Workers rights trump corporate rights. Corporations would be nothing without their workers.
BREAKING:
Walmart employees are promising the biggest strikes ever on Black
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Michael Chiavario Greg, the entire economy is operated by 'manmade laws'. It's like a football game. It doesn't work if there are no rules. The only questions are who makes the rules and how many do we need. If Walmart disbanded, the workers could(if they were organized) take over the operation and divide the profits more equitably. We live in a world where money is necessary to survive. Because of this, rules are necessary to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to do what is necessary to make money - therefore I believe everyone has a right to a job and it is the job of government to provide job opportunities or money until a job can be reasonably attained by a citizen. This is also good economics because it keeps money circulating to businesses that wouldn't flow if people didn't have jobs and therefore money to spend. In some ways and situations workers are forced or coerced to work. a specific example is a coal mining company in the US who made employees take a signing on bonus of a few thousand $s. They were then required to pay the money back with unaffordable interest if they quit in too short a time or if they worked for another company within a large geographical radius. When you are the only game in town there is not a lot of choice about where workers are going to work. Laws of supply and demand can and should be ameliorated by humane regulation that does not wreck the economy. I do not want to live in a dog eat dog world. I want to live in a world where cooperation and kindness are the norm and where common interests trump the interests of concentrated capital. As for the validity of strikes and whether they involve the will of real workers, trust me they are real. I have been a union worker for most of my working life except for the five years that I ran a construction company. I know the score there. When I was the boss, I paid my employees higher than the going rate and I charged my customers accordingly. My employee did excellent work because they were respected and valued and my customers paid my rates because they trusted me and their trust was rewarded with quality honest work. Yes, Greg, you are right: workers need management and management needs workers. Neither should take advantage of the other.
Greg Huff 1. No laws circumvent the law of supply and demand. They can only artificially displace resources making them scarce in one place and over abundant in others, something a free market handles naturally.
2. The rules were made when the country was founded that is the Constitution and the amendments to it. States and communities can pretty much do what they want as long as it doesn’t’ violate the Constitution. (See the 10th Amendment)
3. Agreed, if Wal-Mart wanted to sell to them. But let’s consider… Wal-Mart wants to open a store. Before it opens the city or state says…”you must use only union labor.” Wal-Mart says…OK, I guess we won’t open the store then. Now, instead of workers having a job there are no jobs for them. I don’t think you’ve done the workers any favors.
4. You cannot believe someone has a right to a job and believe in the Bill of Rights Mike. If someone has a right to a job then just throw out the Bill of Rights…(which is being done as we speak by the current and past administrations, congress and Supreme Courts.) If this is done then everyone is at risk and no one is immune except for those that are in power or pay for favors of those in power. The only thing government can do is get out of the way and protect individual rights. Every time this is done the economy expands and lifts everyone up. When there is an expanding economy labor is scarcer and wages rise. This works every time it is tried. There was a depression in the early ‘20s most people have not heard about. This was due to government spending and taxes and regulation. Calvin Coolidge came in, cut government spending, taxes and regulation the economy immediately rebounded and gave us the Roaring Twenties. The opposite approach was taken during the next crash by Hoover and Roosevelt resulting in the Great Depression which left people in the lurch for the next decade.
You cannot protect individuals from their own folly. By your standard every slouchier must be provided a job. If you have a right to a job, you can’t be fired for not working, right? This is pretty much the way it is in France. They’ve given workers this benefit and that benefit and it is almost impossible to fire anyone. The result is no company wants to hire anyone because they don’t want to take the chance on someone that won’t work. France has an unemployment rate upwards of 15%. This is the way to tyranny and misery.
5. I am not sure when this happened in the coal mines. It sounds pretty underhanded and it sounds like fraud, which government has an interest in policing. I agree and if a state wants to make regulations against this sort of thing, that is within the states right to do that. I also believe that there was a necessity for workers to unionize early on to temper the excesses of some of those industries who were managers only and did not know the business and could not do the work. But I object to ANY federal involvement in violation of the Constitution. More effective is for private groups to raise their voice on these things and use that kind of pressure to curb abuses. With the rise of the government regulators, there are many more abuses by these agencies than businesses. I do not object to workers striking. I also do not object to a company firing those who are not on the job doing the work they were hired for. As I’ve said in the past, it is a contract; a person sells his labor for a price. Breaking that contract has consequences on the one breaking it.
6. Look at history Mike. It is only the rise of a (relatively) free economy that has made the kind of world you are looking for. Poverty and misery has been the lot of man since before they discovered fire. THAT only changed with rise of a Constitutional Republic that left people alone to pursue their own interests. Capitalism is the ONLY system that relies on cooperation and exchange of value for value. A business HAS to be kind and that IS the norm from business to business and business to customer. It has not always been such from business to labor but business has wised up for the most part on this and so the time of unions in the private sector is coming to an end because they are no longer relevant. The things that made unions possible in the past are handled and now serve only to strangle businesses. Now it is only government unions that are growing.
Take a look at Detroit. The city has been devastated by the government pandering to unions, driving up taxes and driving business out of that city.
Government unions are only growing because workers are required to join them. This has resulted in government workers in many places not only getting worker security (as it used to be) but being paid far in excess of what the private sector is getting and retirement benefits that are now truly out of control.
Speaking of Detroit …bankrupt. Los Angeles is functionally bankrupt. San Bernardino bankrupt. I know you worked for the government as well. I do not know how long Washington state will be able to sustain your benefits but no doubt they will go to the well of the tax payers and those getting paid less than you and those that are getting no benefits will be asked to pay for yours.
7. You could be right about all of these strikers actually being employees. Some are no doubt…but I am willing to bet the remainder are paid activists and union people who have a vested interest in Wal-Mart becoming union.
On the way you ran your construction business, this is as it should be. You kept on your valuable employees and they had loyalty to you. I’ve seen the quality of many of the Wal-Mart workers and there is a reason for the stereotype. I am afraid I do not see many that are there for long periods of time. I am not sure that the turnover is but I am pretty sure it is high. Whether it is because the good workers are moving on to higher positions or better jobs elsewhere or the bad workers are dropping off I do not know. I know that a union will only coddle bad workers and dissuade good workers from excelling. This will result in Wal-Mart having higher prices, being less competitive and so shrinking overall. They will then close stores that are not pulling their weight and lay off workers. This sort of thing will hit the marginal workers the hardest.
Unions, like most entities that are no longer relevant, try to remain relevant by creating an illusion they are still needed. Unions use Wal-Mart as a foil to persuade the public unions are needed.
8. This is something I agree with you on. It requires a well educated public, and one that has learned to think and question others as well as their own motives.
Mike I ask you do me the favor of watching this John Stossel program. Stossel was a consumer reporter for years who won Emmy’s for his work when he was attacking bad practices in the private sector. At some point he had an epiphany when he saw the abuses of businesses paled in comparison to those of government entities. I know it will go against your world view but I hope you will view it anyway.
http://video.foxbusiness.com/.../stossel-10232014-the.../...
How the D.C. overlords stay in powervideo.foxbusiness.com
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