4) Khend- As I've stated numerous times, I don't object to organized boycotts or legalized unions. My objection is the public sector becoming a massive political actor. The strikes that you had two months ago were limited, but I don't want them to become at all commonplace here.
5) Steely- We can agree to disagree about a word forever. But Fuzzy was going apoplectic over a semantic issue that not really central to this. I'm not the first person to use the word "thug" and "bully" interchangeably, and I won't be the last.
Well, I can't speak for the state employees, but for federal employees, this kind of behavior is explicitly banned by the Hatch Act. If that's what you're worried about, it seems to me that the more efficient way to go about it is to ban this kind of activity rather than deny a whole group of workers the right to strike. If you really want to go down that route, than I think it would behoove you to suggest alternative means of hearing grievances rather than painting public service as a staff of jackboot thugs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
Most aren't stupid enough to do this in uniform, but when your local cop comes to your door and asks for political support the impact really is the same. And when entire chunks of the state workforce are mobilized for elections (most get that day as a holiday compared to the private sector), it's a very potent political force.
But state workers don't have a "right" to strike unless their legislators grant them such a privilege. They didn't have that right for the first 25 years after the Wagner Act and the world didn't end for state employees.
But the more time I spent in the public sector, the more I'm fascinated by this persistent idea that state employees somehow have grievances that must be addressed using collective bargaining (beyond normal civil service rules). That somehow the 85% of private sector workers who aren't unionized somehow have no ability to pursue their interests, grievances and advancement.
I did not say that and I do not think that. I said that as best I could recall, the legislative environment Wisconsin has created, vis a vis labor organization, allowed public sector unions to either be monopolies, or at least behave in a monopolistic manner. Workers don't have monopoly power or anything that even resembles it. Thinking the workers do just ties into what I've been saying about what your insistence on "thuggery" tells us about you. That you have no connection to reality.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
It crosses no line, there's no reason it shouldn't be legal, day-to-day government is and always has been politicized *that's exactly what the general meaning of politics refers to* and those policemen at your door aren't making it any more or less politicized.Quote:
1) Fuzzy: There's nothing subtle about allowing policemen to knock on your door as policemen (uniformed or not) and ask for political support. That crosses a very big line, yet it's also completely legal. I'm not sure why you don't see a problem with day-today government being politicized.
Uniform or no, it's not allowed to use your position as a federal worker to solicite political support. If a police officer, as you suggest, it explicitly or implicitly suggests their services are contingent on political support, report them. Also, could you provide a source on the election=state holiday? Wiki has only eight listed, but it's a)Wikipedia and b) a cruddy article to boot.
I never said that grievances must be address using collective bargaining, that's all you. Furthermore, my experiences suggest that many public (again talking federal here) employees do resolve their issues on an individual basis. I do believe collective bargaining is a useful tool and restricting the right for a group of people to organize is not something to be done lightly. Especially when there are alternatives to address the issue which you seem hellbent on ignoring.
Especially when it would be highly immoral to restrict some people's rights to collectively bargain through unions. Again, Policemen and Firemen. Do you really want to let those people go on strike? Can you imagine the amount of chaos a strike of the police or the fire department would cause? I mean, it already is a problem if they only do what we Germans call "Dienst nach Vorschrift" - doing their work exactly as it is laid out in the contract and not one iota more.
Thus you'll have to let them unionize. It's the only feasible way for those public workers to bargain with their employer. And no, Dread, individuals bargaining don't have the same power a group of people have. Banning unions would be an incredibly lopsided move benefitting only the employer.
It's the same over here with teachers - teachers in Germany are not allowed to go on strike. How exactly are they supposed to adress (and maybe oppose) broad policy changes from politicians if they're not allowed to organize?
This seems to be a recurring dilemma, doesn't itQuote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught