Gratz Michigan! :)

[Maeya]

Answer me THIS: If non-unionized workplaces are currently offering these, why WOULD it suddenly stop?

Because they can? Nursing is a field in high demand right now, mostly because people don't want to clean up after old people. It is not a job that requires a great deal of education, so if things changed, and there was an influx if people heading to those jobs and you have no union to bargain on your behalf, I guarantee you will have your pay and benefits slashed accordingly.

If you think union bosses are all corrupt tyrants, that's fine, change the system. But the idea that workers shouldn't be permitted to assemble in order to gain leverage as a group against exploitation is just...well silly...to me at least.

First of all, thanks for making it sound like nurses are uneducated, glorified shit-wipers. Hopefully you change your opinion next time you're hospitalized. Secondly, yes, nurses are in high demand, but there IS an influx of people going through nursing school because of it. I graduated summa cum laude (from a bachelor's program, btw, the days of the certificate-prepared nurse are long gone) and struggled to even get an interview. Hospitals are being picky and they can afford to be. They have their pick of all the new graduates they could ever hope for. And yet, somehow, I am still being paid fairly with extremely competitive benefits... all WITHOUT a union to negotiate for me.

[Tossica]

Georgia wouldn't have any nurses at all if they didn't pay competitively since so many other states have strong nursing unions. Everyone would move.

[Zanchief]

First of all, thanks for making it sound like nurses are uneducated, glorified shit-wipers.

I don't have that opinion at all, I have the utmost respect for nurses. I think it's a pretty thankless job, and one that I think should be well compensated.

Secondly, yes, nurses are in high demand...blah blah blah...I am still being paid fairly with extremely competitive benefits... all WITHOUT a union to negotiate for me.

Answered your own question.

[10sun]

Harrison,
Don't you work at Costco?

[Harrison]

Lol no, I do not.

I worked for a Sam's club a few years ago before I moved again.

[Maeya]

Secondly, yes, nurses are in high demand...blah blah blah...I am still being paid fairly with extremely competitive benefits... all WITHOUT a union to negotiate for me.

Answered your own question.

But the meat of the argument was that supply does not meet demand, therefor hospitals are forced to compensate fairly. My response was that there is more supply than demand at the moment given the influx of new nurses to the field. I've had friends that have graduated and taken MONTHS to find a job, simply because of the saturated job market.

Anyway, I don't know why I opened my mouth. No sides ever have their opinions swayed because it's obvious that the other side is clearly wrong and misguided. Futile to argue and it just makes me aggravated.

[Harrison]

Clearly you should be sucking union dick (quoted) for all you have. Duh.

[Tossica]

I think it's a lack of empathy. Because YOU don't need a union, no one else should. I don't see it that way.

[ClakarEQ]

Answer me THIS: If non-unionized workplaces are currently offering these, why WOULD it suddenly stop? The nurse's union is pretty much non-existant in Georgia. I get great benefits and am treated very fairly. I have no union-based alternative to speak of, so by your logic, shouldn't my employer be fucking me over already simply because there's no union to protect me?

Few points

- It will take time, as I said, this does nothing "now / today" this is really bad going forward. All workplaces WILL stop these offers because they don't have to do it anymore. The only reason you got what you got was because your employer had absolutely no choice in the matter. Don't kid yourself, if 20 year old could do your job at half the pay, are you actually suggesting you'd still be employed (/laugh)?

- The hospital, union or not, is required to be competitive, they have no choice. The competition only exists for a few reasons, supply demand, IMO isn't one. Any employer will do what it takes to hire what it perceives as talent. The package offered to this talent is driven by third parties that complete package reviews across an industry, region, etc. You got, no maybes here btw, you GOT the package that was acceptable within the criteria, today. That does not mean the criteria will remain as it is today. One down side of your industry is actually what makes it a boom.

- Your industry selection does happen to coincide with a massive boom on humanities time line. RN, at home care, etc are all going to be HUGE and profitable industries ala the baby boomer aging and death. (BTW if any of you young folk want another massively profitable industry, look into morgue and funeral type services, this industry is on the cusp of a massive explosion)

As any industry booms, talent gravitates toward it, this results, over time, in a saturation. Saturation in any industry is really bad. I can look at the IT industry over the past 20 years (been in it for 26) and show a couple of cycles that had near saturation levels and how that caused a massive reduction in pay, industry wide. Your industry carries this same risk. You’ll know in about 15 years when a good junk of the boomers are dead or near death and the requirements / demands drastically reduce in a very short window. I don’t know your age, but say you’re 40 by then. That puts you in the high risk of termination (sorry). You’ll have had 15+ years of annual increase, added vacation time, vested 401k, etc. etc. (fwiw I am very familiar with this position LOL). You’ll be at high risk because that 20yr old can do your job, but now they can do it at 25% of your pay, little to no vacation, etc etc.

I would say you're an anomaly in the discussion though due to your selections in life / career. That is great for you, but don't kid yourself either. Once your hospital becomes financially stressed, unlikely in a lot of cases but sake of discussion here. Some of the first things any company will look at is labor and benefits. Understand your cost to the company is easily 25% (e.g. 100k is your net income per year but you cost the company closer to 130k). So companies look almost instantly at labor because this tends to be a big impact to the bottom line. Thinning the troops is a very common theme as I'm sure you know. First a thin would take place, then a benefit s review, then a drop in annual increase / review along with cap on pay, then forced unpaid time off, then layoff, etc etc.

It is very possible that the impacts of this legislation won't be felt for years, I sort of expect that honestly. That is part of the problem. By the time folks feel the pain, it is too late.

Harri sorry that I picked on you. Perhaps the lack of wisdom or foresight is what frustrates me. I look at this like the 99% group, the occupy movement, and I hear folks say shit like, why so entitled feeling bro, suck it up get a job, etc etc. Yet posts come up on these boards that are the same in my eyes. “entitled” people here (like you, like mindia), the people that already have these benefits, trumpeting from a tower as if they’ll never go away. I just don’t get that line of thought.

/rambling off

EDIT
I missed your second post Maeya. Just wait, you will end up in one of two buckets, 1) too valuable to let go 2) replace with cheaper labor. All you are seeing right now is the industry has not recognized the level of saturation. I would expect 1-3 years for that to happen.

[brinstar]

alright so what's happening here is this

your adjusted argument is that hooray for what the unions did 50 years ago, but they are now irrelevant and can go away and die

and our stance continues to be that if that happened, employers would do their best to roll back the advances unions made lo those many years ago because it costs them profit

and you're like uhhh yeah right, our glorious benevolent loving job-creating deities would never do that to us


and btw, maeya, your argument of "GA nurses aren't unionized and WE get all those things" is completely irrelevant. fact: other nurses' unions around the country fought for and got those things. hospitals in GA know that if they didn't offer those benefits, either a) the good nurses would GTFO or b) GA nurses might actually unionize in order to get them


now, the problem most actual union members have with the RTW laws is that it creates a subgenre of freeloaders. RTW laws are, superficially, designed to give employees a choice about being in a union - but what RTW laws actually do is ban the practice of automatic union membership and dues deduction from payroll. what happens then is that employees who never choose to pay dues or even join the (now-optional) union continue to get many of the same benefits gained by collective bargaining without ever having to contribute time or money. laugh if you want, but i am not making this up: real, honest, give-a-fuck union members are against RTW laws because they encourage freeloading.

say what you want about the GOP trying to destroy the dems' ability to get elected (which is 100% true) but if you zoom out further and ignore party lines, what you have is the ruling class dividing the middle class against itself so it doesn't see the bootheel grinding down on it

[Zanchief]

now, the problem most actual union members have with the RTW laws is that it creates a subgenre of freeloaders. RTW laws are, superficially, designed to give employees a choice about being in a union - but what RTW laws actually do is ban the practice of automatic union membership and dues deduction from payroll. what happens then is that employees who never choose to pay dues or even join the (now-optional) union continue to get many of the same benefits gained by collective bargaining without ever having to contribute time or money. laugh if you want, but i am not making this up: real, honest, give-a-fuck union members are against RTW laws because they encourage freeloading.

This is exactly true.

[Tikker]

.

[Menelvir]

From my perspective, laws and the legal system do not offer sufficient protections for workers in a long-term, consistent way.

In part, this is because organizations like ALEC, which is composed of numerous high-level corporate interests, engages with government representatives to write new laws as well as change existing laws in ways that benefit their companies.

ALEC denies that this practice is lobbying.

But quite simply, if there were no gov't sub-committees, special panels, task forces, etc. that were doing the footwork and proposing certain specialized laws, corporate interests will readily and eagerly fill any such void.

I think it likely that if there were no unions at all, many legislative protections put in place to help workers would soon become 'extinct'.

Protection of rights is not a fight that happens once and then goes away -- it requires an ever-present vigilance.

[Narrock]

Spin it all you want, and rattle off all the stupid leftist talking points y'all want. Bottom line is that it's a win for the middle class worker in every conceivable aspect. End of discussion.

[brinstar]

you couldn't end a discussion with a brick, retard

get the fuck out

[Lyion]

Lets be clear as to what this is REALLY about: Crippling the ability of Democrats to be able to compete, money-wise, in elections.

The GOP has a lot of Big Business in its pocket, and gets huge amounts of funding and campaign contributions as a result. The only real way Democratic groups have been able to compete with that, is because of the support of unions, who have shelled out $$$ to support Democratic candidates, since they tend to be more pro-labor. Cut off Unions' ability to collect dues, and suddenly they lose a huge chunk of their political clout, since they can't pay for ads, and the GOP gets a huge advantage in campaigning.

I'll let my buddy George Will slam dunk this:

The Michigan watershed on right-to-work

By George F. Will,

Rick Snyder, who is hardly a human cactus, warned Michigan’s labor leaders. The state’s mild-mannered Republican governor, in his first term in his first public office, has rarely been accused of being, or praised for being, a fire-breathing conservative. When unions put on Michigan’s November ballot two measures that would have entrenched collective-bargaining rights in the state constitution, Snyder told them they were picking a fight they might regret.

Both measures lost resoundingly in the state with the fifth-highest rate of unionization (17.5 percent, down from 28.4 percent in 1985) and, not coincidentally, the sixth-highest unemployment rate (9.1 percent).

Republicans decided to build upon that outcome by striking a blow for individual liberty and against coerced funding of the Democratic Party. Hence the right-to-work laws passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature to prohibit the requirement of paying union dues as a condition of employment.

The unions’ frenzy against this freedom is as understandable as their desire to abolish the right of secret ballots in unionization elections: Freedom is not the unions’ friend. After Colorado required public-employees unions in 2001 to have annual votes reauthorizing the collection of dues, membership in the Colorado Association of Public Employees declined 70 percent. After Indiana’s government stopped in 2005 collecting dues from unionized public employees, the number of dues-paying members plummeted 90 percent. In Utah, automatic dues deductions for political activities were ended in 2001; made voluntary, payments from teachers declined 90 percent. After a similar measure in Washington state in 1992, the percentage of teachers making contributions fell from 82 to 11. The Democratic Party’s desperate opposition to the liberation of workers from compulsory membership in unions is because unions are conveyor belts moving coerced dues money into the party.

Nationwide, resentment of union power has been accumulating like steam in a boiler. The Wall Street Journal reports that in the past four years “nearly every state . . . has enacted some form of pension changes” clawing back unsustainable benefits promised to unionized government employees. The most conspicuous battle was in Wisconsin, where Republican Gov. Scott Walker survived organized labor’s attempt to recall him as punishment for restricting collective bargaining by unionized government workers. After Walker’s reforms, Indiana under Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels became the 23rd right-to-work state and the first in the industrial Midwest.

By becoming the 24th right-to-work state, Michigan is belatedly becoming serious about what Daniel Boorstin, the late historian and Librarian of Congress, called entrepreneurial federalism. This is the wholesome competition among states to emulate others’ best practices and to avoid and exploit others’ follies.

Indiana and Wisconsin are, fortunately for them, contiguous to Illinois, where Democratic power is completely unrestrained and spectacularly unsuccessful. Indiana noticed Wisconsin’s competitive advantage in attracting businesses from Illinois and elsewhere. Michigan also has noticed. Yet unions call what Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin have done a “race to the bottom.” This flapdoodle and folderol come from unions that have contributed mightily to Michigan’s painful acquaintance with the bottom.

If you seek a monument to Michigan’s unions, look, if you can without wincing, at Detroit, where the amount of vacant land is approaching the size of Paris. And where the United Auto Workers, which once had more than 1 million members and now has about 380,000, won contracts that crippled the local industry — and prompted the growth of the non-unionized auto industry that is thriving elsewhere. Detroit’s rapacious and oblivious government-employees unions are parasitic off a near-corpse of a city that has lost 25 percent of its population just since 2000. The Wall Street Journal reports that because some government workers with defined-benefit pensions can retire in their 40s, “many retirees living into their 80s are drawing benefits for nearly twice as long as they work.”

Many liberals who, with solemn self-congratulation, call themselves “pro-choice” become testy when the right to choose is not confined to choosing to kill unborn babies. They say the right to choose is not progressive when it enables parents to choose their children’s schools or permits workers to choose not to fund unions’ political advocacy.

Democrats who soon will celebrate two of their party’s saints at Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners should jettison either their opposition to right-to-work laws or their reverence for Jefferson, who said: “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

[Maeya]

Many liberals who, with solemn self-congratulation, call themselves “pro-choice” become testy when the right to choose is not confined to choosing to kill unborn babies. They say the right to choose is not progressive when it enables parents to choose their children’s schools or permits workers to choose not to fund unions’ political advocacy.

*snicker*

[Zanchief]

He's making a political argument where there is none. This isn't, to me, about funding a political party. That seems to be all he cares about, and he's wrong.

[brinstar]

george will is a hack with his ass where his head should be

[Lyion]

Yes, he in Zan, but his underlying point is still valid.

I'm pro Union. I think we need more of them. However, the problem remains that almost all unions are linked at the hip with the DNC. This does not even address the issue with public employee unions which are causing so many issues in so many states.

[Narrock]

you couldn't end a discussion with a brick, retard

get the fuck out

The "brick" as you so eloquently call it is the sum of the situation. Having the choice to not participate in a union and no longer being forced to pay stupid union dues, AND limiting the lobbying power of the union in Michigan is a GOOD thing you ignorant mother fucker. Christ almighty, pretty much everything that comes out of your pie-hole pisses me off. YOU stfu, troll.

[brinstar]

your head is a howling vacuum, yet words keep soft-servin' out like an indigestive dog making fresh yard sausage

amazing

[Narrock]

You and your ilk are exactly what is wrong with America.

[brinstar]

your posts should come with a little baggie so they can be picked up and disposed of properly

[Narrock]

You and your ilk should move to Canada.