Soon, The UAW Might Call A Right To Work State Home

self-negotiation is an unrealistic goal amongst all but the skilled or highly credentialed. If you're in the union in a semi-skilled position or sadly unskilled you bet your bottom dollar that union is protecting your wage from attack by non-union workers who will work for less. I always point to Ricardo and the iron law of wages for this. Ultimately the market will bear starvation wages as we have a vast surplus of labor. We as a society should be lowering our retirement age to 62 or 63 while promoting a healthy increase in on-the-job education through tax credits while opening our colleges up to greater enrollment for a better educated population. Instead we're handing our GDP to 400 people who have no interest in anyone but themselves.

@Xeranar Right, the answer is MORE people going to college. Not everyone is college material. Pretty sure too many people are spending errr borrowing too much money on college, keeping a bunch of administrators and professors fat and happy, while adjuncts barely get by. Why dont you rage about the university system, the way they deal with adjuncts makes Wal Mart look like a bunch of pikers. They are full of "hate" for adjuncts I tell you.(Citing "Hate" is a staple of every liberal's emotion based argumentation.) Funny how Universities avoid liberal rage. Why is that?

It doesn't have all that much to do with Michigan at all, to be honest. It has everything to do with national Republican politics, and Citizens United. In a world without campaign finance limitations, unions are the only large-scale donors to the Democratic Party. Ergo, any bill that weakens unions financially is a big win for the GOP. It's tactics, not philosophy.

@dtremit So you prefer a system where union political contributions are unchecked but those from businesses are regulated? Unions are just as much corporations as the companies for which they supply labor. Why should employers act as a collection agency for a labor union? Eliminating automatic payroll deductions for union dues and mandatory political contributions shouldn't reduce union revenues if they are genuinely providing a worthwhile service to their members. What are you afraid of? A little choice, or is being pro-choice only the right position on some issues? Where is the morality of public employee unions giving campaign contributions to politicians who then allocate more money for more public employees? The same freedom of association and rights to contract that protect the existence of unions also protect groups like Citizens United and other private interests that want to spend money to express their First Amendment rights.

@dtremit There's too much money in politics overall. Living in a swing state I was inundated with political ads heading up towards the election, and from both sides it was almost all fluff. Set incredibly strict limits on campaign spending, ban campaign ads, and replace them with public service announcements stating that copies of each candidate's position documents will be made available free of charge at your local public library, post office, or non-partisan run official elections website. Televise the debates, and allow voters to go and read about where the candidates stand on various issues and make their own decision without the constant media blitz. While we're at it we can dramatically reduce the power of paid lobbyists. Whenever a measure, bill, or initiative comes up for a vote in congress announce an open forum in which anyone who wishes to voice their opinion, whether individual citizen or representative of an organization or corporation, can come and have their voice heard. Publish a mailing address and a website where those who can't attend personally can express their views. Under no circumstances shall any agent of any organization or corporation be allowed to negotiate with, cajole, or attempt to sway the vote of any elected official under penalty of law.

@dtremit Ronnie - You're full of it. Plain and simple. If you think a union has equivalent money to throw around you're sadly mistaken. Money = free speech is a poor rule by any standard and simply should not be allowed in any respect. The problem is you're just spouting the right-wing talking points because by silencing the unions you're rewarding one political wing. Free association is fine, nobody is stopping the worlds billionaires from hanging out together and promoting their agenda but if they have 90% of all the wealth no amount of union money can overcome that in a dollar-for-dollar fight. Public Employees are unpaid actually. I have to say this because people like you demonize anybody who isn't in private industry as if all those services will magically appear from thin air. The government takes a small portion of GDP for taxes and these people provide a service which they are underpaid in the long-term. Study after study proves this. Yet they get hounded for asking for raise. Perhaps we should be turning to the private sector and asking why they don't spend more on their employees? The point of capitalism is to extract as much from labor as possible while paying the least. It is where profit comes from. Capital is meant to gain from it but labor should benefit as well. As it stands our society has labor suffering worse than any time in the 20th and 21st century. Republicans are scorching the earth as their demographic dies off...so sad. Least by the time I'm decrepit they'll be gone and we can start righting the ship.

@dtremit Pretty your buddies like Google and George Soros make a pretty big splash in the Democratic coffers.