Eh, companies can in effect already do that. They can decide to pay their employees less and donate money to the RNC, since companies can donate money. The first part is discrimination and against civil rights legislation.Originally Posted by Enoch the Red
I don't really see how you can ban this political funding by unions without doing the same for companies.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
I'd like to see some evidence of a company that forcefully takes out parts of their workers' wages in order to give it to a political party.
Hope is the denial of reality
Eh, if they spend money on a party it's money they could have spent on wages instead. They 'forcefully' pay their employees a certain amount which they determine, so that's really a weird point you are trying to make... how can you 'forcefully take' money from them if you can also just not give it to them in the first place?
By the way, I assume that if you are part of a union you can vote in that union too, so you'd have more control in theory.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Erm, no they can't. They'd get a different caliber of worker if they gave a lower salary. And your argument is quite frankly absurd. You can always make the case that some entity is withholding money from someone and giving that money to a third party, and therefore the third party is being forced to give money to the second one.Eh, if they spend money on a party it's money they could have spent on wages instead. They 'forcefully' pay their employees a certain amount which they determine, so that's really a weird point you are trying to make... how can you 'forcefully take' money from them if you can also just not give it to them in the first place?
By the way, I assume that if you are part of a union you can vote in that union too, so you'd have more control in theory.
Furthermore, you get charged union dues whether you're in the union or not. Regardless, it's a forced membership. What's the difference if they claim to represent me? You see nothing wrong with someone representing you without your permission (and getting paid for it as a result)?
Hope is the denial of reality
I don't like forced memberships, no (and we don't have them here anyway), but I think the points made above were a bit silly. I must admit I'm not entire sure on the American situation though to be honest. Over here neither unions or companies donate to political parties AFAIK. They both lobby, but that's institutionalized.
You don't have to work at an employer who offers you less money because he spends it on something else, but you don't have to take a job where you lose some pay to a union either. So they both attract a different caliber of workers, no? (unless for certain sectors union membership is mandated at all companies, and even then you could argue somebody can work in a different sector). And in both cases the other entity (employer or union) spends the money to benefit you (employer spends it to benefit his company which benefits the employers, union works on benefits for their members directly).
And the reason you call my argument absurd is the reason that your point of 'forcefully taking money' is absurd too - does it really matter if it is taken from your paycheck or never given to you in the first place? Same thing, really, in the end. Both situations someone else spends money, on things they claim is for your benefit too. And is there a real difference between a company donating money to the RNC or to the union, be it before or after it is listed on a paycheck?
And if it's so bad for all workers, why don't they vote to get rid of the system within their own union? Or don't unions have voting rights for their members?
By the way, wikipedia says that a non union employee at a union shop has the choice to only pay the part of the dues that is used for his benefit because it is spent on collective bargaining, and not pay any part that is used for political donations. Seems sorta fair - if you work at an employer who offers you working conditions based on collective bargaining agreements, it's only fair you also pay dues to get the collective bargaining in the first place.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
The unions find ways around that. The one here gives a majority of its budget to another union in "gratitude" for legal and logistic assistance. That union spends a large chunk of its money on political campaigns.
Hope is the denial of reality
No its not fair. Those who choose to join a union should do so, those that don't shouldn't have to pay. Just because others choose to, let them pay for it.
I do agree with Enoch. I think being forced to join a union as a job condition is way different than being forced to buy a uniform.
Using objective ideas and logic that couldn't be used to put forth other ideas you would disagree with or find ridiculous, state why this is so ⃰⃰.
⃰⃰ because I will do so if possible.
. . .
So the issue is more the loopholes around it than the actual unionizing rules?
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
No, my main problem is being forced to pay money to a private organization against my will. And the situation is the same in a large portion of grad schools in the country.
Hope is the denial of reality
If you don't think being required to buy a uniform for a job is different than being forced to join a union and have a percentage of your paycheck automatically taken out and sent to a third party, I don't really know what will make the difference clear. We all have to buy clothes for work after all.
Jazakallah!
June 14, 2011
Collective Bargaining Law Upheld in Wisconsin
By MONICA DAVEY
The Wisconsin Supreme Court cleared the way on Tuesday for significant cuts to collective bargaining rights for public workers in the state, undoing a lower court’s decision that Wisconsin’s controversial law had been passed improperly.
The Supreme Court’s ruling, issued at the close of the business day, spared lawmakers in the Republican-dominated Capitol from having to do what some of them strongly hoped to avoid: calling for a new vote on the polarizing collective bargaining measure, which had drawn tens of thousands of protesters to Madison this year and led Democratic lawmakers to flee the city in an effort to block the bill.
Republican leaders had warned on Monday that if the Supreme Court did not rule by Tuesday, they would feel compelled to attach the same measure to the state’s budget bill, which is expected to be approved this week.
The decision ended, at least for now, lingering questions about when and whether the cuts would take effect, but it also underscored the state’s partisan divide, which seems to grow wider by the day. The ruling was 4 to 3, split along what many viewed as the court’s predictable conservative-liberal line.
The majority of the justices concluded that a lower court was wrong when it found that the Legislature had forced through the cuts in collective bargaining without giving sufficient notice — 24 hours — under the state’s open-meetings requirements.
In its written decision, the court cited the importance of the separation of powers, and said the Legislature had not violated the state’s Constitution when it relied on its “interpretation of its own rules of proceeding” and gave slightly less than two hours’ notice before meeting and voting. In the end, the provision passed without the attendance of any of the Senate’s 14 Democrats.
Justice David T. Prosser, whose re-election bid was threatened this year because he was seen as a conservative who would cast the deciding vote on the collective bargaining measure if it came before the court, voted to overturn the lower court ruling. He issued his own opinion concurring with the majority.
Chief Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson, who is viewed by many as leading the court’s liberal wing, wrote a scathing opinion that accused the majority of a “hasty judgment.”
“It is long on rhetoric and long on story-telling that appears to have a partisan slant,” Chief Justice Abrahamson wrote of Justice Prosser’s opinion.
Republicans, who won control of both legislative chambers and the governor’s office in last November’s elections, praised the ruling, and said they could now move forward with what some of them describe as a fiscally wise budget.
“The Supreme Court’s ruling provides our state the opportunity to move forward together and focus on getting Wisconsin working again,” Gov. Scott Walker said.
Democrats said the court’s decision was unsurprising given a battle that has turned so fierce. Protesters, again, were mounting at the Capitol. Democratic leaders said they planned to remind voters of the collective bargaining bill in the weeks before Senate recall elections that grew out of the fight.
“I guarantee you, some Republicans are breathing a sigh of relief about not having to take this up again,” said Senator Christopher Larson, a Democrat. “On the other hand, these justices just sent a reminder to voters of what has happened here.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/us...wisconsin.html
Twitching again?
I could have had class. I could have been a contender.
I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum
Which is what I am
I aim at the stars
But sometimes I hit London
Good
So the sky wasn't falling?
One district does not a state make.
Is there evidence that other districts are having new found problems because of the legislation?One district does not a state make.
I can't comment on something you didn't post.
But I do know that PA's districts are all faring differently.
Better question: don't you think there are other districts in similar situations that might have benefited from this fairly reasonable change?I can't comment on something you didn't post.
But I do know that PA's districts are all faring differently.
Have Pennsylvania's school districts recently been lifted from the burdens of collective bargaining?I can't comment on something you didn't post.
But I do know that PA's districts are all faring differently.
PA has massive budget problems, I've never denied that. When Rendell wanted to increase education by $1 billion a few years ago, I posted about it (at the other place); I rant about the inefficient way we fund education with property taxes (70/30), with inequities by neighborhood and region.
But I don't lay blame on teacher unions or collective bargaining per se for our long-standing history of budget problems, or failing schools. That they had so much power for decades is also how lobbyists had power...because of the ways we elect and legislate. These legacy costs have been a problem for over fifty years, just like private pensions, the auto industry, SS and Medicare. Special interest groups have enough money and power to trump smart policy or radical change, and "governance" is an election cycle instead of long-term planning.
"Union" is just another word for "special interest group", and all we're doing is moving chairs around on the deck.
I would like to see any evidence of any district where things are "falling apart" due to this reasonable law.
Didn't you know that reducing an entity's costs leads to them falling apart?
Hope is the denial of reality
More good news: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14464327
I'm kind of torn between R and D stateside but in this instance I'm very happy.
Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allaku Akbar!
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/us...wisconsin.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...cJ6I_blog.html
The midwestern union machine brought everything to the table. Money, out-of-state foot soldiers and a vast media operation against the six people up for recall. They failed the first phase and will thus likely fail the second phase (two more recall elections next week).
A victory for reality as well as Obama's famous line that "elections have consequences".
Alhamdulillah, would be the term to use here.
Congratulations America
True, that was an opinion piece. I should have made that distinction more clear.I just checked Marc A. Thiessen. Not the most unbiased commentator around I'd suspect
Fair enough. I was also going to use jazakallah to the voters of Wisconsin (so far).
This is by no means over, but it looks like it's coming to an endgame with a vote to recall heroic Governor Walker in Wisconsin next week.
What I find interesting is that, as soon as the law came on the books that removed mandatory union payments (IE giving employees a choice of paying money to the union), some government union rolls declined substantially. The unions are getting plenty of money from out of state to fight this. But I think it highlights the cynical moneymaking system that has been extorted by government unions.
We'll see how this plays out next week.
Updated May 30, 2012, 7:57 p.m. ET
Wisconsin Unions See Ranks Drop Ahead of Recall Vote
Public-employee unions in Wisconsin have experienced a dramatic drop in membership—by more than half for the second-biggest union—since a law championed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker sharply curtailed their ability to bargain over wages and working conditions.
Now with Mr. Walker facing a recall vote Tuesday, voters will decide whether his policies in the centrist state should continue—or whether they have gone too far.
The election could mark a pivot point for organized labor.
Mr. Walker's ouster would derail the political career of a rising Republican star and send a warning to other elected officials who are battling unions. But a victory for the governor, who has been leading his Democratic opponent in recent polls, would amount to an endorsement of an effort to curtail public-sector unions, which have been a pillar of strength for organized labor while private-sector membership has dwindled.
That could mean the sharp losses that some Wisconsin public-worker unions have experienced is a harbinger of similar unions' future nationwide, union leaders fear. Failure to oust Mr. Walker and overturn the Wisconsin law "spells doom," said Bryan Kennedy, the American Federation of Teachers' Wisconsin president.
Wisconsin membership in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees—the state's second-largest public-sector union after the National Education Association, which represents teachers—fell to 28,745 in February from 62,818 in March 2011, according to a person who has viewed Afscme's figures. A spokesman for Afscme declined to comment.
Much of that decline came from Afscme Council 24, which represents Wisconsin state workers, whose membership plunged by two-thirds to 7,100 from 22,300 last year.
A provision of the Walker law that eliminated automatic dues collection hurt union membership. When a public-sector contract expires the state now stops collecting dues from the affected workers' paychecks unless they say they want the dues taken out, said Peter Davis, general counsel of the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission.
In many cases, Afscme dropped members from its rolls after it failed to get them to affirm they want dues collected, said a labor official familiar with Afscme's figures. In a smaller number of cases, membership losses were due to worker layoffs.
Tina Pocernich, a researcher at Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College, was a dues-paying union member for 15 years. But after the Walker law went into effect she told the American Federation of Teachers she wanted out.
"It was a hard decision for me to make," said Ms. Pocernich, a 44-year-old mother of five, who left the union in March. "But there's nothing the union can do anymore."
But economic factors also played a role. Mr. Walker required public-sector employees to shoulder a greater share of pension and health-care costs, which ate up an added $300 of Ms. Pocernich's monthly salary of less than $3,100. She and her husband, a floor supervisor at a machine shop, cut back on their satellite-TV package and stopped going to weekly dinners at Applebee's.
Meanwhile, she said, she paid the AFT $18.50 out of her biweekly paycheck and was now getting nothing in return. Her college eliminated one small-but-treasured perk, the ability to punch out an hour early during summer months—and the union was powerless to stop it.
In the nearly 15 months since Mr. Walker signed the law, 6,000 of the AFT's Wisconsin 17,000 members quit, the union said. It blamed the drop on the law.
A Walker victory would have other reverberations. It could put Wisconsin—which President Barack Obama won by nearly 14 percentage points in 2008—into play in this November's presidential contest, requiring his campaign to devote valuable resources to defending it. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has strongly backed Mr. Walker's efforts.
Mr. Walker, 44, has likened his policies to Ronald Reagan's breaking of the air-traffic-controllers union in 1981. He says unions make it difficult to balance budgets while maintaining government services without raising taxes. Backers have poured more than $30 million into his campaign since last year, compared with $3.9 million raised by his opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who entered the race in late March.
A victory by Mr. Walker "will be a dramatic signal to local and state politicians they can, in the name of fiscal responsibility, tell unions…to come into parity with private-sector workers, especially on benefits," said Michael Lotito, a San Francisco attorney who represents management in labor disputes and has testified on labor issues before Congress.
The Walker law sharply curbed collective bargaining for nearly all the state's public-employee unions except those for police and firefighters. Unions no longer can represent members in negotiations for better working conditions or for pay raises beyond the increase in inflation.
Unions have spent millions of dollars on TV ads campaigning against Mr. Walker. "Unions are putting a lot on the line and if they win, they win big, but if they lose, they lose even bigger," said Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University. A loss "will be interpreted as a sign of weakness and a lack of public sympathy."
Organized labor's strength has been declining for 60 years, as unions failed to keep pace with globalization, an increasingly service-oriented economy and more aggressive opposition from employers. Today, just one in eight American workers is a union member compared with more than one in three in the mid-1950s.
But that decline has come almost entirely in the private sector, where only 7% of workers today are union members. Public-sector union membership rates have held steady at around 37% since 1979, and the number of members has increased, thanks to growth in government employment. In 2009, for the first time, there were more union members in government than in companies.
The Labor Department estimates Wisconsin had 187,000 public-worker union members last year, but it hasn't updated the data for this year. The Wisconsin affiliate of the National Education Association declined to comment on any membership change.
Public-employee unions are under pressure elsewhere, too, as state and local officials cut spending in the wake of the recession, although the unions have won some fights. Ohio voters last year overturned a Republican law that went even further than Wisconsin's in limiting bargaining rights for public-sector unions by including police and firefighters.
But Republican governors Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Chris Christie of New Jersey have seen their popularity rise after taking on unions, and even some Democratic mayors in big cities—such as Chicago's Rahm Emanuel—have been pressing unions to accept concessions to help balance budgets.
Membership declines could be self-perpetuating, said Mr. Chaison of Clark University. With diminished dues, unions deliver fewer services, making membership less appealing and hampering recruiting.
The fight in Wisconsin has spawned bitter rancor across a state whose divergent progressive and conservative political traditions were long balanced by a culture of political compromise.
After Mr. Walker proposed the law, hundreds of thousands of union members and other labor supporters shut down the state capital for weeks, and Democratic lawmakers fled to Illinois to try to prevent the quorum the bill needed to pass. Union organizers helped gather more than 900,000 signatures to force the recall election.
But the unions also have made mistakes. They spent $4 million backing Kathleen Falk, a labor-friendly former official in Madison, who was crushed in the May 8 Democratic primary by Mr. Barrett.
Meanwhile, collective-bargaining rights for public employees has receded as an issue, with far more people saying in recent polls that job creation is their top priority.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...413999718.html
Good to see you twitching again.
I could have had class. I could have been a contender.
I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum
Which is what I am
I aim at the stars
But sometimes I hit London
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