Eliminate Labor Unions from the American workplace and this is what you get

[Teamster Jeff]

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/labor/news/2013/09/17/74363/latest-census-data-underscore-how-important-unions-are-for-the-middle-class/

[gopiscrap]

1. No kidding

[aristocles]

2. Surprised?

[Teamster Jeff]

3. No. This has been a part of the plan.

[aristocles]

4. What plan?

[Squinch]

5. The plan whose success is illustrated in that graph.

[aristocles]

6. So there is a "plan" to decrease the income of the middle class?

That doesn't make sense.

[Squinch]

7. And yet a lot of Republican action and legislation aims that way. So it makes sense to

someone:

"Right to work"
Pension dismantling
Regressive taxation
Decimation of funding of public jobs
Anything that Scott Walker does
Anti-American-worker trade agreements

Seems concerted to me.

[brush]

11. Doesn't make sense?

You must not have been around when Reagan lead the charge against unions in the '80s by breaking the PATCO, the air traffic controllers union. Union membership has dramatically shrank since then, as have wages.

There's a pretty obvious corollary there for those paying attention.

It might help to do some research on labor movement history and see how wages rose as unions formed and got stronger. And wages rose in non-union shops as well because they had to raise pay to compete for skilled workers with union shops.

[tblue]

14. Makes perfect sense to the corporatocracy.

[Curmudgeoness]

15. I agree with you. It doesn't make sense.

And yet the corporations have always hated having to sit down with the employees (through unions) and negotiate pay, work conditions, benefits, etc. They are much happier when they can set wages and benefits wherever they want, and the employees have no options but to take it. And as to work conditions and safety, those are just onerous expenses that the corporations would rather not think about.

[cstanleytech]

16. True it doesnt make sense because in the long term they are going to end up shooting themselves

in the foot because the people as a whole are only willing to take so much before they get so pissed off that they do something like what the french did to solve there problem with the wealthy elite back in the late 18th century.

[Amonester]

18. True that, but the problem is, the French elite didn't have drones, nor ...

un-Constitutional NSA's secret-law spying on every bits 'n bytes in the entire Universe.

[abelenkpe]

20. More like a plan to reduce wages

and the leverage of workers to demand safe working conditions, decent hours, benefits and wages.

Employees are always the biggest expense and business owners are always trying to reduce expenses to maximize profits. They often don't consider safety or the further ramifications on the worker or community. That's why workers need unions to bargain for better working conditions and communities need government to regulate business.

[El_Johns]

24. Of course it makes sense.

[beachbum bob]

27. income redistribution works taking from the 99%

and giving it to the 1%


we have 30yrs of data that proves this out.....tax policy for instance taxes people greater who actually "work" vs those who income comes from having money.....fair progressive taxation was scrapped years ago. Financial entities and instruments (like SPE, derivatives, CDOs,etc) rewarded fraud and abuse with little or no oversight>>>>the rewards went to those at the top.


income redistribution from the middleclass to the upper 1%, clearly proven and easily fixed.

[Thinkingabout]

8. Big money went into states with out the right-to-work laws and got those laws passed.

You have the crap output by those who does not have a clue what unions does and yet they consider themselves experts. Unions was an opening to get good hard working people an opportunity to get a decent job at a decent wage. There was also benefits like health insurance and pensions. The unions started decreasing, pensions are not being created and we have generations getting older and there will not be any pensions. Expect these people on low wages to save money for their old age, not on the salaries being paid today.

[mountain grammy]

9. Of course it was planned. The corps don't want anyone telling them what to do

least of all their workers. Cutting back on regulations, weak enforcement of environmental laws, and vilifying labor unions. Sounds like a plan to me, and it's working. Record profits and freedom from rules for the multinationals while workers fall behind.
The saddest part of all is how American workers are so easily suckered. Ask 10 people what they think of unions and you'll get 8 negative responses and that's from low paid workers.

[Populist_Prole]

10. To the PTB, the drop is a feature, not a bug

Also note how jobs are ballyhooed in the abstract, as in the focus being on creating or maintaining "jobs" as a positive metric in and of itself, rather than on the quality of the job and the positive economic impact they have on the working class' spending power. Also ignored is how many of these lower jobs replaced better paying ones as profitable companies relocated to more "business friendly" locations in the US.

[malthaussen]

12. Interesting synchronicity to those graphs...

I'm curious about the major dip in middle class income circa 1993. It seems that the biggest decline came during a Democratic presidency, not a Republican one. There was actually a tiny "recovery" during the Bush administration, and then another descending curve. Union membership, however, has steadily declined no matter who is in charge.

-- Mal

[Teamster Jeff]

17. NAFTA was passed in 1992

Shitty trade agreements like NAFTA and the proposed TPP are job/wage killers too

[malthaussen]

22. NAFTA was my first thought, too, but...

... Clinton signed it in Dec of '93 and it went into effect 1 January 1994. The huge drop appears to have occurred earlier.

-- Mal

[WestSeattle2]

13. Huge transfer of wealth from middle and lower classes to the upper class -

and the upper classes want even more. The destruction of the middle class is nearly complete - give it another 10-15 years.

[Cleita]

19. Too bad there isn't a law requiring all workers belong to a union,

a trade group or professional association that isn't controlled by the company they are employed by. The movie and TV industries were once controlled this way. No production company could hire non-union and that included the actors and all the way down the ladder. As a result everyone was well paid.

[Amonester]

21. Yes. "As a result everyone was well paid." and ....

the owners still had more than enough to get two or three mansions, luxurious cars, jewels, and all that jazz.

Then came the stock exchanges...

[Cleita]

23. Also, an added thought about Sweden. I recently learned from one of the Republican

TV pundits that Sweden didn't have a minimum wage and yet Swedes have the highest wages in the world. Of course, no one asked her the follow up question, which was why, so she conveniently eliminated that reason.

http://www.thelocal.se/20130402/47094

Swedes earn highest wages in Europe: study
Workers in Sweden earn the highest average hourly wage in the European Union, according to a new study from Germany.
Published: 02 Apr 2013 11:48 CET


Swedes earned €41.90 ($53.90) per hour on average last year, or roughly 350 kronor. This compares to an average of €31 in Germany, according to a recent report from Germany's official statistics agency, Statisches Bundesamt.

The lowest wages among the 27 member states of the European Union were found in Bulgaria, where workers received an average of €3.70 per hour, according to the report.

Despite Sweden's labour costs being the highest in Europe, Mats Dillén, CEO of Sweden's National Institute of Economic Research (Konjunkturinstitutet), argued that Sweden remains economically competitive.

Okay, that being established, with no minimum wage, why?

Here is the answer:

http://www.thelocal.se/jobs/?site=tlse&AID=47794

Top ten tips for earning a higher salary in Sweden
Want more money? Want to learn how to convince your Swedish boss that you are indispensable? Sure, but make sure you do your homework first, explains union ombudsman Anna-Karin Mattsson.
Published: 13 May 2013 12:07 CET

First things first, check if your place of work has a collective bargaining agreement.

"A great deal of companies in Sweden have this arrangement, which could be a key difference if you have moved here from another country," Mattsson from the white-collar trade union Unionen told The Local.

Mattsson explains that there aren't laws in Sweden governing wages, because "the Swedish model" is dominated by the "central wage contract" (centralt löneavtal) - where the unions collectively strike bargains with employers' organizations.

Ten steps to help you get the salary you want in Sweden
You may have seen the term "avtalsrörelse" in the Swedish papers? That's what takes place when this type of broad collective bargaining get under way in Sweden.

That's the first of three structures that may apply to your place of work in Sweden. You'll need to get to grips with what deal applies to you before any talk of salaries can get under way.

The second structure is the "local wage contract" (lokalt löneavtal) where employees go on to make a deal with their specific company. This deal is not allowed to include worse working conditions or lower wages than the industry-wide central wage contract, as outlined above.

So it would seem collective bargaining and unions have accomplished what we seem to be unable to do in this country.

[Enthusiast]

25. Kicked and recommended a whole bunch.

[madrchsod]

26. 1976-77 the investment bankers refused to fund machines that build new machines

the bankers realized that mexico and the pacific rim nations were going to be the industrial base of the world in the future.

the steel mill i worked for had machines that were built in the 20`s and 30`s. no one in the usa built theses machines anymore. during the late 80`s the mill put in a new technology billet casting line was built in korea.

today we do not have the machines to make what we used to make.why? they are being sold to other countries.

if we buy a machine tool from japan we can not move it from one location to another in a production facility. if the company does`t inform the tool builder the gps system shuts down the machine.

welcome to the brave new world.