My husband warned me that many aspects of this long
article were silly, but recommended it for the schadenfreude.
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez of Columbia, and Vanessa Williamson of the Brookings Institution examined the long-term political consequences of anti-union legislation by comparing counties straddling a state line where one state is right-to-work and another is not. Their findings should strike terror into the hearts of Democratic Party strategists: Right-to-work laws decreased Democratic presidential vote share by 3.5 percent. . . . The authors estimate that Democrats control 5 to 10 percent fewer seats in state legislatures (in both chambers) after a right-to-work law is enacted.
I enjoyed reading how unfair it was for workers to benefit from unions without paying dues, without any mention of what it was like for workers to have union dues extorted from their paychecks without getting anything back in services that they were interested in.
This leads to a vicious cycle wherein the GOP can use that power to further suppress votes, gut union rights, and gerrymander legislatures—in other words, embark on a fundamental retooling of American political mechanics.
The devil you say! That hasn't been done since Democrats used their power to establish public employee unions. Speaking of that,
Right-to-work will decimate private-sector unions, while the five Republican justices on the bench may be poised implement the equivalent of right-to-work nationally for all public-sector unions in the upcoming Janus decision.
Evil is described as good, good proclaimed as evil, the sane are labeled insane, and the prophets were once called devil power users.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing new under the sun, vis a vis Solomon.
I am not particularly concerned about private sector unions. I figure that the free market will restrain them. Public sector unions need to be destroyed.If government employees were worse off than private sector employees in terms of wages and benefits, I might have a different opinion. What was given by executive order can be taken away by executive order.
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree with Gringo here. I think private sector unions did a lot of good for the American worker in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but that the market has had to correct for them (which has hit the American automotive industry hard). Public sector unions are typically monsters, though there might be exceptions for particularly disadvantaged public workers (e.g., graduate students have a pretty nasty road, but I wouldn't support a union for tenured professors).
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I think that the connection between unions and political power ends up being a problem even with the private sector sometimes. We should be wary of things like closed-shop laws.
...the five Republican justices on the bench may be poised implement the equivalent of right-to-work nationally....
ReplyDeleteOne can hope. I'm not sanquine, though; Roberts and Kennedy are too unreliable. Even when they rule more or less "correctly," the Supremes too often duck away from substantive Constitutional rulings, even when the case cries out for one, and satisfy themselves with deciding only the narrowest technical question.
Eric Hines
ReplyDeleteNowadays, unions are much more prevalent in the public sector than in the private sector. BLS: Union Members Summary.
The union membership rate of public-sector workers (34.4 percent)
continued to be more than five times higher than that of private-
sector workers (6.5 percent).
It is not as easy to send government jobs overseas.
Government jobs are better not sent overseas, but alas! It's also very hard to downsize them.
ReplyDeleteIt's also very hard to downsize [government jobs].
ReplyDeleteBut not impossible, as Reagan showed when he eliminated one entire union. Unfortunately, no one following had the political courage to continue, much less maintain, and we have the same bloated Controller union right back again, just under different personnel.
The public service unions, sadly, are an excellent argument for unfettered patronage.
Eric Hines
After all these years, I remain amazed that he had the stones to shut down the Air Traffic Controllers Union, of all things, and that no one managed to pin any plane crashes on him. Today I swear the Democrats would plant a bomb on the plane themselves in order to score the point on Trump.
ReplyDeleteWell, you know, Trump shut down the government, and people died. Trump cut out subsidies for Obamacare, and people died.
ReplyDeleteThe Progressive-Democrats have been throwing bombs and planting them for something over a year.
Eric Hines
People will die: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXWhbUUE4ko
ReplyDeleteEric Hines
The Left can cry all they want about people dying ,but the only factions in charge of that is in the Deep State, not the Left.
ReplyDelete