Thanks to cap and trade and health care, there wont be any employers anyway.

Companies are going to move where carbon isn't taxed and they can pollute as they please (about 1/2 the world's countries fall into that category), and thanks to our free trade policies they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by doing it.
Private Health Insurance companies are going to be dropping like flies, and tens of thousands of Americans are going to be out of work, due to the cheaper government backed insurance coming onto the scene.

The recovery is a long way away, and sitting here complaining about unions is stupid, considering people will soon be lucky to have any job at all, union or otherwise.

people wanted change, they got it.

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"I think he can be ready, but right now I don't believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training."
- Joe Biden Aug 2007, on Obama

" We still don't have a lot of answers about Sen. Obama."
- Hillary Clinton Aug 2008

An employee working in an at-will situation is agreeing to work without a contract. The employee can stop working at any time without recourse and the employer can dismiss the employee for any reason which doesn't violate state or federal law.

I'm not at all trying to argue why working in a union is somehow better than working at-will. A union will protect an underachieving employee while an at-will employer will terminate them. And while working for an at-will employer can leave an employee open to termination without cause, the employee was in no way coerced to work without a contractual agreement.

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There is no secret ingredient.

So, even though no contract exists, an employee can leave whenever, but the employer can't fire him whenever? You see no problem with that?I agree. The employer should be able to fire him. If no agreement exists, why the hell should he be forced to keep him hired?

When, oh when, will the stupid, lazy and shiftless workers realize that if their employer, the most wonderful person in the world. wants to screw them it's their patriotic duty to bend over and grab their ankles?

It's amazing how anything ever got done in this country at all, since all the workers in the factories are the dregs of humanity, while the owners, sitting on their fat asses in the office all day, were the only ones who did any work.


Yeh, sure, they'll all go to China, I guess. The Chinese have this wonderful history of just loving capitalists.

And since everyone there makes about $8 a month, thats going to give them a HUGE market for shoes costing $200.

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Alizee Jacotay, the reason god invented hips

What does this have to do with patriotism? And where did I say the employer firing them was necessarily a wonderful person? Oh right, I didn't. It's your Strawman Syndrome acting up again. Forget to take the medicine?

If they really think they're getting "screwed" when the employer chooses not to renew a contract THAT HE NEVER AGREED TO RENEW, then they really are dumbasses. They must think they have some sort of entitlement to be rehired indefinitely regardless of their behavior just because they worked there for a month. What I mean is, I don't consider it "screwing."You really need to get back on the meds, man. Your posts are getting dumber by the minute.

I didn't say all the workers sucked. In fact, the problem you're having is that many of them do NOT suck. If all of them sucked and sucked equally, they wouldn't need any fucking union protections. They'd just get together at a sucking party, arrive at sucky conditions, offer them to the companies, and watch them move overseas, become fully automated or collapse within the month.

I might have oversimplified what I was trying to say. In at-will employment, an employee can walk away without recourse. In the same situation, an employer can terminate an employee for any reason unless:

1) the termination violated discriminatory laws; termination for race, gender, age and whatnot.
2) the termination violated the employer's own expressly written rules for employment even without a written contract.
3) the termination resulted from the employee's refusal to commit an illegal act.
4) the termination resulted from an employee's state or federal right or responsibility to some "thing"; medical leave or jury duty for example.

There's a lot of little examples, but I'm hoping at least most of them fit somewhere in those four numbers. And I guess I don't really have a problem with any of those.

Hey, I'm in complete agreement. Any employee for any company who did not have a specific contract for work, and then shows up one day to find they don't have a job is someone who never really paid attention to their own situation. To that extent, all a union does is allow an employee to remain oblivious.

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There is no secret ingredient.

And just where is that? This is a rather dim economy right now thanks to the last 8 years of fucking things up. You cannot just quit one job and walk right out and get another one or a better one. Especially if you are not of the right social or political circles. Many wageslaves are stuck in the positions they are in because there are NO other options. And the Republicans want to take away anymore options than there already are.

Uh yeah they can. Under at-will employment any reason can be used to fire you. If the boss dont like you they can fire you. They can even do so for discriminatory reasons but they will lie and put down somethign else and they wont ever get in trouble for it. That is unless it is a union shop. Or a right to work state. Or there happens to be some sort of mythological "contract" dictating that the comapny can only terminate an employee "for cause". Comapnies can treat their wageslaves however they frakkin want in america and there is very damn little the wageslaves can do about it except unionize and collectively bargain for better more humane and fair conditions.

Yes everyone does it is called being a human being and not an object. People are not owned and slaves anymore even if capitalists and companies would like to see that or go ahead and treat them as such. Without collective bargaining we would still be working 18 hour days 7 days a week with no health benefits no safety systems and for pennies on the dollar just like it was back at the turn of the 1900s. A capitalist paradise I'm sure you'd say. back when Henry Ford hired the Pinkerton assassins to coem in and terrorize and kill any worker who sympathized with the unions. Back when fighting for your rights meant a totally different thing than it does today.

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“If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of
a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.”

– George W. Bush in Washington, D.C., Dec. 18, 2000

If there are no other options, then they should work to improve themselves. And if Obama is here to unfuck things, then why did he lie about the withdrawal dates where Iraq is concerned? Oh right, he's just here to continue fucking things up, but leave it to Rahmota to play partisan blame games.Well, if you're working without a contract, then what the hell else do you expect? They may as well complain that they didn't get a job by staying at home and doing nothing.There's nothing mythological about it. If you want reliability at work, demand a longer contract. If you're working day-to-day, then you're essentially working on a day-long contract.And I support their right to fix their prices. Just as long as they accept the possibility that they'll get fired for being assholes.Just because you're not a slave, doesn't mean you are entitled to fair and equal treatment. If I invite one person to my house for a party, should I be forced to invite anyone who asks? That's essentially what you're suggesting.If you want more, all you have to do is wait for a better offer.Leave it to Rahmota to suggest I am in favor of something of which I am not in favor. I got a question for you. Let's say you get your hair cut at barber A that charges you $20. Then, the barber starts charging $2,000 per haircut, with no increase in quality. Do you stay at barber A or you do you go to barber B that charges $22 per haircut?

You think that the bosses will see it like that; a union challanges their power and there power to exploit workers and cut costs totally. And no, I wouldn't, ut thats a totally different situation a) becuase these rules are indiscriminate adn equal for all companies and b) theirs no barriers now for people who want to protect themselves.
Nope, they won't, people will try to form them but to have aunion you need to have people in a job and they'd be crushed before they had chance to get any power. Any union is, to you, harmful to buisness unless its docile and dosn't actually do its job.

Charging too much by wanting a decent wage? How dare they!
Unions, contray to your opinion, don't protect workers who won't work. Why would they? It only harms their strength and reputation. You just assume that unionised workers are less efficent, when in fact we know that they can be more efficent. Unions exist to get hard working workers what they deserve and adress employer abuses. They don't exist to protect the lazy.
But surely the employer fixes conditions on their work as well, including the price of labour.

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No, there is a term, 'price fixing', mean illegal collusion in setting market end-prices for goods, services, etc.... and then there is collective bargaining and negotiations for contractual terms and stipulations. You are equating the two. They are two utterly different animals.

Just because you don't actually understand the difference between the two doesn't mean that you're right in conflating the two and misusing the word.

The goal is not the same.

The only difference is it's quite clear you don't know what you're talking about and you're arguing based on emotion.

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All things serve The Beam

That is not an option for to many people in this country. College is expensive. And even then it is not a garentee that you WILL walk out and get a better job. Many areas of this country have been seriously depleted in jobs due to outsourcing and offshoring.

WTF doe sIraq have to do with America? The occupation of Iraq was just about Bush II trying to take over Iraqi oil, look tough and the only jobs it increased where for mercenary companies like Blackwater and undertakers. And yes he is trying to unfuck thigns up but too many heartless coldblooded selfish capitalist scumsucking republicans and turncoat democrats are intefereing in the glorious, useful and required things that need to be done to unfuck this country.

Collective bargaining is not price fixing. Get a grip on it. Collective bargaining is a defensive action only against the exploitation and abuse of the company.

No that is not what I am saying. What I am sayign is that if you invite 4 people over to the house and make one sit under the stairs while you and the other three go sit in the living room that is wrong and unfair.

And there are no better offers coming along then what? Take whatever wageslave job you can manage to find and accept whatever workign conditions no matter how deplorable just so you can survive? Or should all poor people just die and decrease the surplus population? Is that what you would like to see Slon? Would you like for all poor people to just die and get off your planet? People have to have money to survive in this country.

Really based on your attitude and that of way way too many others who should be re-educated I'd figure you'd love to see stuff like EEOC and OSHA and all those other pesky regulations and agencies that hold companies back from exploiting, abusing and using up and throwing away workers like they used to do so back then.

That dont even make sense. A barber is not my employee they are providing a service. In the scenario you are propsing I would go to another barber but I would report the first barber to the BBB and the local attorney general for fraud investigation and I would try to get his business liscence revoked or at the very least protest him and try to drive him out of business.

Your barber analogy is nonsense and you need to come up with something that is not apples to oranges comparisons.

__________________
“If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of
a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.”

– George W. Bush in Washington, D.C., Dec. 18, 2000

Oh, I see. So you pick the laborer that gives you the cheap haircut, but that's okay. It's only bad when someone else does it, huh? Indeed. They apparently can't even fix prices and find enough people to go along with them without the government coming in with guns. I'd say they're too incompetent for the prices they demand.No, but when the government is forcing the employer to accept any and all terms, what's stopping them from doing the same to lazy workers?In some ways, they do. And what I'm saying is, it should be legal for both workers and employers to do so. However, there is currently an extremely unequal and unfair set of laws. Union workers are encouraged, if not forced, to fix their prices. Whereas sellers can't legally collude and employers often have their wages fixed low by the government (minimum wage). It's ridiculously unequal and oppressive.

Laborers sell their labor (a service). The only difference you're showing is that one is illegal and the other one is not, but that has been a major point in my posts, so claiming that I am being dishonest is completely untrue.The goal is to reduce competition (among workers or distributors) to make more money.It's a subjective term. The wiki definition is:
"Price fixing is an agreement between business competitors to sell the same product or service at the same price."

Do you disagree?

Laborers sell their service (labor) and if they are in a union, they have an agreement to sell it at the same price (wage).

Well, then I guess they're fucked and obsolete. They should start their own businesses and only hire deadbeats who charge like lawyers.You suggested Bush and fucking up the country. Well, Iraq fucked it up. So far, Obama has lied about withdrawing from Iraq to get elected. Face it, he's just another scumbag who's robbing us blind to pay off his cronies. And his promises were just lies designed to get him into office so he do just that.You get a grip. Your emotions are getting in the way of rational thought. Well, they would get in the way of it if you had any.

Unions are there to have the workers stop competing for prices individually (collective bargaining) and agree on a set price. This leaves the buyer of their labor (the employer) with a fixed price for all the employees. So, if they all get together and demand $40, he doesn't have anyone to go to who will work for $35. The same reasoning applies to traditional price fixing. The sellers get together and agree on a price of $40. The consumers (you and I) have no choice but to buy it for $40, since there is nobody offering less.

The two are one and the same, with the only difference being the product/service sold and the legality of it. However, since many of these workers are unbelievably retarded, greedy and lazy, they can't really monopolize the market unless the government comes in and holds a gun to the heads of everyone who disagrees. If this happened to the traditional market and retailers, it would be like the US government coming in and telling those who distribute Linux for free to either stop doing so or charge as much as Windows charges for Vista.And that the government should come in and force me to treat them all equally? Even when the fourth is free to leave?Well, if you're not worth much and don't want to wait for a better offer, then yeah. And no, people don't have to have money to survive. They can just live off the land. Now, if they're too weak and stupid, then yeah, they need money. And sometimes money isn't even enough.

That's what you fail to understand: everyone can't live forever.If you want the regulations, just ask for them to be included in your contract. If the employer disagrees, you don't take the contract. Some workers want to accept the contract and then whine about it. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.

Regardless, it has nothing to do with assassins.A barber is hired by you, for money, to perform the service of giving you a haircut. A factory worker is hired by the employer to perform whatever factory-related service relevant, also for money.

There really is no fundamental difference.Well, if we apply your reasoning to this, they'd take your report and use it as evidence against you. Then, they'd fine you or send you to jail for not rehiring the barber. You're just emotional and don't give a fuck about rational thought. It makes perfect sense, you just get stuck on semantics, failing to see that you're still hiring someone to provide labor for you.

Hopefully they are smart enough to realize that before they decide to take the job.

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"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb discussing what's for dinner.
Liberty is a well armed lamb willing to contest the majority decision!" ~ Benjamin Franklin
"Diplomacy is the art of saying Nice Doggie! while you're looking for a rock. ~ Wynn Catlin
"There are no innocent civilians." - Gerneral Curtis Lemay. A.K.A Bombs away Lemay