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EDITORIAL
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Updated: Mar. 4, 2010 | 2:36 a.m.
In 2008, unions spent more than $400 million to help elect Barack Obama and increase the size of the Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate.
They've gotten some consideration for those donations -- Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, is a frequent White House guest, and President Obama helped keep General Motors and Chrysler alive as union employers for now through bailouts.
Nonetheless, on balance, leaders of labor's largest federation are stuck for a plan to reverse frustrating failures in most of their headline issues as they convene for their annual meeting this week in Orlando.
If their agenda stalls even after that much spending, and even with the whopping legislative majorities enjoyed by Democrats through all of 2009, one possibility the organizers may have to face is that neither they nor their agenda is really all that popular.
Socialized medicine? Even a new, "low-calorie" version isn't doing that well. A bipartisan jobs bill did pass the Senate last week, but drew tepid praise at best from the AFL-CIO.
Union leaders fought hard to keep a Democrat in Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts Senate seat -- and lost.
Another setback came in January when two Senate Democrats joined Republicans in blocking the appointment of labor lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board.
Card check? It now appears dead in Congress.
Union membership in the private sector fell 10 percent during Mr. Obama's first year in office, to a historic low of 7.2 percent. A poll last month from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that only 41 percent of those surveyed now have a favorable view of unions, compared with 58 percent in a similar survey in 2007.
It's up to them, of course, but maybe the AFL-CIO should simply announce it's going to work next fall for the party that has the best plan to cut government spending, cut taxes and thus allow private employers to create new jobs. Because a change of course seems advisable. And dumping the radical, far-left agenda -- which the rank and file have never considered a hill to die for -- might be a start.
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patrick,
We don’t totally disagree but the idea that the capitalist system is the root cause. I don’t agree with, although when you mix corporations and government, again this isn’t capitalism, it changes to something else.
Then I’ll agree the gotta cut, gotta cut, of course it comes from the ego of those running this giant monster, that goes, I gotta gooble up, I gotta gobble up, I must control everything, and that sounds a lot like government.
Our problems are not the systems but our leaders running the systems and they are out of control.
And no system of government or economics seems to be immune to our human flaws, when all is corrupted we reach the point we are in today.
Joe C.:
Well said! Unions have problems, businesses have problems. Neither are infallible and both are necessary until the day comes when business can be counted on to treat their employees as the valuable parties they are.
And, of course you are correct about Walmarts policies to keep hours down so that they can deny paying benefits to their workers. That's all part of the capitalist system, gotta cut costs, gotta cut labor, gotta cut cut cut.
And we all know where that takes us right?
@ jcm
To be fair about Wal-Mart and patrick they do have benefits but many stores cut hours short so they don't have to pay them.
For those that do make it to full time the pay and benefits compare closely to most of the Culinary union jobs or the SEIU, of course depending on the job.
Two unions I could never support are the Culinary or the SEIU that joined leagues with illegal aliens and since the willing illegal labor is responsible for lowering wages and displacing citizen, thus the creation of jobs we don’t want.
Unions will always be necessary as you cannot count on industry or government to protect your safety or fair pay.
But unions have created many of their own problems, and like industry must be flexible and evolve along with throwing out the corrupted influences that have been tied to unions for too many years.
I wish it was as easy to just say union bad industry good but it’s just not so, corruption and greed are ruining factors on both sides hurting working people.
patrick. At some point the law of dimishing returns reverses. As we found when gas prices spiked a couple years ago manufacturers began contemplating relocating their factories back to the USA because it was cheaper to produce the products here than to use slave labor and ship them back to us. Only a drop in gas prices changed that dynamic from occurring.
Capitalism without moral behavior (like most amoral behavior) sows the seeds of its own destruction. Capitalism in a society with good moral fabric is a prosperous combination.
I eschew shopping at Walmart whenever possible because I despise the store setup, their lack of ability to check customers out in a hurry and the general indifference of many (not all, some are pretty good) of their point of sale employees to any customer satisfaction. They can lower the prices all they want but if you have to hold your nose to shop there it doesn't do much good.
Patrick:
Walmart, and its policies of being the "low price leader" results in ONLY one thing; low wages, and ultimately the demise of Walmart and lots of other companies for that matter.
This results in the loss of employment for all.
Unfortunately, this is PRECISELY what I meant when I said that capitalism sows the seeds of its own demise. See, capitalism is based on increasing shareholder value; at any cost. Increasing shareholder value means a business must cut costs at every opportunity.
Ultimately, this results in an ever downward spiral; cut labor costs, cut labor salaries, cut purchase costs, etc. Now, cutting salaries and purchase costs means that the people formerly reliant upon those salaries, and jobs, and purchases have less money. People will less money are less able to buy stuff, which means places like Walmart, in order to maintain their margins, MUST cut costs EVEN MORE.
THIS is why a company like Walmart, and heck, ALL capitalist enterprises for that matter, are ultimately DOOMED to create their own destruction.
I'd rather we didn't go down with them.
Joe,
Spreading teh cost to taxpayers means your immediate out of pocket costs go down but your taxes go up. At best it is a wash. But because government is very unefficient it will end up costing more in taxes. There is a reason why the average European has 30% less wealth than the average American.