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LETTERS
Workers deserve employers who play by the rules
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To the editor:
It is discouraging to read an editorial miscasting the results of the election ("Card check, RIP," Nov. 5 Review-Journal). While the political landscape certainly shifted dramatically last Tuesday, this election was not a mandate for the anti-worker agenda.
It was a call to fix the economy so working families can get back on track.
Unfortunately, extreme right-wing groups such as Save Our Secret Ballot are funded by corporate interests, and used the elections in Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah to push for policies that hurt workers and distract the debate away from the economy. The secret ballot initiatives referenced in your editorial were a pre-emptive strike against the Employee Free Choice Act -- legislation that has not yet passed Congress.
What's more, we know that the corporate interests that bankrolled these initiatives and channeled unprecedented money into the mid-term elections do not represent all employers.
More than 1,000 employers nationwide have endorsed the Employee Free Choice Act, and a growing number of employers across the country recognizes that respecting their workers' choice to form a union isn't just the right thing to do, it's good for their business.
There's too much at stake to let the anti-worker agenda, however well-financed, carry the day. Working women and men deserve better: a rebuilt economy with a clear path to the middle class, and employers who play by the rules.
Kimberly Freeman Brown
Washington, D.C.
The writer is executive director of American Rights at Work, an educational and outreach organization dedicated to promoting the freedom of workers to form unions and bargain collectively.
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Employers deserve workers who work......
I have read several times that the historical purpose of big government was to referee between big business and big labor. This makes sense to me, even though I will be the first to agree that it is an ideal that is not being met nowadays. But the solution is not to do away with organized government and labor, and so remove all the checks and balances on the power of big business. What's next - calling out the National Guard to force striking workers back to the job at gunpoint? Wouldn't be the first time it was done!
unions = socialsim so it only makes sense a conservative has no problems with them. Conservatives are socialists at heart even if they themselves do not realize it.
informed. you are not conservative if you do not understand the corrosive, and even corrupt role unions are playing.
unions are a labor cartel. examples of their excess is everywhere, esp in CA and in NV.
no conservative can justify being okay with the disabling effect unions have and are having on the US econ.
I am a conservative republican in my voting stance, however I have no problem with the majority of unions and have absolutely no problem with public sector unions. I find it ironic that most republicans say "less government" since they feel the government is corrupt, yet bash public unions that protect public workers from the corrupt government. Governments, both local and state, frivolously spend. And if it wasn't for the unions protecting the public workers, they would opt to pay their workers poorly, and reward themselves instead.
Often times I hear people say to look at GM to see how unions destroyed a company. Yet I would have never bought a GM vehicle because 1) they sold crap product and 2) their car line up was terrible (design wise). It was not the unions who ruined GM, it was the sorry management. Ford, on the other hand in my opinion, had much better products and lineup...so I bought from them.
Monopolies can only exist with the assistance of the government. That is to say, in a free market monopoly status is near impossible to achieve. They are government constructs. Just like Corporations.
The Left Wing, and Unions just got their firing papers.
If you want to see who the voters want gone, look at last Tues. results.
Card Check was merely an attempt for unions to get the names of those that did not vote pro union so they could use their violent influnance on them. This was clear. Why some one would doubt it is beyond me. There is a reason unions are failingly miserably in the private sector and have only the public as their last bastion. It is time to bury these dinosaurs for good. Stopping card check was a good first step.
PS - isn't blaming unions for absolutely everything sort of like saying that the current disastrous record of the football Rebels is entirely the fault of the players, and that the coaches had nothing to do with it?
@ Ted_in_Vegas: Actually, I agree with you about standing against monopolies because they eventually destroy businesses. And I agree with other posters about lazy employees that are difficult to fire. I've seen that more than once myself. My only problems are that unions aren't the only cause of monopolies in the current business world, and they also aren't the only source of stupid, lazy people. I still think that the Vegas casino industry, and the American auto industry, have been as much damaged by greedy, incompetent managers making bad business decisions as by lazy, greedy union labor. In order to be consistent, don't we have to be opposed to ALL monopolies? To paraphrase what has been said in these blogs many times, employees have no rights other than what the employers choose to give them. Why is totally destroying unions, and giving monopoly power to management, the appropriate solution to the excesses of union labor power? Once we do that, how do we get rid of lazy, incompetent MANAGERS?