Michigan Becomes 24th Right-to-Work State

[J.K. Gregg]

Subverting a business and a union's right to contract isn't progress. It's regress.

[John Galt]

[The Dude]

[J.K. Gregg]

Yes and yes.

[John Galt]

So then tet, do you think its a better situation with or without Taft harley , knowing that unions still have Wagners power

[Hyperion]

I've perused this thread but haven't seen a credible argument that the law should forbid unions from striking with the intent of getting the employer to agree upon a closed shop. Most of the other complaints lobbied don't concern right-to-work laws but federal labor legislation.

[G5000]

If belonging to a union is a superior form of employment, then people will join the unions without being forced to do so.

The fact the unions feel laborers should be forced to join their organization smacks of flop sweat.

You are not given a choice of unions to join in a closed shop. There is only one, and you must join. This is not freedom of contract by any stretch of the imagination. This is extortion, plain and simple. And now it has been outlawed in Michigan. Good.


I will tell you the real reason the unions are angry.

In the hi-tech industry, you won't find many unions, if any. And the hi-tech industry is the safest and best paid sector, after the financial services industry (which is also non-unionized).

There are more hi-tech jobs than there are people qualified to do them.


But for the low-skills jobs there are more workers than there are jobs. So the union laborers are seeking protectionist measures to stifle the competition for those jobs, and a closed shop is one of the crudest methods used to that end.

Right to work laws level the playing field for those jobs.


Instead of bitching about it, they should be waking up to the fact the days of growing up to work in your daddy's factory are over. The low skilled jobs need to be sent overseas to developing nations where they belong, and we need to be training our workforce for the high skilled jobs of tomorrow.

Silicon Valley has figured this out. The sooner labor and teacher unions figure this out, the better our future will be.

.

[Hyperion]

So let me get this straight:

It's not fair for a union to get the employer to change (voluntarily!) company policy so that every worker is unionized, but if the workers request anything else and the employer agrees, that's fine and dandy.

And so we should have the state mandate that employers can never be backed into this situation. Because that's a free market solution.

Double-think at its best.

[The Dharma Bum]

[G5000]