Discussion for article #238047
One has to question how useful are the Unions in modern day America. They sure had a great deal of fault in the rust belt economy collapse.
This seems like a typical conservative tactic–they want all the benefits of a union, they just don’t want to pay for it. They want all the benefits of having roads and schools and bridges, but don’t want to pay taxes. They want all the benefits of health care, but don’t want to pay for it.
So, suggest a two tier system: Those who pay union dues get the union wage; those who don’t get the minimum wage. Then let’s see these roaches run to the exits when someone turns on the light.
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I hate to cut short the gay marriage victory lap but this case would directly affect more people and indirectly screw a lot of things up for every wage earner in the country. The government already gives organized capital about a 50 to 1 advantage, in terms of differential, deferential, preferential power and privileges. So naturally, Republicans are suing to make it 500 to 1.
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I want to know WTF happened to all my supposedly great liberal trial lawyer allies, when a case like this makes it to SCOTUS instead of shareholders suing corporations for violating their rights instead. Hillary says thanks for the checks, guys, but I say you’re seriously dropping the ball.
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Don’t believe every factoid you read in the WSJ editorial pages, Puppies.
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Extremely useful.
Question answered.
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I am a public school teacher who opted into a union. This case will hurt unions, but don’t expect it to be a huge blow because public workers want their unions and the recruitment is done by colleagues.
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Probably will be the end of unions as we know them. I doubt the Court will be very sympathetic to free loaders in unions. Other things I am sure they would be.
Sort of, there was fault to go around there.
Really? somebody forgot about Michael Milken’s junk bonds, leveraged buyouts NAFTA, GATT and Reagan’s breaking PATCO.
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You’re way off base on this issue Puppies. The Mellon family (Big Steel) started the collapse of the rust belt economy back in the '70’s. This SC case is all about the conservative movement and the Chamber of Commerce further weakening unions in order to maintain the status quo - cheap labor for Corporate America.
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Pretty easy to predict a 1% victory here in the SC. But, labor could turn this into a very positive thing. I hope we are up to it. Democrats need to have their inherently lazy butts kicked regularly.
You mean the freeloaders who use the union to negotiate their contracts and advocate for decent working conditions but don’t want to pay dues?
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Pretty much, but destroying the funding mechanism will cause corrosion of power and so on. It is largely the end of most of their influence, at least with this court. And the unions that do exist would pretty much have less resources but be fighting for those that put in and those that do not. Thus making little incentive for being involved with them at all.
So, make it so that unions don’t have to represent people who don’t pay. Don’t pay? Don’t get the collective bargaining rights. It’s that simple. The same arguments apply. My “money-speech” should not pay to benefit non-speaking, non-paying, non-contributing asshats. You get what you fucking pay for and if you pay nothing, you get nothing. Nothing could be more “free market” than that. Not paying for protections of collective bargaining termination arbitration rules, etc.? Have fun getting fired and having no recourse but the courts and blowing through whatever you’ve scrounged to save to pay for your attorneys. There’s absolutely no reason that unions/collective bargaining units should have to save these fucking idiots from themselves. The first step in destroying unions was always the act of forcing them and their contracts to benefit folks who didn’t contribute. The second was pinching wages for 40 years to make unions dues hurt. But, if they want to go it alone or put ideological nonsense before their own well-being, then let them. See how that turns out for them.
And, of course, the first step of the reactionary plutocrats will be large businesses trying to reward non-union people with better deals than the unions achieve…an attempt to incentivize being a non-union employee in hopes it breaks the union so that, once gone, things can return to the “normal” situation in which the serfs know their place and are entirely, 100% subject to the whims of their masters. Let them enjoy their fucking equal pay lawsuits.
This obviously all comes back to the fucking “money = speech” nonsense…the day the SCOTUS turned Amurikkka into an official plutocracy.
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Don’t believe a goddamn thing you read in the WSJ, particularly the editorial page.
FIFY hehe
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Think about this for a minute:
You take the family to a restaurant: nothing terribly fancy, but definitely nice - a treat for the wife and kids.
The service is pretty good, and the food’s not too bad, either - definitely better than takeout or leftovers.
The check comes, and you call the server over to start complaining about the bill.
“Listen, I only ate about half the steak, and I barely touched the veg. I shouldn’t have to pay for those. My wife and kids? Look at the food left on their plate - why am I getting charged for full meals when there’s obviously leftovers?”
That’s what this case is like: the teachers are getting the benefits of union negotiations, but don’t want to pay for them.
I can’t imagine how a “fiscally responsible” party can support freeloaders.
What, exactly, is it you think trial lawyers are supposed to do to make the Supreme Court, which picks less than 200 cases a year to hear out of several thousand cert petitions filed, hear the cases you want them to hear? And why in the world do you think it would be a good thing for this Court to hear those cases?
But hey, on behalf of trial lawyers everywhere, thanks for the misdirected dig. Because we totally don’t get enough of that already.
And, that’s exactly how it happened. Throughout the 70’s it was common to hear people talk about how unions were totally unnecessary because now enlightened employers didn’t look at wages and benefits as money stolen right out of their pockets for no good reason which they were entitled to get back. The idea that the threat of unionization was the only thing keeping non-union employers from acting the way, well, exactly the way Walmart operates now, was lost on them.
And now, here we are in a world where the Walmart labor model is the norm and the serfs submit meekly rather than have anything to do with those awful, awful unions.
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