Why are Republicans out to destroy Public Unions?

[DucatiMonster696]

Are you arguing against the inflation that has been prevalent in CEO pay over the last decade?

Hmmm...that would be the case if profits for firms also were not rising in tandem along side the compensation being received by these CEO's as a whole. However for the most part CEO pay has risen along side the vastly increased profits that have been generated by them for many successful firms. This is not to say that there are not examples of CEO's being overly compensated beyond the worth they brought to the corporation they run/ran however on the face of it firms who are apt to over pay their CEO's who continually produce mediocre results are not around for very long.

 

[Throckmorton]

This opinion totally ignores reality that the money spent on wages and benefits by a private entity is always measured against potential prospect of risk vs rewards. Private firms which ignore the reality of costs and the outcomes of risk vs reward will eventually face a situation in which they are no longer in business due to reckless long term behavior. Over compensation is always felt by private firms via lack of efficiency on how and where they spend their money and thus very few firms would spend money on employees who are not worth their weight in the profit they generate their firm.

Government entities however do not actually face these concerns because they have at their disposal the ability to lobbying for increased spending, deficit spending, a rise in taxes, etc and can operate for many years effectively on what many private firms would consider a net loss on the goods and services they provide, e.g US Postal service, Amtrack, etc.

As a government employee I find hilarious the idea of raising taxes to increase salaries. What fantasyland do you live in?

Are you just ignorant of the widespread furloughs and wage cuts all over the country during the past couple years?

 

[Craig234]

on the face of it firms who are apt to over pay their CEO's who continually produce mediocre results are not around for very long.

You gotta love ideologues who just make crap up and post it ignoring any facts to the contrary. Quick, name 5 major corporations who did this and aren't around over it.

 

[Craig234]

Correct! =)

Oh, so Walker supports increasing teachers' pay? How much has it gone up?

 

[cybrsage]

Quick, name 5 major corporations who did this and aren't around over it.

HP, IBM, Boeing, Yahoo, Time-Warner.

They all replaced CEOs who were doing mediocre or worse in order to survive as companies (unless I mixed up some of the companies - if I did, there are many more to choose from).


EDIT: Misread your comment. They would not be around had they not removed the bad performer. They are all still around.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

M: There has to be a profit motive for market economics to work, no? The folk who run the government are obliged to run it efficiently and workers work for a profit too. They have to get some fair compensation. I think these two forces are supposed to balance themselves optimally, no?

I have difficulty with your premises here. The government is obliged to run efficiently? What government are you looking at? That doesn't describe any that I've ever heard of.

To put it a different way: businesses are profit centers, while governments are cost centers. Governments are restricted by budgets but have no inherent restrictions on the basis of needing to be competitive.

M: I think Darwin makes a case that is more to the point. We do have control, broadly and slowly speaking. We can vote out folk and replace them. We just may not be able to do it before they have developed sufficient momentum that even with breaks applied, we won't go over the cliff.

But this is exactly what is happening in places like Wisconsin.. and I'm assuming you aren't too happy about it. After many years of unchecked growth, people are exerting corrective influence. The unions want the status quo to stay in place forever and it simply isn't realistic.

M: Governments other than the federal can go our of business. Some are, I believe.

They don't really go out of business.

M: Most union employees can't afford to live where I do. They do not vote in my local elections. Oddly, they get rather high pay because I am in a wealthy and Democratic area. We don't have envy to any great degree. You know how it is when you are strong, you have broad shoulders that can carry other people.

Anyone who pays taxes already carries a lot of other people.

What you call "envy" I call a desire for fairness.

 

[EagleKeeper]

There may be benefits to the employee by having the union; but when a union is able to FORCE the employer into how business is done; that oversteps their bounds.

A Public union has to be responsible to the taxpayers; many have come to lose tract of that fact. they feel that the public has to come to them on the union demands.

Those unions have even more of a responsibility because the public depends on them to provide the services agreed on.

 

[zsdersw]

I'm going to just paste here something I wrote on my blog (now forum) in February 2011 when the Wisconsin stuff blew up. I've since reconsidered some of what I wrote below -- mainly, I understand that public unions do play an important role, and I also understand why they got so pissed off at Walker's dishonest tactics -- but many of the core issues remain.

--

I took a rather unpopular stance in siding with the Wisconsin governor against the teachers’ unions. I’ve never been a big fan of unions at all, and especially do not like public sector unions. There are four main reasons for this.

1. A union in a private company can make a fair argument that it is an organization that prevents the exploitation of the “little guy” by the power of the corporation. That argument falls flat in the public sector, because the employer here is us — we are paying the salaries and benefits with our taxes. There’s no profit motive.
2. We have no direct control over the bargaining process. A company CEO knows that if he does a lousy job of negotiating, he’ll get fired. That doesn’t happen in the private sector; the president or governor or other leader knows there will be no consequences to caving in on union demands.
3. Union negotiations in the private sector have an automatic balancing factor: if the union goes too far, the company becomes uncompetitive and goes out of business, and the union members are all out jobs. In the public sector this can’t happen — all that happens is that the taxpayers get soaked.
4. There is a major conflict of interest. Imagine a situation where the CEO of a company got his job based on the votes of his employees — how effective a negotiator would he be? Yet that is exactly the situation with public service unions. There is a built-in incentive to pander to the union for votes.

I resent public servants having an entitlement attitude when it comes to my money. I resent people who have no health care being forced to pay for their health care plans. I resent people who have no pensions or 401k’s having to pay for their ridiculously generous pension plans. I resent union bosses who are supported via forced contributions and then abuse their power.

100% correct. There is no need for public-sector unions, even for things like police and firefighters. Jobs like that in which one risks his/her life on a daily basis are jobs that the average person would likely not seek, which makes the pool of potential employees much smaller than that of most other jobs. This places upward pressure on the compensation and benefits offered.

The pay for any job, but especially jobs funded by taxpayer dollars, should be determined by the nexus of supply-and-demand... not unions.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

There is no need for public-sector unions, even for things like police and firefighters.

I think that's going to the opposite extreme. Without any unions at all, especially for essential services, the potential for exploitation is too high.

 

[zsdersw]

I think that's going to the opposite extreme. Without any unions at all, especially for essential services, the potential for exploitation is too high.

I disagree. It doesn't matter if the job is an essential service or not... no one is forced to work anywhere; they can find another job in another area.

 

[nageov3t]

As a government employee I find hilarious the idea of raising taxes to increase salaries. What fantasyland do you live in?

Are you just ignorant of the widespread furloughs and wage cuts all over the country during the past couple years?

it's happening now... but in NJ, that's only after electing an anti-union Governor and following decades of both parties promising the moon to teacher and police unions to secure election (without regard to the fact that the state couldn't pay for it and rubber stamping tax increases while pensions still went underfunded)

 

[Charles Kozierok]

I disagree. It doesn't matter if the job is an essential service or not... no one is forced to work anywhere; they can find another job in another area.

There's a difference between a job and a career.

If you've trained as a teacher and have ten years' experience at it, and they decide to cut teacher salaries by 50%, you're pretty much screwed.

 

[zsdersw]

There's a difference between a job and a career.

If you've trained as a teacher and have ten years' experience at it, and they decide to cut teacher salaries by 50%, you're pretty much screwed.

Then you find a teaching job that pays better... or you take whatever jobs you can get.

There is no expressed or implied guarantee that you will be able to find a job in your chosen career field for the rest of your working life.

 

[QuantumPion]

I disagree. It doesn't matter if the job is an essential service or not... no one is forced to work anywhere; they can find another job in another area.

I have no problem with private unions even in public sector jobs in principle. Workers have the right to form voluntary associations amongst themselves in any industry. The problem is when the unions use their influence to get government to pass laws in their favor - e.g. mandatory union membership, automatic dues withholding, etc. Cops can have a union - with the understanding that if they strike they can all be fired with total loss of all benefits and replaced with non-union cops.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

There is no expressed or implied guarantee that you will be able to find a job in your chosen career field for the rest of your working life.

Which is one reason why workers want to be unionized.

I'm obviously not denying valid objections to unions, but "just get another job" is a gross oversimplification.

 

[cybrsage]

I have no problem with private unions even in public sector jobs in principle. Workers have the right to form voluntary associations amongst themselves in any industry. The problem is when the unions use their influence to get government to pass laws in their favor - e.g. mandatory union membership, automatic dues withholding, etc. Cops can have a union - with the understanding that if they strike they can all be fired with total loss of all benefits and replaced with non-union cops.

AFAIK, cops are not allowed to strike. If NO public union was allowed to strike I would have far less problem with their existance.

 

[zsdersw]

I have no problem with private unions even in public sector jobs in principle. Workers have the right to form voluntary associations amongst themselves in any industry. The problem is when the unions use their influence to get government to pass laws in their favor - e.g. mandatory union membership, automatic dues withholding, etc. Cops can have a union - with the understanding that if they strike they can all be fired with total loss of all benefits and replaced with non-union cops.

Sure, they can organize however they want, but that doesn't mean the employer has to change how they handle labor matters.

Most police/firefighters cannot strike... which means all unions are about is securing pay/benefit increases, whether the municipality can afford it or not.. and that's a problem.

 

[zsdersw]

Which is one reason why workers want to be unionized.

I'm obviously not denying valid objections to unions, but "just get another job" is a gross oversimplification.

No it's not.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

No it's not.

If you want to turn this into a Monty Python routine, there's no point in continuing.

We're talking in some cases about decisions affecting all workers of a particular job in an entire state. Without any collective organization, these people can easily be put in a position where they have no choice other than to uproot their families and leave the state.

Can they do that? Sure. But there's a very valid argument for unions because of the lack of power that individuals have.

 

[zsdersw]

If you want to turn this into a Monty Python routine, there's no point in continuing.

We're talking in some cases about decisions affecting all workers of a particular job in an entire state. Without any collective organization, these people can easily be put in a position where they have no choice other than to uproot their families and leave the state.

Can they do that? Sure. But there's a very valid argument for unions because of the lack of power that individuals have.

Sure, and the sky is falling. Such actions would be undertaken by only the stupidest of administrations... and are not at all likely.

 

[cybrsage]

Maybe school administrators will instead cut their pay by 150% and use the new income source to pay for school repairs, etc.

 

[zsdersw]

Maybe school administrators will instead cut their pay by 150% and use the new income source to pay for school repairs, etc.

Whose pay are they cutting by 150%?

 

[Genx87]

Whose pay are they cutting by 150%?

I think he was being sarcastic

 

[zsdersw]

I think he was being sarcastic

Well, I was asking for clarification. I wasn't sure if he was talking about school administrators cutting their own pay by 150% or cutting teachers/aides/secretaries etc pay by 150%.

 

[MooseNSquirrel]

Hmmm...that would be the case if profits for firms also were not rising in tandem along side the compensation being received by these CEO's as a whole. However for the most part CEO pay has risen along side the vastly increased profits that have been generated by them for many successful firms. This is not to say that there are not examples of CEO's being overly compensated beyond the worth they brought to the corporation they run/ran however on the face of it firms who are apt to over pay their CEO's who continually produce mediocre results are not around for very long.

We weren't discussing profits, but I'd be happy to argue that one in a different tangent. For example, has the pay rise matched the sustained rise in profits?

So Ducati, as originally stated, has CEO pay increase led to a better economy?