Labor unions bad, corporate unions good?

Anti-union sentiment is getting more and more vociferous among Republicans.  A case in point is an op-ed in the Star Tribune about day-care providers "union benefits" – "Minnesota is the latest scene of desperation", James Sherk, Heritage Foundation, Star Tribune, 2013-05-26.  However, this article is more balanced in that it questions only a particular situation.  Should self-employed people be forced to join a union?

But isn't a union a group of people with similar interests.  And aren't there many labor laws to ensure that labor unions have democratic leadership?

If we are to ban unions or pass laws that make it difficult for workers to form unions, shouldn't we also ban corporate unions, like Chambers of Commerce or National Association of Manufacturers?

See also Adam Smith on wages and who gets to organize to control them.

Concerning the Heritage Foundation and its bias, see "Heritage Shock", Paul Krugman, New York Times, 2013-06-05 and "Yes, Europe is really is in the throes of austerity", Dylan Matthews, Washington Post, 2013-06-05.

Greedy CEO Unions

The mantra of "greedy teacher unions" or "greedy unions" or "greedy overpaid government workers" appears in letters to the editor, blogs, and even in articles by people who should be more objective.  These phrases have the same nebulousness as "paying fair share".  "Fair share" generally means "more" but little thought goes into why some should pay more taxes.

"Greedy unions" generally comes from those who not only don't want to pay more taxes, but they don't want to pay more wages to their employees.  And guess what they form to advance their agenda?  Unions!

They aren't called unions, but they are in the sense of coming together to advance an agenda.  These include Chambers of Commerce, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), numerous "conservative" think tanks, and many, many trade associations.

Like every other group, they work more to advance their short-term interests than to advance the public good.  They want government off the "people's backs", but then they rush to government for contracts or laws favoring one industry over another.

Like every other group, they purport to represent all like them.  As the Occupy movement claims to represent the 99%, these CEO unions claim to represent all businesses.  But the large corporations do not all have the same interests, and the large corporations do not have the same interests as smaller businesses.  McDonald's does not represent the interests of all restaurants, and Walgreen's does not represent the interests of all pharmacies.

Organizing to promote a special interest is the American Way.  It was going on before the ink was dry on the Constitution.  We just have to be vigilant in our reading to look for hidden agendas and slogans over careful thought.  It's a hard job being a good citizen and voter.

Low cost government leads to higher costs

You can find an interesting examination of the push for less government and what it really costs by listening to  "What kind of country" on This American Life.  It includes interviews with Grover Norquist and government official and private citizens in Trenton NJ and Colorado Springs CO.

My sense is that the anti-government, anti-tax rhetoric has gotten so out of hand that people don't look at the true cost of some of the measures.  Supposedly by privatizing city services you can cut costs because the private company pays less to its employees.  But is anybody counting the profit that the private company expects.  People will be willing to pay $350 per year to have street lights turned back on but are unwilling to pay $200 to keep all city services running.  Because a hotel has a smaller percent of its expenses in wages and benefits, doesn't mean that a city should have the same percent of its expenses in wages and benefits.  Maybe if we compared a city to a software company, we would find that the city had a smaller percentage of its expenses in wages and benefits.

If you have time, I recommend listening to "What kind of country" to the end.  I used the time to finally clean my desk.

Free markets, unions, and Adam Smith yet again

I was published again, this time in the Star Tribune on the selective reading by many of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations". I also proposed a standardized test for legislators. See http://www.startribune.com/opinion/letters/138816234.html.

Adam Smith was pro-labor

The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily: and the law, besides, authorises, or at least does not prohibit, their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work, but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes, the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks, which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year, without employment."
- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter VIII, Of the wages of labour
What he describes is not a free market.

Follow the money follow-up

Rather than just blather here about issues, I did act on campaign contributions. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is up for re-election next year, and so I sent following to her campaign.

"I am seriously considering not voting for any candidate who accepts money from organizations and people who accept campaign contributions from those who have no right to vote for that candidate. The situation for Cravaack is pretty bad, see Coffee Party's call-in "Who's your Daddy?" The FEC does not provide as much details for Senators, but I'm disappointed with both of our Senators from Minnesota. See Follow the money - Minnesota's Democratic U. S. Senators."

Follow the money - Minnesota's Democratic U. S. Senators

On 9 November I wrote an analysis of Rep. Chip Cravaacks' contributions, "Coffee Party's call-in 'Who's your Daddy?'". I wrote that I didn't check on Minnesota's Democratic Senators, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken. As I'm not too pleased with the contributions to any candidates, I finally found a round tuit to look at Klobuchar's and Franken's contributions.

It's not as easy as looking at Cravaack's. The Senate does not provide the nice summary that the House of Representatives does. Essentially, the only detail is in the scanned copies of the reports that the Senators have to provide. And Open Secrets http://www.opensecrets.org doesn't provide as much detail for the Senate as the FEC does for the House of Representatives. I limited my review to the top 20 contributions from industries.

For Klobuchar this is at http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=2012&cid=N00027500&type=I.

The top industry was lawyers and law firms. Both PACs and individuals gave $754,054 of her $4,056542 contributions from the top 20 industries, or 18.59%. Labor unions are broken down into five types; the total of all five types was $399,549 or 9.85%. Next was "retired" with only individual contributions of $317,000 or 7.82%. Lobbyists were fourth with $229,455 or 5.65%. The remaining groups were five percent or less. My thought is to let her have the votes of these contributors in 2012, if they can vote, and to carefully consider the alternatives to the major parties, including voting for Wright In.

For Franken this data is at http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=2012&cid=N00029016&type=I.

The top industry is again lawyers and law firms, and it is probably followed by unions and retired. I've been searching and writing on this long enough for today. I will jump back to Franken's top contributors. The top four are Time Warner, General Electric, University of Minnesota and Moveon.org. It is kind of hard to know what this means as these are mostly individual contributions; the contribution of a web designer at Time Warner would be considered in this total. Is that web designer in New York or Minneapolis. From the data available on OpenSecrets, I wouldn't know.

What I was looking for is how much Franken may be getting from the medical device industry, given that he has proposed legislation to speed up approval of devices. The first directly health-related company was United Health ranked 37 with $18,150 from individual contributors. However, my thought is the same as for Klobuchar, let him have the votes of these contributors in 2014, if they can vote.

Hard-earned dollars or cushy union jobs, make up your mind

Many politicians, Democrat, Republican, and others, laud the hard-earned dollars of workers and executives without regard to what they actually do.  Many Republicans and conservative commentators imply that all union workers are over-paid.  Excuse me, if all workers have hard-earned dollars, how can any be overpaid?

The latest claim of inefficient union workers is "Unions promote lower performance" by Nathan Jamail published in the Duluth News Tribune, 2011-09-04.  Among his claims is that unions are responsible for the outsourcing of jobs.  He hasn't read the About window for Adobe Photoshop Elements.  All the programmers have Indian names.  I didn't know that Adobe had union programmers.  If they don't have union programmers, then why are they outsourcing programming in such a large scale to India?

He didn't mention all the overpaid financial wizards who got six figure bonuses for helping defraud widows on refinancing their homes.  Nor did he mention the "unproductive" union firefighter who rescued a widow from her burning home.

If you want a kinder view of unions, read Phil Nast's "Denying their [unions] benefit denies history".  I am a bit biased on this, Phil is a friend.

Mob rule or "people's" rights

Gov. Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Senate have unleashed the whirlwind by ramming through a bill to limit the rights of union workers.  It is hard to say what will get blown down.

Are the protesters storming the state capitol an attempt to govern by mobs?  Or are they legitimate expressions of grievances?  How many are people who will be directly impacted by this legislation?  How many are people that just rally to a cause they are sympathetic to?

The police have given up trying to keep people out of the Capitol, but there are two tactics that they might try to limit the number.

First, of course, is safety.  What is the occupancy limit that the fire marshall has set for the Capitol?  The limit established of course before Walker was elected governor.

Second, did all the protesters vote?  Any protesters who didn't vote in the last election have only themselves to blame.  It would be a logistical nightmare to check if each and every protester voted, but one could ask all those who didn't vote to leave.  It would be interesting to see how many, if any, walk sheepishly out.

I think Wisconsin is going to see a drastic drop in the number and quality of government workers.  Some will take earlier retirement than they had planned.  Some will find other lines of work, difficult as it is currently.  Others may just depend on spouse income.

I wonder if some teachers will band together to form tutoring companies.  For a fee, they would tutor individual or small groups of students outside of classrooms.  Of course, this will limit access to learning to many, but the "short-term" pain may serve as a wake-up call to the importance of properly funding public education.

Power plays

We have the Republicans in Congress voting in lockstep to oppose Obama and the Democrats.  Well, almost, now we have "Tea Party" Republicans voting in lockstep to defeat spending proposals of veteran Republican legislators.

We have Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate disappearing to deprive the Republicans of a quorum to pass an anti-public union bill.

We have thousands packing the Wisconsin capitol to protest the bill.

I have a couple of questions.

How many of the protestors voted in the last election?  If the turnout of these voters was the same as the general population, they partly have themselves to blame.  If they all turned out, maybe they should work harder at getting a bigger turnout in the next election.

Why the big push to strip unions of power?  Could it be part of a larger corporate strategy to weaken those who question corporate power?

It seems that many corporate executives want everything their own way; governments and unions shouldn't even question their decisions.  It seems that their only goal is to maximize their own compensation, to hell with the shareholders, to hell with the environment, to hell with the public good.

Not all corporate executives behave this way, but enough do and are pushing us down a slippery slope to a very uncivil society, one which really won't be good for business in the long term.  It's another version of Lenin's "A capitalist will sell you the rope to hang him with."