On Thu, 17 Mar 2011 02:26:01 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

"HeyBub" wrote in message
om...
Robert Green wrote:
"HeyBub" wrote in message
m...
harry wrote:

They are in third world countries expressly to avoid these things.
America also supports many corrupt, killer tyrant leaders so that
this regime will continue and rich republicans can make more money
also depriving Americans of jobs. Without bloodshed nothing will
change. But eventually the pigeons will come home to roost.

There is some traction to your observation that US companies locate
in places where they can avoid regulations and have lower employee
costs.

There is also a significant incentive to locate offshore to avoid
taxes. The US has the 2nd largest (soon to become THE largest)
corporate tax rate in the world - something in the neighborhood of
35%. If the US reduced its corporate tax rate to zero, we could make
a big dent in unemployment as companies moved production facilities
back home.

Things have changed, however. Republicans got elected. Whether this
will result in bloodshed is solely up to the unions.

Oh Jeez, now you're rewriting union history? I'm not particularly
fond of unions, but I am fond of the truth.

Just like the partisan donkey crap that either the D's or the R's are
solely responsible for all our ills, perhaps you've heard the
expression "it takes two to tango." The history of the labor
movement is riddled with murders of union workers, scabs, innocent
bystanders, Pinkertons, hired thugs, business owners and more.

Union organizers faced businessmen determined to keep unions out of
their businesses at all costs. No one who is writing in AHR today
really knows what work was like in the early industrial age. They
have no idea how many people died so they could have their paid
vacations, health bennies, lunch hours, work breaks, fair wages,
pensions, workmen's comp and more. They just take for granted those
conditions were always there. They were not.

A lot of people on every side of the issue died, at it wasn't all
"solely up to the unions." I'm sure you've enjoyed many of the
benefits that were brought about by the unions you're now (wrongly)
implying are the sole cause of labor violence. History says
otherwise.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History..._United_States

You make some good point, but that's almost all history. Worker's rights,
working conditions, hours, pay, safety rules, and the like have all been
settled. There are huge government agencies that enforce all these
regulations.

Those rights, like any other, need constant vigilance because they're under
constant attack. Every year since I started working my health benefits
became less and less valuable. My defined pension plan got converted to a
401K, I lost a week of vacation time and my disability/health/misc.
insurance covers less and costs more each year. When people get laid off,
others weren't hired to replace them; their work was split up among the
remaining group members, essentially a cut in pay. There probably isn't a
salaried employee here who hasn't gotten the feeling that they're working
more and getting less for it every year. There's no guarantee that the
benefits unions have won for *everyone* won't start getting peeled away one
by one. The evidence suggests quite clearly that's exactly what's
happening.

Employers have found thousands of loopholes in Federal work regulations.
The recent bus crash that killed 15 in NY led one transportation worker to
call the driver's logbook "the fairytale book" because employees are told
exactly what they need to write to keep the Feds happy and it has nothing to
do with reality. Employers hire rafts of temps to skillfully avoid paying
benefits. They hire independent contractors (that are in many cases really
full time employees, the IRS contends) as a further attempt to avoid paying
benefits and into FUTA, FICA, etc.

If business indeed runs in large, 100 year cycles as some suggest, it's time
for the wheel of fortune to turn and for us to see a resurgence in the idea
of unions. The Wisconsin walkout gave the issue enough time to gain legs of
its own. Rather than co-opting the process, the Democrats were using the
rules, just like Rep. Shelby of Alabama does with his holds on nominees, to
focus attention on a deal that was supposed to go down so quickly that no
one would notice. But they did. And now the heat is on.

One thing that remains of the union legacy is thuggery.

Was anyone murdered in Wisconsin? It's easy to preach union violence, but
if you look worldwide, it's once again businesses that are hiring thugs to
union bust. It's not the simplistic argument you're turning it into.

"Canada's National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) noted in a
recent statement that on average, a trade union leader is assassinated every
three days in Colombia, accounting for the vast majority of all trade
unionists killed worldwide. More than 80 percent of the casualties are
civilians, NUPGE said, with the extreme right-wing paramilitaries
responsible for 85 percent of the deaths and the army for another 10
percent."

http://peoplesworld.org/rural-union-...t-in-colombia/

The Wisconsin protest struck me as a mostly peaceful demonstration that
succeeded in focusing the nation's attention on the Republican's belief that
winning the midterms in the lower house was a mandate to bust unions,
dismantle Federal agencies and punish Democrats and their constituents
nationwide. We both know it was the very same stars that were in alignment
to get Clinton a second term.

Now, by seeming to "take control" the Republicans get to share in the blame
if anything goes really south before 2012. The funny thing is that when
watching the Sunday talk shows, it's clear that Republican commentators also
see this same "we have a mandate" folly playing out as it did with Clinton.
I see the right as nearly being forced into running two candidates: Right
and Super Far Right. Shades of Ross Perot. (-: The Tea Party will split
the Republican vote and Obama will cruise to a second term like Clinton did.

Republicans should remember that they really only have control over the
lower house of one branch of government and an occasional majority on the
Supreme Court. That's not carte blanche to strangle the Federal
government. I am betting once they do shrink the government, it will
deflate the overall recovery by throwing an estimated 700,000 people out of
work. There's extremely clear evidence the longer you're out of work, the
less likely you are to find a job - ever. Like the demise of GM, that's
something that's NOT good for us in the long run. But there seems to be
absolutely no business that shows an interest in long term planning of any
kind. It's just "what's our current stock price and how can we boost it?"



You make a few good points BUT - most of this is NOT LABOUR RELATED so
much as political in nature.
As long as you have two diametrically opposed and inflexible political
parties involved in every aspect of American life, you will have
conflict in every aspect of American life.

Can't put it much simpler than that.
Anything either labour or management says or does is seen through the
political lens and will offend (deeeply) one "party" or the other.