There will be blood!

[Perd Hapley]

Because the alternative to a union job is a Chinese sweatshop job. Funny stuff, DS! 

[Regolith]

While this is true, it's hardly the case that governments have no policy options to protect wages and jobs.  Tariffs being the obvious example.  While those options all have costs, so does competing with Chinese labor markets, and I think it's worth a very detailed examination before we decide that accepting third world conditions and wages is the only way to keep jobs.

Funny; the folks working for Toyota in Kentucky aren't working in third world conditions and wages. They may not be payed as much as their few peers who are lucky to still have a job in MI, but they are making decent, livable wages. It's that price difference that is driving Ford and GM out of the US. If Ford and GM could open up a shop in the US and be able to pay what Toyota is paying, they'd probably do so, but they can't because the unions have their nuts in a vice.

[makattak]

Yeah, how is my questioning right to work laws inconsistent with that?

That's obviously a big reason why they went there - but if they hire fewer people in the south than they would have in the union state, or pay them lower wages, what's the net difference?

I wonder what would happen if a company were able to decrease the number of inputs they need to produce a good and still produce an equal (or, in this case, superior) good? How might that be beneficial?

I don't see one state getting the crumbs from another as a net gain to the economy.  I'm not that sure (as I said above) what the effect is overall.

That's because you can't look beyond the immediate effects. (Part of the first quote.) It's a consequence of refusing to think like an economist. (At this point, I can only assume it is willful).

[ArfinGreebly]

An economy is essentially an energy system.  Think of it as a complex circuit where flow is measured in money instead of amperes.

There is a physics to money.  You may be able to fool people, but physics doesn't care how you rationalize trying to pull more energy out of a system than the system actually has in it.

You can't argue successfully with thermodynamics any more than you can argue with gravity.

If money doesn't accurately represent an exchange of value, the system will eventually fail.  If more energy is sucked out of the system than can be tolerated for continued operating, the system will fail.  If exchange of energy within the system is prevented, the system will fail.

I did a spreadsheet once, modeling the basic flows.  It was interesting to see what could be tweaked before the net output went negative.  Wonder where I put that thing.  I wonder if I could replicate it today.  It certainly was no Sim City, but you could see the effects of different feedbacks in the system.

I am perpetually amused at people who try to tell me that "raising taxes solves revenue" but who have never modeled the problem.  I am then usually presented with some appeal to authority (well, if you would just read a basic economics text ...) and then the "it's people like you who ..." dismissal.

It seems we have the math skills to calculate thermal butterfly effects, but the concept of money as energy?  Not so much.

One of my favorite economics quotes, "economics is just psychology."   

[zahc]

Since unions are essentially labor protectionism, it should be easy for both sides to admit that doing away with them will drop average wages. The reason unions exist is to generate scarcity where there is none. The only way that would NOT cause unemployment to rise is if the demand for labor were extremely inelastic. That might have been the case historically in Detroit during the boom years, but certainly does not apply in the age of globalisation.

[dogmush]

While this is true, it's hardly the case that governments have no policy options to protect wages and jobs.  Tariffs being the obvious example.  While those options all have costs, so does competing with Chinese labor markets, and I think it's worth a very detailed examination before we decide that accepting third world conditions and wages is the only way to keep jobs.

Hyperbole much?

(Before you try to answer, I work trades in a RTW state.  "Third world conditions and wages?"  No.  You're wrong. The phrase you're looking for is "economically sustainable wages")

[De Selby]

Hyperbole much?

(Before you try to answer, I work trades in a RTW state.  "Third world conditions and wages?"  No.  You're wrong. The phrase you're looking for is "economically sustainable wages")

The point was that factories can now choose places like china almost as easily as they can choose a right to work state in America - over time, tracking the consequences for all groups, that's who we are going to be competing with when it comes to manufacturing wages.

Compared to 20 years ago how do manufacturing jobs and wages look, auto industry included?  That would seem to me a fairly decent indicator of where this is heading. 

The point there is that arguing "at least we have jobs" isn't necessarily going to yield the best outcome.   

Would you support efforts to import cheaper workers to ply your trade?  Or to outsource it somehow?   Both of those things would be market tools that operate on the same assumptions as RTW legislation. 

[HankB]

An employment agreement only needs two persons - the employer and the employee. Injecting a third party - a union - who can demand protection money union dues from someone else's employee is a fundamentally corrupt shakedown, and is really nothing less than institutionalized gangsterism.

(BTW, what ever happened to Jimmy Hoffa?)

[Ron]

That's obviously a big reason why they went there - but if they hire fewer people in the south than they would have in the union state, or pay them lower wages, what's the net difference?   I don't see one state getting the crumbs from another as a net gain to the economy.  I'm not that sure (as I said above) what the effect is overall.

I certainly think it's worth questioning whether these laws actually do anything beneficial.  Out-doing the Chinese in labor conditions and wages in order to get jobs isn't necessarily the outcome I want for America.

It isn't a zero sum, either they build in union or a right to work state.

They also may choose to build outside the USA or not at all.

Suggesting right to work is comparable to Chinese labor conditions sounds like something the union propagandists would say   

[drewtam]

Unions in Michigan manufacturing (and Illinois too) already have 2 tier wage schemes. The older guys keep the benefits and wage scale (adjusted for inflation) that they had in the height of union power, the 80s.

The young men are basically paid less net than southern RTW states, if I recall the numbers correctly.


My experience is that union pay is really not the biggest deal killer, especially now with the 2-tier contracts. Its the constant fighting. It turns into a situation where both sides, the worker and the management, do only absolutely the bare minimum for each other, no compromise and hardball 100% of the time.

Worker does the bare minimum - "not my job, I won't do that extra thing you asked." "Its not in the contract" "hey engineer, you can't touch that thing, that is my job and only I can do it." etc
or "Oh some of us are getting laid off because 2009 crash; lets sabotage $60k in equipment." 

Business does the bare minimum - "we could give you a bonus for a good year, but its not in the contract" "slight downturn in the economy? lets layoff 3x as many people as we project having to cut just to be sure because that is what the contract allows" "can we negotiate the worst possible contract for the union? if they agree to it, lets do it" 


Going from our Illinois plants to our southern state plants, the attitude difference is night and day. Trying to fix something to make the plant run better, goes something like this...

Illinois - don't touch anything, don't ask anyone for help cause they don't want to do it, I don't care, thats your problem not mine 'buddy'. You need to get my supervisor to come here and tell me to change anything.

Southern US state, Japanese plant, South American plant, etc - Oh hi, how can we help? oh yeah, have you thought about doing this and that to fix this problem? yeah we can try that, lets set it up after break. Give me a second, I need to polish this oil smear off this machine.



Like I said, from my limited experience with manufacturing the union pay scale is not that hard to accept or budget. But its the constant battle to do anything, to be flexible in the slightest, and the absolute disgust the worker has for the company he works for that just makes it an anchor around the neck. And so it sets up a tit for tat exchange that has spiraled down to where we won't build another plant in Illinois or other northern states. Its just too expensive, and the cost has very little to do with pay scale.

[RoadKingLarry]

Oklahoma isn't a big union state. Union workers are a pretty small minority here in the first place so any effect of RTW here is going to be pretty minimal to begin with but when it was an issue on the state ballot it was pretty contentious and darn few people even had the first clue of what it was about.

It is easier to terminate someone in a RTW state.  Essentially, there needs to be little reason to dismiss someone.  They will still get unemployment, but under normal circumstances, that is for a limited amount of time.  It remains to be seen how the RTW laws and unions interact.  I suspect this could be determined fairly easily by looking at union shops in RTW states.

From before and after the law was passed I have seen pretty much no real changes, either with management/labor interactions or how the union local operates. I know 2 people that have "quit" the union. There were a few "suggestions" from some of the officers at the local to shun them, they were ignored.
One other issue we have here is that we are a RED state, get out of the metro area and the people I work with are all a bunch of hard core conservative rednecks.

[MillCreek]

Parts of Washington state, especially where I live, can be a big union area with the Boeing workers.  Boeing opened a 787 plant in Charleston, SC a few years ago pretty much solely because SC is a RTW state, and they were tired of the machinist union strikes in Washington. I see that the same union is trying to organize the Charleston plant, and I wonder how that is going to work out.

[brimic]

An economy is essentially an energy system.  Think of it as a complex circuit where flow is measured in money instead of amperes.

There is a physics to money.  You may be able to fool people, but physics doesn't care how you rationalize trying to pull more energy out of a system than the system actually has in it.

You can't argue successfully with thermodynamics any more than you can argue with gravity.

If money doesn't accurately represent an exchange of value, the system will eventually fail.  If more energy is sucked out of the system than can be tolerated for continued operating, the system will fail.  If exchange of energy within the system is prevented, the system will fail.

I did a spreadsheet once, modeling the basic flows.  It was interesting to see what could be tweaked before the net output went negative.  Wonder where I put that thing.  I wonder if I could replicate it today.  It certainly was no Sim City, but you could see the effects of different feedbacks in the system.

I am perpetually amused at people who try to tell me that "raising taxes solves revenue" but who have never modeled the problem.  I am then usually presented with some appeal to authority (well, if you would just read a basic economics text ...) and then the "it's people like you who ..." dismissal.

It seems we have the math skills to calculate thermal butterfly effects, but the concept of money as energy?  Not so much.

One of my favorite economics quotes, "economics is just psychology."  

If they still gave out Nobel prizes in economics to people who knew what they were talking about, I'd nominate you.

[brimic]

Unions in Michigan manufacturing (and Illinois too) already have 2 tier wage schemes. The older guys keep the benefits and wage scale (adjusted for inflation) that they had in the height of union power, the 80s.

The young men are basically paid less net than southern RTW states, if I recall the numbers correctly.

There still are positions in the unions that don't partake in a 2-tier pay system- the fat greaseballs that sits in the office and collects the union dues.

[MillCreek]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324339204578173701137303598.html?mod=ITP_pageone_1

Article today in the WSJ on the effect of RTW on wages.  In a nutshell, it is hard to find data that isolates only the effect of RTW laws on wages as opposed to the overall business climate in a state, but the laws don't seem to have much of an effect either way on wages. 

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

You ever asked a real question?

so no?

its ok jfk was able to own up to it

[cordex]

Union opposition to right-to-work legislation has always struck me as sort of self-incriminating.  It seems to be a recognition that they do not provide sufficient value to attract membership without threat of force.

If unions provide tangible value both to the worker (via safer working conditions and other benefits) and the employer (through increased quality, stability and morale), they will continue without problem.  If not, they will die under RTW just like many union members fear, but a union that does not provide value to both the worker and the employer shouldn't exist anyway.

Unions do provide some value to some people (especially their leadership), but overall I see them in their modern incarnation as a parasite that feeds on members and companies alike.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

the people are speaking
http://www.politifact.com/oregon/statements/2012/jun/22/steve-buckstein/has-wisconsin-afscme-really-lost-50-percent-its-me/

[Scout26]

And we have Steve Crowder being sucker punched on camera after being yelled and cursed at by the soft, cuddly union supporters.  As usual, the lefties continuing to express their views non-violently.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_F3oev06i0

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

theres a video on facebook of a union useful idiot swearing he saw the "tea partiers" tear their own tent down

[Boomhauer]

Parts of Washington state, especially where I live, can be a big union area with the Boeing workers.  Boeing opened a 787 plant in Charleston, SC a few years ago pretty much solely because SC is a RTW state, and they were tired of the machinist union strikes in Washington. I see that the same union is trying to organize the Charleston plant, and I wonder how that is going to work out.

And Boeing pays their workers slavery wages...

Oh, wait, they DON'T. Boeing workers in Charleston make a damn fine amount of money...


TTX is a company that rebuilds rail cars, owned by several of the major railroads. They used to be a union shop until the workers threw the union out because it was screwing stuff up.

Unions exist to do one thing- make the union bosses money, and get votes for politicians.

Like Drewtam says, big difference between union and non union shops. Down here the industry coming here and setting up plants is not paying nothing wages, they pay very well (Usually around 35-40k a year).

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

another difference is merit pay. as opposed to my wage being stuck under that of a slug hired before me

[longeyes]

If they still gave out Nobel prizes in economics to people who knew what they were talking about, I'd nominate you.

AG's metaphor is great--as far as it goes. 

But it posits a rational system and economics is not a rational system.  Cultures are driven by irrational motives and operate, when they can or need to, outside rationality.  What do you think explains the fact that most "economics" in long-ago times (and sometimes not long ago) were based not on
The Invisible Hand but rather The Iron Fist indulging in war, rapine, and slavery to aggregate its "economy?"

[grampster]

Michigan lost out on some auto manufacturing because it was a closed shop state.  That is no longer the case.  Plus we now have a sane business tax, plus business personal property tax that will soon go away.  Add in all the cheap abandoned buildings, cheap land etc along with the rail, highway and air infrastucture to say nothing of our beautiful state full of lakes, parks, forests, the great lakes, hunting, fishing, da UP inte alia and Michigan becomes one of the most attractive states for business and industry to begin coming back.

In five years Michigan will be leading the way.

[slingshot]

Tariffs don't fit very well into the free trade arrangements that are in place.  Even when we know China is abusing all sorts of arrangements (patents, copyrights, controlling the value of their currency, etc..) the US is reluctant to place tariffs on goods shipped here from China.

...and I think it's worth a very detailed examination before we decide that accepting third world conditions and wages is the only way to keep jobs.

I feel sure such a study had been done.  However, I am not aware of any factories in the US working under third world conditions or wages.  I suspect that our minimum wage would look pretty good to many in the third world.  We compete with China through automation and efficiency and costs associated with shipping widgits to the US to sell.