Bringing Back the Union Label?

Barely 12% of today's workers belong to a union ... most union workers today don't work in factories, mines, shipyards, on the railroads or driving trucks - most of them are federal and state civil servants and public school teachers... [snip]

... here comes HR 800, proposed federal legislation carrying the misleading title "Employee Free Choice Act". It was passed by the House in March 2007, but denied by the Senate. The Heritage Foundation has provided a superb summary of the Act and its pernicious effects on both employers and employees...[snip]

... even George McGovern, the aging liberal lion-in-winter writing in the Wall Street Journal, knows the most dangerous consequences from this toxic bill are the assault on free speech and denial of fundamental tenets of a democracy-- and virtually guarantees worker intimidation and, would force an employer to recognize the union with no recourse. [snip]

Certainly before the 2010 midterm Congressional elections, the union ranks would swell by the hundreds of thousands if not millions.

And what would be the consequences in addition to more Democrats easily winning re-election? Higher costs to consumers, companies less globally competitive and more jobs shipped to China. And higher taxes for those who remain to fund more unemployment benefits, free health care, and abstract environmental regulations having little tangible benefit to anyone.

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> "HR 800; Employee Free Choice Act"
Email Your Congressman > https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml


> FLASHBACK: NNBrief 6/13/2008:

LOOK FOR THE UNION LABEL

What do the farm bill, the cap-and-trade global warming bill, the clean water bill, the housing bailout bill and the school construction bill all have in common?

In each one and countless others the Democratic majority in Congress has inserted "prevailing-wage" requirements [via Davis-Bacon requirements] that amount to a super-minimum wage, says the Wall Street Journal.

Barack Obama has proposed a new taxpayer-supported $60 billion infrastructure bank that would siphon billions off to his union friends by mandating Davis-Bacon...

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LOOK FOR THE UNION LABEL
What do the farm bill, the cap-and-trade global warming bill, the clean water bill, the housing bailout bill and the school construction bill all have in common? In each one and countless others the Democratic majority in Congress has inserted "prevailing-wage" requirements that amount to a super-minimum wage, says the Wall Street Journal.

We're speaking of Davis-Bacon, the 1931 law that set a floor on wages in part to price black and Mexican workers out of the work. Today, its main impact is to require de facto union wages. For example:

• A Heritage Foundation analysis of wage data reports that in many cities the mandated Davis-Bacon wage is twice as high as the market wage.
• In Nassau-Suffolk in New York, for example, Davis-Bacon requires a minimum wage for brickmasons of $49.67 an hour, though the more common area wage for that work is $25.50.
• Many reputable studies have estimated that Davis-Bacon inflates federal construction costs by anywhere from 5 percent to 39 percent.
• America could be building about 25 percent more bridges and roads by repealing Davis-Bacon.
• A 2001 study by economists Daniel Kessler of Stanford and Lawrence Katz of Harvard found that when states repeal their Davis-Bacon laws, it is followed by an appreciable narrowing of the black/nonblack wage differential for construction workers.

Barack Obama has proposed a new taxpayer-supported $60 billion infrastructure bank that would siphon billions off to his union friends by mandating Davis-Bacon. That's "change," -- right out of taxpayer pockets, says the Journal.
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The union label: Paying off Big Labor

Subject: txt crpt -
Rewarding Big Labor for political support, the Obama administration is virtually shutting nonunion contractors out of federal construction projects worth at least $25 million -- and sticking taxpayers with untold millions in higher costs.

Just weeks after taking office, President Obama signed an executive order encouraging use of project labor agreements (PLAs), which require contractors to agree to union representation and work rules...

[And never forget: 'big labor' now IS our government, with the majority of unionized Americans being in the tax-payer funded public sector - i.e., government.]

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image toon - crpt auto = Union Label = pink slip mny

SCHOOL CHOICE INTERNATIONAL

... The findings speak quite clearly:

• Competition from private schools improves student achievement, and appears to do so for public school as well as private school students.
• It produces these benefits while decreasing the total resources devoted to education, as measured by cumulative educational spending per pupil.
• Under competitive pressures from private schools, the productivity of the school system measured as the ratio between output and input increases by even more than is suggested by looking at educational outcomes alone.
• Ironically, although Catholics historically placed less emphasis on education than did adherents of many other religions, their resistance to state-run schooling in many countries helped create institutional configurations that continue to outperform government run systems.

[seems like another waisted study as common sense tells us competition improves the product - students included. But the article also sites union critics that label the effects 'unproven' and that student achievement in the public sector could* decline as students become 'segregated' - so hopefully this large study will provide some 'proof' of what all non-union adults already know... Recommended > ]

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