Michigan to become a right to work state?

[Wild Cobra]

aka, Right to Earn Less.

all states with RTW laws have lower avg wages than non RTW states.

RTW = War on Employees

All?

Probably not. It is true however, that right to work states have an average lower income than non right to work states.

It is also true that right to work states have an average lower cost of living.

When both these facts are factored in, right to work state individual, as an average, have a higher purchasing power than non right to work state individuals.

[Capt Bringdown]

The right to work legislation didnt ban a ing thing. Anybody can still join a union. It's now no longer compulsory.

Really, this isn't complex nor difficult to understand. I don't know why you cant/wont grok this.

I see that the legislation does ban compulsory union membership. "If employers choose to conclude union-shop contracts with unions, what gives the legislature the right to interfere?"

I think it's a pretty straight forward libertarian argument. I think employers and employees are better equipped to negotiate private contracts for mutual benefit than remote legislators.
Was I condescending to you? I don't think I was, so your aggro is more than a bit bizaare.

[Capt Bringdown]

He's just a lemming, repeating what his liberal masters tell him to say.

Not at all. The article I linked to was from a libertarian source. Seems to me that there's a wide range of opinion on this subject, and that the topic can be addressed without childish name-calling. Don't you agree?

[CosmicCowboy]

I see that the legislation does ban compulsory union membership. "If employers choose to conclude union-shop contracts with unions, what gives the legislature the right to interfere?"

I think it's a pretty straight forward libertarian argument. I think employers and employees are better equipped to negotiate private contracts for mutual benefit than remote legislators.
Was I condescending to you? I don't think I was, so your aggro is more than a bit bizaare.

Are you choosing to ignore the fact that federal government intervention into the employer/employee relationship is what allowed unions to exist to start with? Unions had extended that federal protection into control of 100% of the workers that chose to work for a given employer whether they wanted to be union or not. Right to work is simply protecting the rights of the workers against the union. Or put differently, it is giving the individual worker the right to choose. How do you find this to be anti-libertarian?

[Capt Bringdown]

Are you choosing to ignore the fact that federal government intervention into the employer/employee relationship is what allowed unions to exist to start with?

No, and I would like to see the current labor law framework opened up to more compe ion, especially from more radical unions such as the IWW.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

You need to do some more reading on the topic.

When WC says this, it's code for, "You need to start getting your information from Politico and Fox News!"

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

All?

Probably not. It is true however, that right to work states have an average lower income than non right to work states.

It is also true that right to work states have an average lower cost of living.

When both these facts are factored in, right to work state individual, as an average, have a higher purchasing power than non right to work state individuals.

I'd bet my left testicle you just made this up and don't have any factual evidence backing it.

[Capt Bringdown]

How do you find this to be anti-libertarian?

Freedom of contract. redux: If employers choose to conclude union-shop contracts with unions, what gives the legislature the right to interfere?
"When a legislature interferes with voluntary employment contracts, it infringes people’s freedom to bargain with their own labor and possessions. Treating this kind of interference as acceptable means licensing arbitrary interventions into the market by politicians, who are ill-equipped to second-guess the decisions made by the real people making work agreements with one another."

As I was told many times during the WalMart strike, employment is voluntary. No one is forcing anyone to work in a union shop, right?

Such collective contracts, without 100% agreement on the employees, is authoritarian and communistic.

Seems to me that your standard of anything less than 100% agreement = "authoritarian and communistic" is unworkable in just about every human context.

[CosmicCowboy]

As I was told many times during the WalMart strike, employment is not voluntary. No one is forcing anyone to work in a union shop, right?

.

So you want the government to force workers to pay dues to an outside organization they don't want to belong to just so they can work for an employer that they want to work for?

[Capt Bringdown]

So you want the government to force workers to pay dues to an outside organization they don't want to belong to just so they can work for an employer that they want to work for?

Government should respect private contracts.
"All that people need in order to negotiate for themselves is freedom of contract. (Of course, sometimes they might not be able to do so if an employer is bound by a union contract that prohibits individual negotiations. But if the contract is a voluntary one, the government has no business interfering with it.)

[CosmicCowboy]

Government should respect private contracts.
"All that people need in order to negotiate for themselves is freedom of contract. (Of course, sometimes they might not be able to do so if an employer is bound by a union contract that prohibits individual negotiations. But if the contract is a voluntary one, the government has no business interfering with it.)

Exactly

So if an employer wants to hire a worker

And the worker wants to work for the employer but doesn't want to join the union

The government shouldn't give an outside organization the power to extort the worker to give them part of his/her wages that they earned.

[boutons_deux]

employees who don't pay union contributions should not be included in any benefits the union obtains.

[Capt Bringdown]

Exactly

So if an employer wants to hire a worker

And the worker wants to work for the employer but doesn't want to join the union

The government shouldn't give an outside organization the power to extort the worker to give them part of his/her wages that they earned.

Why should membership in a union as a condition of employment be denied? If private parties agree and compliance with the contract is voluntary, I don't see a valid reason for big government to get involved.
No one is forced to work for a particular employer, so language such as extortion is inflammatory and inaccurate.

[CosmicCowboy]

Why should membership in a union as a condition of employment be denied? If private parties agree and compliance with the contract is voluntary, I don't see a valid reason for big government to get involved.
No one is forced to work for a particular employer, so language such as extortion is inflammatory and inaccurate.

Any employer that still wants to make union membership a condition of employment can do so.

Extortion is the perfect word to use if an employee doesn't want to join the union but the union forces him to as a condition of employment (with the hammer of a strike hanging over the employers head if he doesn't go along with the extortion plot)

Your argument has been blown to pieces.

[CosmicCowboy]

employees who don't pay union contributions should not be included in any benefits the union obtains.

The employee works for the employer, not the union. The benefit package negotiated is between the employer and employee.

[Drachen]

True, but I like saying it. You weren't much nicer to him.

TeyshaBlue you two are so alike. I wouldn't be able to tell you guys apart if it wasn't for your avatars.

[boutons_deux]

The employee works for the employer, not the union. The benefit package negotiated is between the employer and employee.

that's the kind of power relationship employers exploit to over employees, esp when unemployment is high and employees are desperate.

[coyotes_geek]

All?

Probably not. It is true however, that right to work states have an average lower income than non right to work states.

It is also true that right to work states have an average lower cost of living.

When both these facts are factored in, right to work state individual, as an average, have a higher purchasing power than non right to work state individuals.

I'd bet my left testicle you just made this up and don't have any factual evidence backing it.

Pretty much a given that WC doesn't have any homework on this, and normally I'm not into doing someone else's homework for them. But, this topic got me curious enough to see what I could dig up in 15 minutes or so.

I took per capita incomes by state that I found here, on the Census website and put those into a spreadsheet.

I did a google search for a cost of living adjustment, by state, and found one here and plugged those into my spreadsheet.

From there I just normalized all the incomes using the COLA data I found, separated the right to work states from the closed shop states and averaged the normalized incomes for each group. I left Indiana and Michigan in the closed shop group because the income data on the census website was 2008 and both those states were closed shop back then.

I ended up with an average normalized per capita income (2008) of $38,516 for right to work states and $37,400 for closed shop states.

Obviously there's a bajillion different factors that affect per capita income and cost of living that have nothing to do with right to work or closed shop. So borrowing the Mythbusters standard, we can't give WC's myth a "CONFIRMED", but we can give it a "PLAUSIBLE".

[Capt Bringdown]

Any employer that still wants to make union membership a condition of employment can do so.

Extortion is the perfect word to use if an employee doesn't want to join the union but the union forces him to as a condition of employment (with the hammer of a strike hanging over the employers head if he doesn't go along with the extortion plot)

Your argument has been blown to pieces.

Not at all. Employment is voluntary and there is no extortion.

"Do you have the right to not join a union - sure. What you don't have the right to do is not join a union and work for an employer who requires you to join one as a condition of employment.

Similarly, you have the right not to wear a blue shirt, but you do not have the right to insist on being hired at a place where the uniform is a blue shirt, yet not wear one."

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

average income is a pretty worthless statistic that doesn't account for how income is distributed at all. If you filled a stadium with Bill Gates and 50,000 homeless people, the average person in the stadium would be a millionaire. Median income is by far the better and more accurate measure of middle class prosperity.

[CosmicCowboy]

Not at all. Employment is voluntary and there is no extortion.

"Do you have the right to not join a union - sure. What you don't have the right to do is not join a union and work for an employer who requires you to join one as a condition of employment.

Similarly, you have the right not to wear a blue shirt, but you do not have the right to insist on being hired at a place where the uniform is a blue shirt, yet not wear one."

You are really slow aren't you? Right to work gives the employer the opportunity to CHOOSE to hire union AND non-union workers if he wants. The difference is the union employees pay the union to negotiate their salary and benefits where the non-union employee can negotiate his own salary and benefits directly with the employer.

[Capt Bringdown]

Obviously there's a bajillion different factors that affect per capita income and cost of living that have nothing to do with right to work or closed shop. So borrowing the Mythbusters standard, we can't give WC's myth a "CONFIRMED", but we can give it a "PLAUSIBLE".

This is obviously an old study, but:

Lawrence Mishel of the liberal Economics Policy Ins ute wrote in 2001 that working in a right-to-work state results in a 6 to 8 percent reduction in wages. Even controlling for regional cost-of-living differences, the difference is a fairly significant 4 percent penalty. - more ->
Right-to-work doesn’t work
Michigan passes an anti-union law and claims it's good for workers. Economists say sure -- if you own the company

[Capt Bringdown]

You are really slow aren't you? Right to work gives the employer the opportunity to CHOOSE to hire union AND non-union workers if he wants. The difference is the union employees pay the union to negotiate their salary and benefits where the non-union employee can negotiate his own salary and benefits directly with the employer.

Resorting to personal insults means you've lost the argument. But besides that, it seems to me that you refuse to accept the freedom of contract between employer and employee. If employers and employees feel a closed shop arrangement is to their mutual benefit, they should have the freedom to negotiate such agreements. The government should respect freedom of contract.

[coyotes_geek]

average income is a pretty worthless statistic that doesn't account for how income is distributed at all. If you filled a stadium with Bill Gates and 50,000 homeless people, the average person in the stadium would be a millionaire. Median income is by far the better and more accurate measure of middle class prosperity.

Re-running the numbers for median income instead of per-capita I get $50,237 for right to work and $49,849 for closed shop.

[DarrinS]

Unions have done wonders for the people of Michigan, especially Detroit.