[GayLibertarians] (no subject)

I thought you might all like this post from anther group (esp. Ron Getty, based upon earlier "union" related posts).

Rich

Dear Rich and The Rest of You;

To paraphrase something for the benefit of Andy Stern of the AFl-CIO
so he can understand what is happening: " We have met the enemy and
it is us ". Or in pure economic terms there is a poor resource
allocation of limited resources going to areas of less productivity
per worker. And the wage earner and consumer pays the price.

When you inflate union wages through collecitve bargaining
procedures where the wages are above the free-market wages for the
same positions you create some of the following: less workers hired
because of the higher wages, less hired workers doing less
productive work, unless there is heavy capitalization of the
industry so the output is created through the capitalization not
through out right productivity, the cost of the goods produced are
higher for the consumer and there is lesser chances of the goods
being high quality if there was true free market wage competition
among competitors. The alternate also applies where there is an
agreement among manufacturers to keep wages artifically low. Once
again there will be a poor allocation of limited resources to a less
productive worker.

Then the people who are not hired at the higher union wages seek
other jobs and are less productive in relation to open market wages
where there is basically a floor on wages.

Then in answer to his statements about not understanding what should
be basic free market economy he only has to look at the protective
tariffs, protective labor laws, huge taxes on productivity of any
kind to fuel an insatiable government tax system gone wild. The more
capital which is sucked out of the economy in taxes the less capital
there is for expanding industry and opening new business and
plants.

Lastly, as noted in the article, we do not have so much to fear from
private industry labor unions but governmental employee labor
unions. As they are the fastest growing union labor sectors. These
workers are hired with tax payer dollars and face no competition at
all in the market place.

Ron Getty
SF Libertarian

--- In lpsf-discuss@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Newell" <richard@n...>
wrote:

I thought you might all like this post from anther group (esp. Ron

Getty, based upon earlier "union" related posts).

Rich

From: dcrealtornw@a...
To: GayLibertarians@yahoogroups.com
Cc: Foxhall69gtown@a...
Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2004 3:06 PM
Subject: [GayLibertarians] (no subject)

The cat is out of the bag
Linda Chavez

July 28, 2004

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/lc20040728.shtml

The Democratic Party is a "stale party of ideas." That surprising

assessment

comes not from a conservative critic but from one of the Democrats

most

stalwart supporters, Andrew Stern, the president of the largest

union in the

AFL-CIO, the 1.6 million-member Service Employees International

Union (SEIU). Stern

set off a huge controversy when he spoke to the Washington Post's

David Broder

and Thomas Edsall on the first day of the Democratic convention,

and he has

since been backtracking on his statements -- with some difficulty

since they

were caught on tape and are readily available on the Post's

Website.

But what Stern said should come as a big surprise not just to the

Democratic

Party but to union members, given the huge amount of their dues

that will be

directed toward electing Democrats this election. Unions will

spend an

estimated $800 million to defeat President Bush and other

Republicans in 2004 -- $60

million of which will come from Stern's own SEIU and at least

another $35

million from one local in that union, Local 1199, in New York

City.

Stern, who has been speaking out for weeks now about what he

seems to

believe is a sclerotic labor movement, hit some raw nerves in his

comments to the

Post. He said, for example, "We can't talk about education. . . We

can't discuss

when it is failing our members (children) in public schools in

urban areas.

You know, we're the experiment. Maybe vouchers aren't the only

answer, but

then, what is? I'm tired of hearing if we just pay teachers more,

you know life

will be terrific. It's a huge problem."

Of course he's right. Just as he is when he describes the

inability of the

government to regulate the U.S. economy, which he admits is "too

big. You can't

regulate an American economy without markets. ... " He accurately

describes

his fellow Democrats' understanding of the economy: "We don't

understand

markets, we don't understand employers, we don't understand

competition; we don't

understand globalization; we don't understand how wages are set in

an economy."

Stern's solution is a bigger role for unions, which he describes

as "a

market force" in regulating wages. The problem is, unions have

virtually given up

their original mission of organizing new members and representing

them at the

bargaining table. Even though unions have taken in more than $17

billion every

year in members' dues, they spend the lion's share of that

treasury on bloated

bureaucracies and political action. Union membership has declined
precipitously in recent years, from a high of 35 percent of the

workforce in the

mid-1950s to the current rate of just 13 percent, and only 8.2

percent of private

sector workers. Stern's union is one of the few in the AFL-CIO

that is growing.

Although Stern's union represent both public and private sector

members, the

SEIU has actually gained members among janitors and other low-wage

workers in

recent years -- making it a rarity in organized labor circles. But

nearly

one-in-two union members today works for government at some level:

local, state or

federal.

Private sector union members are paying higher taxes to fund Big

Government,

which may benefit public sector unions but does little to help

working men

and women who don't work for government. Janitors in Stern's

unions are paying

more out of their paychecks so that already well-paid, college-

educated

government workers can get even more in theirs. Worse, the

services these government

workers provide are declining in quality -- as Stern suggests when

he talks

about American education.

Stern has let the cat out of the bag. Big Labor's ties to the

Democratic

Party aren't exactly helping working men and women. So why do

Stern and his

fellow union presidents insist on taking union members' dues to

fund the Democrats?

I wish Andy Stern would answer that question.

Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a

Townhall.com