i agree that many unions now are anachronistic and need to be reformed, and i accept your assessment that many unions have failed to amend some practices that are no longer fair or practical, including the example you cited. do layoffs and raises need some performance criteria beyond just seniority? certainly, some adjustments ought to be made to promote both short-term excellence and long-term commitment.

however, i think by calling unions "the problem" you're making a blanket statement about many different organizations, each of which serves a number of important purposes. employers have very little obligation to protect the rights of their employees. therefore, professionals who work for a living deserve the right to protect themselves from corporate and government abuse by organizing. it's improper and inaccurate when you claim that labor laws eliminate the need, for the reasons i cited in post 24.

if you're going to eliminate the functionality of a union, there has to be something else to serve the same purpose. creating a vacuum where unions used to be, is infinitely more harmful than any possible harm done by unions themselves.

i love how when the government imposes its will on people for lefty causes like healing the sick and feeding the poor, then fox calls it big government socialism trying to take over people's lives. but when it does so for righty causes like cutting corporate and wall street taxes, or neutering unions, then it's the people's representatives protecting the mom n' pop, sweater-buttoning taxpayers who elected them for that purpose. you're a big fan of pointing out hypocrisy michale, so doesn't that qualify?

i don't understand your leaps of logic from union elections to the flaws in seniority to the purpose of business to utopia. i didn't suggest or suppose any of what you said i did.

My point was to show the flaws in Unions and their practices. In this case, an award winning teacher was fired because Union rules dictated that retention and promotions are based on seniority, not merit..

I am sure you would agree with me that THAT completely sucks...

I simply maintain that Unions are now part of the problem, not part of the solution...

Michale.....

i don't understand your leaps of logic from union elections to the flaws in seniority to the purpose of business to utopia. i didn't suggest or suppose any of what you said i did.

businesses don't exist for the goods or services they provide, they exist for the sole purpose of making money for their owners. the bigger and more entrenched the business, the more easily abuse of employees can occur in the name of money, so employees are entitled to protect themselves by organizing.

a new way of structuring union-hood might help address some of the problems with issues such as cronyism, or using seniority alone to decide on retention and layoffs. that's very far from utopia, it's just a different idea.

What about the other side of the coin??

In 2010, Megan Sampson was named an Outstanding First Year Teacher in Wisconsin. A week later, she got a layoff notice from the Milwaukee Public Schools. Why would one of the best new teachers in the state be one of the first let go? Because her collective-bargaining contract requires staffing decisions to be made based on seniority.

Ms. Sampson got a layoff notice because the union leadership would not accept reasonable changes to their contract. Instead, they hid behind a collective-bargaining agreement that costs the taxpayers $101,091 per year for each teacher, protects a 0% contribution for health-insurance premiums, and forces schools to hire and fire based on seniority and union rules.

Your analysis pre-supposes that big business exists solely to provide work for employees and unions..

That producing a product or service that the public wants is secondary...

What you describe is Utopia....

It is not reality...

Michale.....

the reason is that unions are ALSO sometimes part of the solution, protecting workers from management abuse. multiple versions means competition, which would force unions to do their job right or get voted out. i do not support dividing the burden for representation unevenly ("right to work"), but i agree that workers should have the option of voting to be non-union as well, as long as they have the opportunity to recant that decision when the next election comes.

your argument that labor laws render unions obsolete is a specious one. laws can easily be changed by a legislature with an axe to grind. they can also be willfully ignored or unenforced. and the second a union ceases to be at least a viable option, that's exactly what happens. do you have any idea how much hardship can be involved for non-union workers to win a wrongful termination case? even if they ultimately win the case, which is not exactly a foregone conclusion even if they are in the right, in the meanwhile they have no income and still have to live with the consequences of being improperly fired.

as for the effect on big business: if having multiple unions would make it more difficult for the huge, multi-state, multi-national behemoths that regularly crush smaller businesses in their wake, i say all the better.

Here is a really choice gem from Taylor Marsh...

"As an aside, can you imagine if Democrats had a majority that they would ever act like this to push their ideology against what the people want?

Seriously!!??? I guess Taylor has a VERY short memory and has forgotten all the things that Democrats pushed thru over the objections of the American people when Dems had a lock majority.

I know Taylor is not THIS stoopid, so I can only assume that this is simply another show of blatant Leftist hypocrisy...

Michale.....

Do you support Right To Work legislation??

Michale.....

what you call anarchy, i call democracy. if the country can figure out a way to elect new leadership every couple years, so can a few teachers, firefighters, clerical workers or airline pilots.

It's not electing new leadership every couple years that I was referring to. That wouldn't be the anarchy..

and there should not be only one possible union available.

That's the point that would revert everything to anarchy.

If you accept that premise that Unions aren't the god-send fount of goodness and wisdom, that Unions are sometimes part of the problem, why would you want to have MULTIPLE versions of that problem?

Imagine a large business that has two dozen different departments and each department has their own union. Each department's Union would negotiate for each individual department. Of course, these Union members would not be doing their jobs rather they would be doing Union work. The company, of course, would have to pay these workers even though they are not working, and then would have to hire and pay MORE workers to do the work that the Union person SHOULD be doing.

This is already happening across the country, by the way...

Now multiply all these negotiations by a factor of 5 or 10 (if the targeted business has many branches across the country or the world) and then explain to me how ANY business could possibly conduct business if they have all these Union added expenses...

Unions served a very good purpose. But they are an archaic and useless instrument of control of the masses by the chosen few.

There are laws in place that protect workers, that do the jobs that the Union did..

Unions are now part of the problem. They are as evil and as corrupt as the corporations.

but that's not grounds for elimination of the right to organize.

How about the right to NOT organize if one so chooses..

Let's face it. This isn't about collective bargaining rights. The BIG beef the Union has is that the new Wisconsin Law will give employees the right *NOT* to pay Union dues..

And THAT is what the Union and the Democrats are fighting for.

MONEY...

Because the Union leaders know that they won't have the money for their penthouses and the Porsches and the Democrats know they will lose money from Union donations...

Follow the money, NYpoet..

THAT's what it's all about in Wisconsin. The Democrats and the Unions want that money and Walker and the GOP think that it should be the employees who keep that money...

Michale.....

what you call anarchy, i call democracy. if the country can figure out a way to elect new leadership every couple years, so can a few teachers, firefighters, clerical workers or airline pilots.

on the other hand, we can do what you suggest and go back to the 7-day work week and the twelve hour day with no overtime. we can all resign ourselves to subsistence wages, with no representation to protect us from the corruption of state and federal labor law, while the state and federal governments find ways to funnel what's left of the taxpayers' money to wall street, wal-mart and cheap foreign labor. nobody's advocating laziness like you're suggesting, just the right to be fairly represented in labor negotiations.

have unions overstepped their rightful bounds in some cases and do they need to be more realistic? sure, but that's not grounds for elimination of the right to organize. in spite of the efforts of the republicans in the wisconsin legislature, the state's population seems to agree with me on this point, and the dems have said they won't be wandering back just yet.

Wis. GOP strips public workers' bargaining rights
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_WISCONSIN_BUDGET_UNIONS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-03-09-19-45-22

Senate advances collective bargaining changes; Democrats to return Thursday
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/117656563.html

Democrats only hurt themselves and the people they are supposed to represent...

Michale.....

Can you imagine the utter anarchy at such an arrangement???

Companies, businesses and workers would spend all of their time trying to negotiate and get the best deal possible that there would be little, if any, time to accomplish the mission...

How about a much simpler plan??

Do your job or get fired.

If you don't like the job, then quit and find a better one..

Seriously, have we grown so pampered that we expect everyone and everything to bow to our comfort level??

No wonder the American worker is a pale imitation of what they once were..

For god's sake, we put a man on the moon..

Now, it's "Don't bother me, I am on my Union Established coffee break.. I won't be available in an hour either because then I will be on my Union Established pre-lunch break... After that?? Forget it, I will be on my Union Established lunch break."

What ever happened to actually WORKING for a living??

Seriously....

Michale.....

i agree that a monopoly on collective bargaining is not necessarily a healthy thing. however, allowing management to dictate the terms of employment is an equally bad idea, especially when most private-sector jobs are being sent overseas at every opportunity. choosing not to have a union is like choosing not to have a government; it leaves people vulnerable and distributes the burden of support unfairly.

my belief, for what it's worth, is that just like other politicians, collective bargaining rules should allow workers to choose who represents them by a majority vote, and there should not be only one possible union available.

They have absolutely NO CHOICE in that matter.

Do you think that is fair to them??

Michale.....

My whole point is that, in this case, there is no need for a Union. State laws protect the workers and the Gov has offered to strengthen those laws..

Make no mistake, the issue in Wisconsin is about one thing and one thing only. A corrupt and greedy Union attempting to hold onto it's power at the expense of taxpayers.

Michale....

whether unions are greedy or archaic are valid questions for debate, but framing this conflict as unions vs. voters is moose poop. the union gave in on the budget issue weeks ago and asked to negotiate on the rest. the republicans refused to negotiate anything whatsoever, regardless of whether it was budget-related, and said so both publicly and privately. eight republican state senators aren't being recalled by unions, they're being recalled by voters.

the "big corporate monster" is not a mommy who pays her taxes.

In the case of the issue in Madison, Wisconsin, the "big corporate monster" is, in fact, the mommy and daddy taxpayers...

Which is precisely why Unions for public sector jobs are archaic and part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

In short, the Union in this case is as greedy and evil as the Corporations you like to point the finger at. :D

Michale......

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/uc/20110302/largeimageta110301.gif

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/uc/20110305/largeimageta110304.gif

But, as we see in Wisconsin, this is not always the case...

http://sjfm.us/temp/pged.jpg

Michale.....

(Enough to kill 2 and a half men)

:)

I actually ran into Senator Hatch on my way to the Senate cafeteria during one of my visits to DC. As I passed him, he didn't even attempt to make eye contact. I could have been one of his constituents. Whatever.

As for Judy ... she's been around too long to be astonished by a long-time US senator who finds himself having to deal with the Tea Party element in his party. She didn't challenge him on his nonsense because she wasn't equipped with the facts to do that. That both disappointed and surprised me.

like you said before, it doesn't even necessarily mean adding an extra tax on the rich, just making them pay at least as high a social security rate as the rest of us.

no more "caps," and let's call them what they are, class warfare to redistribute even more wealth to the super-rich and away from everyone else.

First off, nice use of "moose poopery." Heh.

Yeah, I tried to find a transcript of the full session that Hillary's comments came from, but didn't have the time while writing today. I want to read the whole testimony she gave, if that was any indication of it.

But, also, I am a big Jeopardy! fan. So that's where that came from.

Liz -

Oh, I don't know, to me it seemed like Judy just gave up -- at some point about halfway in -- of expecting any sense out of Hatch. Hatch is normally a very staid and serious type of guy, has worked with Dems before, and is normally quite reasonable when it comes to actual facts. Which is why his transformation was so astonishing. This is what the threat of being Tea Partied can do to you -- remember that his fellow senator from Utah was the FIRST sitting Republican the Tea Party took down, last election cycle. Hatch is terrified he's not going to keep his cushy job, and he's doubling down on The Crazy in a last ditch effort.

nypoet22 -

I've always thought proposing a "millionaires' tax" would be a smart thing for the Dems to do. One Senator did so (Schumer? I forget) but couldn't get much support even within his own party. But seriously, eighty-one freakin' percent?!? It's an idea whose time has come, and Obama may have been smarter than we thought to schedule this debate in the midst of the 2012 election.

-CW

I was watching Senator Hatch on PBS the other night. But, I was paying more attention to Judy Woodruff.

Did you notice how her astonishment was not at all matched by any effort on her part to set the record straight? Just like Hatch, she doesn't know what the record is either or she just doesn't know how to set the record straight. Perhaps she doesn't think that is her job.

That was just another in a growing list of poor performances by the journalists at the PBS Newshour.