*built

Yeah, the Senator from Boeing is right. We don't need unions anymore because everyone makes a living wage with rights and benefits and such.

Even with worker productivity skyrocketing over the last 40 years while real wages remained stagnant and pensions and benefits were mostly eliminated, you really can't expect corporations to run profitably if they have to bargain with workers (or pay taxes or comply with environmental laws and other regulations, but that's another story).

You certainly can't hold the CEOs responsible...those poor bastards have had to make due with just a 400x pay increase over those same 40 years.

You really think unions have more power than corporations?

Huh.

RTW laws are not laws "allowing a person to join a union or not." They are laws that "allow police to forcibly beat the shit out of people forming unions" and that allow employers to "fire people who try to organize workers on relevant issues such as fair treatment, anti-sexual harassment policies, overtime payment, maternity and paternity leave, healthcare, safe working conditions, vacation pay, weekends, and the fucking 8 hour work day." Things you either don't have to think about because you are supported by your parents, still a student, you're just too dumb to care, or all of the above. Also important, union pension plans involve hundreds of billions of dollars which go right back into the American economy.

With real wages going down and corporate profits going up (they are sitting on 2 trillion dollars of capital right now, where are the jobs?), while lobbying fiercely to make everyone live their "market values," unions are more valid than ever. It's interesting that some of this country's greatest economic times were at times when union participation was spiking upwards.

Labor union membership was at its peak in the 1950's, that wonderful conservative yesteryear that they all wish still existed. What conservatives don't understand was that those glory days were punctuated by relatively high taxes on the rich and a great deal of respect for working people.

baleen, in America of 2011, you are now considered a communist for writing something like that

really

I wonder what possible impetus could have done this grave disservice to the national discourse HAH just kidding, an autistic four year old knows how the wealthy have completely harnessed the power of PR at this point

Baleen, it's my understanding that the country's greatest economic times were, for the most part, because most of the developed world had its factories destroyed in the WWII and needed to buy from the US in order to rebuild.

I don't disagree with your general assessment of the importance of organized labor and its value, I'm just not clear on the 1950's economic strength/union membership spiking relationship you're suggesting.

5 for Lamar's evil.

The problem with unions today is simply that they are needed globally, not locally. Capital is fluid and mobile, but workers are not. Without a global union movement, any one country can undercut others and we have a race to the bottom. Union labor cannot compete with slave labor. Ironically, the single most important place for union formation is in communist China. It's worth noting, my conservative friends, that they arrest union organizers there and imprison them in forced labor camps. I think this says something about the relation between unions and modern communism that you might wish to consider.

Approval ratings for unions are still above 50% in this country, so I'm not really that "communist." Most people would like to be in a union.

Simon, my point was merely that heavy participation in unionizing doesn't destroy the economy. I didn't mean to imply a correlation between higher union involvment and a better economy, but you could maybe make the argument that a healthier and better trained workforce is a more productive one. I can't remember where I read the study that traced a correlation between economic boom activity in South Korea and Brazil shortly after implementing sweeping national health care measures for its citizens. A healthy workforce is obviously a primary objective of union organizing.

UNIONS ARE MAD WITH POWER I ONCE SAW A 40 YEAR EMPLOYEE TAKE AN EXTRA FIVE MINUTES FOR LUNCH AND NOT CARE WHEN WILL THE POOR DOWNTRODDEN BILLIONAIRES SAVE US???

This is what dumbfuck libertarians like mouser actually believe.

At least you have some Washington pride and respect for the people that built much of your state...... I think.