Michigan's a Right to Work state!

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Crashman

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
Dec 31, 2007
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You don't see this discussed in the news, but Michigan state law was previously written to allow unions to compel dues from non members. Henceforth, laborers will be able to tell them no.
 
I dont think anyone should be forced to pay for anything. But paying union dues would make sense to a low wage worker. If a union takes 2% dues and gets you consistent above 2% raises (Example...gentlemen) and benefits it would make sense.



On the other hand I have a feeling this wasn't a move to help anyone but the companies. I work in a right to work state and the pay for most entry level jobs sucks, and you typically get a .25-.75% raise (I got a 0.16 cent raise one year....). Just look at walmart if you want an example of many workers in one industry that arent able to unionize. Their average pay is 8.20$/hour most are on food stamps(AKA taxpayer dollars) because their pay is low, almost all work less than part time. Its not a very good life. The American dream is dead and this is just another nail in the coffin. Now you can work your @ss off your whole life and be in no better position than your parents.

Now whats to stop a company from dramatically changing the way a raise system works? Whats to stop them from paying minimum wages for years (Minimum wages are already about 2$ lower than they should be).

 


As someone from that area, I believe it will greatly help the economy. I had too many friends drop out of high school, get their GED, and start on the assembly lines at GM PowerTrain making $25/hour. Many, if not all of them, are out of those overly high paying jobs and are doing whatever work they can. One guy is now putting on roofs and painting when he lost his job there.

Those jobs.. they never came back. Don't let the news lie to you. You can't keep paying people $25/hour or more to do basic labor. My neighbor previously also worked for GM PowerTrain. Her job was to pick up a transmission from one conveyor belt and put it on another. That was her job. It was hard, she had to do 6 transmissions every 5 or 10 minutes. Those things are heavy and all.. but was the job worth $33/hour? Absolutely not. The company bought her out for $140,000 for her 4 years of service to them.

Other neighbor was a janitor and made over $100k a year at the Chrysler HQ outside Detroit. They wouldn't do their job during the 40 hour work week, so everything was overtime. Double time on Sundays, triple on holidays.

If you want to pay into a union, please do. But you should 16 year old kid who is a bagger at Kroger be paying $50/month in Union dues? No way.

It will really help them up there as more people will be able to work, or rather the people who want to work will become employed and the ones who don't will become unemployed.
 
I was reading this article:
http://cnsnews.com/blog/terence-p-jeffrey/obamas-america-will-become-detroit

Political.. but there were some good facts in there that are not political.

By current calculations, Detroit faces obligations over the next six months that exceed its revenues by $47 million. The city, the Free Press reported, now pays $1.08 in benefits to municipal workers and retirees for every $1.00 it pays in salary.
Click to expand...

Traditional two-parent families and the productive taxpaying citizens they produce have fled. In 1950, according the U.S. Census Bureau, Detroit had 1,849,568 people and was the fifth-largest city in the nation. By 2000, its population had dropped to 951,270; by 2010, to 713,777; and by 2011, to 706,585.
Click to expand...
*Keep in mind, Detroit itself had around 5 million people at one point in the 90s. 8 million+ including suburbs.

[...] But of the 224,846 residents who do have jobs, 34,500 — or 15.3 percent — have jobs with the government. Thus, this city that boasted 1,849,568 residents in 1950 has only 190,346 private-sector workers today.
Click to expand...

Wow..
Of the 363,281 housing units in Detroit, 99,072 are vacant.
Click to expand...

Another interesting thing... 706,000 people living in the city and only 190,000 working in the private sector. 225,000 people working.. out of 706,000 people [over 16 and eligble to work].


I figured I would hijack and make this topic about Michigan and Detroit. :)
 
ah, if only...
My first job in a "closed shop" paid a little less than 5% over minimum wage and the "union tax" was around 8%. So, I made less than minimum wage after "union tax". And that's before FICA of course. Heck, I had to pay FICA ON my "union tax".
 


If you raise minimum wages, you raise minimum prices across the board. If Walmart paid more, prices would be higher. I have several neighbors who work at Walmart. They make between $13-$15.. one is the deli manager, another is manager of produce, and another is a sales manager or something over a clothing section.

Friend of my owns 3 Tim Horton's. The company sets the prices, he doesn't. He used to pay his managers $2/hr more than his regular workers, and his nights workers made $0.75/hr more than his day workers. When minimum wage went up, he couldn't adjust. His managers now make $0.50 more than a regular employee. He cut his personal pay from $60,000 to $50,000 a year. He's the business owner.. and makes $50,000 a year. That sucks.
 
The fact that many service companies can't pay a $10/hr base rate is both true and an indicator of larger economic troubles. People think I'm ignorant to blame the trade deficit, but everybody seemed to have more money during the "tech bubble".

Why didn't the same thing happen in the housing bubble? People will say I'm ignorant to credit the tech bubble for bringing real money into the US. They'll even use the single instance of the housing bubble as an example of why bubbles never produce a national financial gain, even though the housing bubble was built on debt. People will also say I'm a simpleton for linking the trade deficit to foreign debt, which I've been doing since I first started watching the news and was far too young to understand the complexities of a national economy.

But as an "economics simpleton", my observations seem to make far more sense than the calculations of professional economists.

But those observations have nothing to do with the topic. More observations: At the high end (UAW), unions appear to have relied on several workers paying into the system in order to cover the benefits of one retiree. A system like that requires union membership to grow continuously at a fairly high rate, regardless of the employer's needs or abilities. I observed the solvency of these union funds drop as the proportion of workers to retirees dropped.

At the low end, unions simply stole money from the bottom workers to pay benefits to the middle. I've been in those jobs, as have my family, and this intolerable situation is the only one I haven't seen discussed in the news. That's why I referred to this problem in my lead.
 
Union for union sake
What an absolutely stupid idea.

Ive got union in my blood, but if a union doesnt allow you to do a few things as an individual, or make you more money, or protect your job or job habitat/working conditions, theyre worthless.
As an individual, sending your share of political contributions where YOU want them comes to mind as well
 
Unions are very good at over paying a lot of unqualified workers, or qualified lazy workers. Rarely do you find a really good proud union worker who excels above others at their job.
 
riser also mentioned lazy workers. These problems are far less common over the past 20 years, with GM making some of the best-rated full-sized cars in the late 80's. But if you were to go back to the mid 70's you'd find tons of drunken and stoned employees sleep-working, which lead to incredibly low assembly quality on cars that, though horribly outdated, were built on solid mechanical design.

In the 70's you could pick up a car with hundreds of assembly defects and fix every single problem as soon as it became apparent, creating a nearly-perfect used car that lasted hundreds of thousands of miles. Buyers leaving GM claimed QUALITY as the reason they switched, but the union blamed MANAGEMENT for using outdated designs. I'd be more inclined to listen to the buyers.

But the bigger problem for workers were "closed shops" that took money from the bottom workers without letting them earn full membership benefits...ever. Michigan is filled with hundreds of thousands of working poor, with all pathways to advancement blocked, their children eating from food stamps, and the union that blocks their advancement still taking their money. The big news in the law is that these bottom workers can now follow the creed of the Boston Tea Party: No taxation (union dues) without representation (union benefits).
 


You must live in a right to work state if you didn't know that a non-right-to-work state REQUIRES that people pay union dues if they wish to work at a certain employer. It seems unfathomable to a person with reasonable intellect that you can be forced to pay union dues simply to be allowed to continue to work at a certain job, but it's true. Of course Obama is pitching right to work as banning unions, which is patently false. It just bans mandatory union membership as a condition of being employed. But you can see why he's doing what he is doing as a percent or two of union dues are given back to the Democrat Party's election campaign.

Detroit with the partial exception of the partially Italian-owned Chrysler is making many very good cars. GM overall is making cars as good as any other maker, Ford is doing especially well. Chrysler is making some decent products like their Mercedes-Benz-derived RWD cars and Jeeps but quality continues to be a problem. They *are* Chrysler, after all. If they didn't have quality problems then they wouldn't be Chrysler, would they? 😀 Being part owned by "Fix It Again Tony" sure doesn't help them either.
 
Are you kidding me the Republicans have no rich machines backing them up in Michigan.Koch brothers is one.You are one winning Republican.
 
Crash is it really you ??

I thought you were up the top putting icing on the donuts ??

mingo ... don't let this guy fool you ... he ripped off my grandma ... sold her a Pentium D overclocked ... she uses it to cook her eggs on.

Crash is still working on his plan for total world domination.

If he achieves it the first to be culled will be the malcontents in this forum area.

:)
 
I asked a childhood friend what he was losing. He works in Michigan in a Union. I simply asked what he is losing.. People can now choose if they want to pay Unions to represent them. Unions are still allowed, it just doesn't force everyone to pay into them if they don't agree or dislike something, or even can't afford it.

Guess what? He couldn't tell me what he was losing. I said in worst, his Union boss wasn't going to be making $300k a year anymore.

In fact, I would argue they gained some liberty (haha John) in this happening.
 
This?
6400oc_photo.jpg

It's a Core 2 Duo...sorry she had to wait for her breakfast, I was out of Pentium D's at the time
 
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