Michigan Votes Forum

 If they can't stand on their own maybe they should not exist.Free choice is what this bill is about, of course you would like to make it about class warfare.

The "free choice" you would like comes after unions are weakened. The free choice workers have now is whether or not they want to work at a company where the employees have formed or joined a union to bargain collectively with their employer for a fair wage and benefits, or at a company where each worker competes with the other for the lowest wage and benefits. This is most certainly about class distinction and fairness. America is strong because we have, at least until recently, had a large middle-class and a small percentage of our population in poverty. That is changing, and people with your views oldvet are the reason. This is really a question of patriotism. Do we want America to look like China, or Mexico, or do we want it to look like what brought people from all over the world as immigrants to this country.? A country where even those of basic skills could make a decent living and raise a family. Unions are a part of that equation, and Michigan has prospered because of it. Unbridaled capitalism is as harmful as unbrideled socialism. This is what we would have if workers loose their collective voice.

Unions can and do stand on their own. If a union has won, through an election of the workers at a business, the right to be the sole bargaining agent for those workers, union membership becomes a condition of employment at that particular business. To give each new employee the opportunity to not join, but still benefit from the gains the union has made, takes away the choice the majority of workers have already made, and makes them chumps for the new employees. It is basically unfair.

This whole argument is about the survival of the middle class. Without unions, or if unions are weakened to the point they are irrelevant, as the right to work for less does, the survival of the middle class is in peril, and we become a country that looks much like Mexico. Extreme wealth on one end, and extreme poverty on the other.

 And if we let the unions have thier way we can be like Greece.

 Unions: all working for the greater good of the collective no matter how much destruction results. Sure sounds like comunism to me.

Right to Work and Right to Teach ,comming to a state near you.

No one is saying let unions have their way. Let unions function as they are intended, to bargain for wages, safety, and benefits. What this bill's goal really is is to weaken unions politically. The Rights big fear is that the working class will have some influence in Lansing and Washington. Business doesn't want the competition.

 Unions are suppose to be a voice of the worker, not the policital view of the union bosse's. Not all union people are Democrats.  A large portion of them can think for them selves.Unlike you who can only pit Unions against Business. You have some warped sense that Business is bad and only a union worker( I use the term worker losely ) is good. If you are not in a union you look down on that person,you try to talk down to that person. So far you have only made yourself look foolish,it is the only thing you have done well here.

Unions are supposed to be the voice of the worker, and in order for the worker to have a voice, they need to play the political game. That game is played with money, in case you weren't aware. No union leaders tell individual workers how to vote. They vote according to their own political views. Union leaders are elected to represent the best interest of their members, just like our government leaders are. Rank and file members may not agree with which political party or candidate union leaders choose to endose, based on personal issues, and can make their own decision at the voting booth. That's what democracy is all about.

When losing an argument, it is fairly common for one to resort to personal attacks.

 And you resort to them so often.

The occasion hasn't arisen lately.

Employment laws in the United States protect workers now.  Right to work should be law across the state as well as the whole nation.  This is America... you shouldn't have to be forced to join a group just to work for someone.

I'll second everything you have said Gypsy. Many people who did not have the benefit of a union have no idea why they are needed. But I certainly know all of the horror stories of those who do not.