Lets finally get rid of all unions!

The point is the unions unions inflate wages and in many instances require only union people hired. This keeps our country down. Companies should have the right to outsource and much as they want (as much as the market dictates). Outsource the jobs we can't do cheaper and let the market dictate which jobs we should be doing.Low tech jobs outsource. I have no problem with that. Free competition and I trust in the innovation of the American businessman.

As manager, I would fire an employee with facebook comments that reflect poorly on my business. It is my right to do so. It stands to reason that I might check someone's facebook before I hire them.This is why we do not want unions. The employee has every right not to work for me, but I don't need any union stopping me from looking into a facebook page that might do my business damage.

Mrs. M wrote:

Here's one of the few good reasons to keep unions:

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/02/19/1746256/Employer-Demands-Facebook-Login-From-Job-Applicants

Obviously he does. The tea party has changed politics as they used to be done. The free rides will end. The people have had enough of the BS. Lets gradually let social security be replaced by private investment accounts. Old people are basically stealing from young people the way the system is now. Declare the system broke and change all the rules for social security. There are so many baby boomers how do they expect the younger workers to pay them so much more than they put into the system.We need RADICAL change in this country just to get back to our roots. Getting rid of unions is just the start.

Tea Partier wrote:

GOP and PIGS wrote:

The Tea Party is the morphed 60's era Ku Klux Klan. They want to slash Civil Servants and Teachers benefits but leave outlandish perks, salaries, pensions, retirements for Police, Fire, Congress, President, Governor, Pentagon, and Military. If effect the Tea Party does the 'divide and conquer' tactic against taxpayers.

Do you just make up whatever bullshit occurs to you?

Samuel Adams3 wrote:

The point is the unions unions inflate wages

This really isn't true for most public sector unions.

Almost all of the union rhetoric is ill-informed.

Also everyone remeber to click the support of Walker link.

Ya, you know the only reason that you have weekends off, a reasonable salary, workers comp, health insurance, and reasonable working conditions? Unions. Those not in unions reap the benefits of what unions have accomplished. Anyone who denies this is ignorant of history and of what happens in foreign countries.

SamuelAdams3 wrote:

We have lost technical jobs to China and India. What do you think the average Chinese technical job pays? A hell of a lot less than in the US. The unions are why we have to pay tech guys so much.

Get rid of the unions and let US companies pay them fair world level market value.

Keith you miss really obvious points.

No, it's your myopia that's missing the obvious point. Hardly any technical workers in the US are unionized. The lack of collective bargaining meant hundreds of thousands of technical workers lost their jobs.

Technical workers in India make about 1/8th what they make in the US, China 1/10th. It would be impossible for any US worker to survive at those pay levels.

The presumed reason for this massive job shift was that trained workers weren't available in the US. US companies didn't want to pay for training, foreign governments were perfectly happy to. US companies get cheap labor whose training was subsidized, and those foreign works often have to sign a contract that they have to work for 2 years, with no chance of any wage or other negotiation.

So what you're advocating is a return to abusive and one-sided labor relations. Corporate slave-holders. Companies used to have people that tried to organize killed to make sure labor rates were kept low. They imported workers from China and Ireland and literally worked them to death, burying them under the rails when they died. Today companies still threaten job loss to workers that report health and safety issues.

Unions wouldn't be necessary if corporations wouldn't continually abuse their workers for profit. Since many corporate executives are mostly looking at the next quarterly income statement they'll often do things are are detrimental to their workforce (and long term corporate health) if it means a short term bump in earning. It's bad for the workers, bad for the companies, and long term it's bad for the country as a whole.

Arent there laws now that dictate workplace conditions, minimum wage and worker's rights? OSHA handles safety concerns so why do we still need unions? I do realize that historically unions fought for these issues and contributed a lot to the quality of life in the US but have they outlived their usefulness? At least, in their current form with the amount of power they have.

I thought we hung that fascist piece of crap "Il Duce" upside down in Rome in 1945 and here he is posting his poison six plus decades later.

Weakening the teachers unions is the first step in education reform. Everyone agrees that our current system is terrible but the second someone starts to really address the issue you get mass demonstations.

Yeah, blame the teachers, don't blame the lazy, underage, uneducated parents, the 24 hour video games and TV babysitting the fast food and soft drink diets that produce kids that can't sit still and pay attention for more than a minute....has to be the TEACHER'S fault, and their UNION!

I have two sisters that spent their lives teaching kids in poor rural districts. You have no idea what you're talking about as far as the real problem that the US has substandard education compared to certain other industrialized nations. I've worked in the steelworker's union in 1978, was a teamster in 1979, was in the newspaper guild in 1984 and 1985, and have been in the treasury employee's union since 1985. There has to be a system of checks and balances..there's no good reason a person should be fired because one particular manager doesn't like someone's look or color. How come no one on here thinks the management/school boards/administrations are not top-heavy and causing their respective business/school district/government its financial problems?

Only if you have made this apparent at the hiring of the employee - it should be stipulated at the hiring. FB is referred to as a "social network", although it is being used as a "business network" as well. You may have the right to fire an employee who speaks disparagingly about your business on your business site, but not if s/he does so on their personal page. If the employee has "friended" you so that you can see the employee's personal comments, you have every right to confront or reprimand the employee - if the employee didn't want you to see comments, s/he shouldn't have friended you. Right to fire? Not sure - the MD corrections officer was being re-certified, not being hired for the first time.

This line between work and personal reminds me of the teacher in GA that posted pics on her FB page (which she thought she had under personalized settings, thinking her students couldn't see them) of her drinking on vacation. The principal received an anonymous complaint presumably from a parent and gave the teacher the choice to remove the pics and be suspended or to be fired. Or another teacher who blogged about how lazy and disrespectful her students are and was fired.

Let's get rid of YOU instead. Yeah, I like that idea.

Unions aren't the reason, Ray-Gun and his cronies are.

Send jobs offshore, yeah...that was a GREAT Idea.

NAFTA, oh such a WONDERFUL concept, for the top 1%.

Damn brain-damaged-quintuple-pension-dipper vulture he was.

No of you swine mention THAT do you, you rumproast.

Why not put some of YOUR idols in jail for (bleeping) the economy?

Exactly right. We need to break the hold teacher unions have on our politicians. The teacher unions protect bad teachers and keep them well paid. We need to chop the legs off the teacher unions. The teachers will fall into place.

BertNEarnie wrote:

Weakening the teachers unions is the first step in education reform. Everyone agrees that our current system is terrible but the second someone starts to really address the issue you get mass demonstations.

'School administrators can only negogiate with the money they have? Have you seen the increase in school taxes?'

Wait, taxes have not risen. Funding for schools has been stable if not decreasing across the country. It's not a priority for Republicans, or most Americans for that matter... which probably explains the typos, but I digress...

I really doubt that the remnant of union power is the cause of our fiscal woes. So calm down, Adams. Rather, the billions of dollars spent in extravagant, deluded military operations overseas WITHOUT an increase in taxes is a big culprit. As is the need for serious overhauling on the social security.

You now are not making any sense at all and and any point you are making supports my position. How can you say the lack of collective bargaining caused US tech workers to lose their jobs??? This makes no sense and you give no reason for making that claim.Tech workers in China are paid much less. A company has a right to hire those who will do the same job at a much cheaper wage. Just as the consumer has the right to buy the same goods at a cheaper that are imported.Some tech jobs may have stayed in the US if companies could have dropped salaries to make them somewhat competitve with foreign coutries. Some unions stopped this.This is capitalism. If our companies can get cheap labor overseas good for them. If its the kind of work that YOU do, the market doesn't support you doing that so find something else to do. If you have money, buy stock in the company.This is the free market system and its all good.

Keith Stone wrote:

[quote]SamuelAdams3 wrote:

We have lost technical jobs to China and India. What do you think the average Chinese technical job pays? A hell of a lot less than in the US. The unions are why we have to pay tech guys so much.

Get rid of the unions and let US companies pay them fair world level market value.

Keith you miss really obvious points.

No, it's your myopia that's missing the obvious point. Hardly any technical workers in the US are unionized. The lack of collective bargaining meant hundreds of thousands of technical workers lost their jobs.

Technical workers in India make about 1/8th what they make in the US, China 1/10th. It would be impossible for any US worker to survive at those pay levels.

You are right. This isn't the early 1900's. Unions do a hell of a lot more than address real safety issues. They will soon be a thing of the past anyways. Wisconsin will be a blow to the heart of all unions and its about time. It did take the tea party to give the impetus to drive a stake in the blood sucking union's heart.I can hear all the big salaried union kingpins crying right now.

Samuel Jackson wrote:

Arent there laws now that dictate workplace conditions, minimum wage and worker's rights? OSHA handles safety concerns so why do we still need unions? I do realize that historically unions fought for these issues and contributed a lot to the quality of life in the US but have they outlived their usefulness? At least, in their current form with the amount of power they have.

ryan foreman wrote:

Even if pro union people get their way, public employees are still going to suffer cutbacks in pay and/or benefits.

If unions get their way, teachers will lose their jobs, period. And it will mostly be the younger, cheaper teachers. Unions don't stand up for their employees, they stand up for their tenured ones.

Please read this story about the school that Obama trumpeted in the state of the union address.

http://jwpegler.blogspot.com/2011/01/real-story-with-obamas-colorado-school.html

During the state of the union address, Obama praised the Bruce Randolph school in Colorado for turning themselves around rather dramatically in a few short years.

Three years ago, Bruce Randolph was one of the poorest performing schools in Colorado. In 2010, 97% of the seniors graduated. Many of the graduates were the first in their families to get admitted into college.

How did they do it?

Sen. Michael Bennet and the school's principal Kristin Waters, convinced the Colorado government to give the school almost complete autonomy from the state's education bureaucrats over budget, staffing, schedule, school calendar, and curriculum.

One of the first things they did is terminate all of their tenured teachers and told them they could re-apply for their jobs. Only 5% got their jobs back. 95% of the tenured teachers weren't up to par.

The Gate's Foundation has done significant research into why public schools fail. Their conclusion is that it's all about teachers. The producer of the movie "Waiting for Superman" came to the same conclusion. Good teachers succeed and bad teachers fail our children. It's not any more difficult than that.

In the private sector a business can: A.) fire bad employees and B.) pay good employees a lot of money. You can't do that in government. That's the problem. It has to change.

If we're really serious about fixing the public schools, we need to give principals the ability to terminate bad teachers and reward great ones with substantial performance bonuses tied to international test scores. We also need to get schools out from under their state's education bureaucracies and let the principals and the parents who have kids in the school have a greater say in how the schools are run.

This is how the Bruce Randolph school was able to succeed. It's how other schools will be able to succeed as well.

Unfortunately, the teacher's unions have viscously blocked every attempt to implement these types of common sense reforms.

The big question is whether or not Obama and the Democrats are willing to do battle with their largest specialist interest group (the NEA) so that our kids can have a fighting chance in the global economy?