[diveRN]

Originally Posted by HM2Viking

I think you better take a little bit of time to read the Kentucky River Decisions which effecctively acts to strip OT eligibility from nurses.

BUSHCO has pushed back hard against the rights of workers to collectively bargain for improved wages and working conditions and attempted to restrict the potection of these laws. A few examples come to mind in no particular order:

A. Stripping TSA employees of collective bargaining rights and due process.
B. Attempted suspension of Davis-Bacon in the gulf states following Katrina.
C. Attempting to strip OT rights from workers (And advising employers how to cut pay for workers.)
D. Attempts to destroy SS.

The laws are only as good as those charged with enforcing them. Your belief that the law will protect you as an individual absent a strong labor movement that aggressively protects those laws is naive.

...

The way you word your points is politically loaded and obviously biased towards labor and unions. You think that unions are a good thing in today's work world, I don't. I believe our difference of opinion comes from a fundamental difference in our political beliefs and outlook on life.

I come from an entrepreneurial background and have signed both sides of a paycheck. I've been in situations many times where I've paid my people but failed to write myself a check. You seem to believe that employers are nothing more than bottomless money pits that exist for the benefit of workers.

We'll have to agree to disagree.

[♪♫ in my ♥]

Originally Posted by Dolce

I won't join a union for several reasons. First of all, unions are heavily political. I do not want my union dues going to candidates that my union supports but I don't personally agree with.

Secondly, I feel that if nurses want to be treated like a PROFESSION they should start acting professional. IMO unions are not professional. You mention boiler-makers and iron workers as members of unions and that is very true. Both of those occupations are trades, not professions. I believe one of the reasons nurses don't get the respect they would like is because they are viewed as vocationally-trained help instead of professionals.

I would like to add the caveat, though, that I am grateful for the benefits that unions have provided us and the pioneering efforts they have made to make the workplace safer.

Teachers are professionals and they have unions.
Airline pilots are professionals and they have unions.
Police officers are professionals and they have unions.
Firefighters are professionals and they have unions.
University professors are professionals and many of them have unions.

I can see some reasons not to join a union but 'professionalism' is not a valid one.

[♪♫ in my ♥]

Originally Posted by diveRN

Additionally, I think unions foster mediocrity.

I have several teacher friends that belong to the CTA. They are dedicated, excellent teachers who often spend a significant amount of their own money and invest a lot of their own time into their kids. They don't get paid overtime for the additional efforts they put in, in fact one teacher's contract says she only has to work from 0730 to 1415, she gets a 1 hour lunch break and one period without kids. She's actually with her students only 5 hours each day and gets 3 months off in summer and 2 1/2 weeks at Christmas ... and that's established by contract. Oh yeah, and she doesn't have to pay into social security.

The one friend I'm talking about puts in far more time than that, without a doubt, but her contract says that she doesn't have to. According to her, there are a number of tenured teachers who only do the minimums... we're paying those teachers north of $60k a year for 25 hours work a week, 8 1/2 months a year.

Good return on the investment?

Another reason I'm down on unions is because I've heard the, "it's not my job" line too many times. As a new nurse, I worked at a hospital where the aids were union, but the RNs weren't. Post mortem care was NOT in their job description. The PCU with a 1:3 ratio was slammed one night when my palliative care pt finally expired. I had a full code trach/vent/PEG that was on the bubble so I asked an aid (who was doing her online training) to get the morgue litter and move the body downstairs. The answer I got? You guessed it.

From that point on, I vowed I'd never work in a union.

Very well put.

The stuff you describe above is why I've been anti-union for so long. (My wife is a CTA member...I know...believe me, I know) However, after nearly 20 years of unrepresented professional work (for both unionized and nonunionized companies) before entering nursing school, I've seen enough workplace abuses to have gone over to the other side.

The company abuses that I've seen outweigh the union abuses that I've seen.

I figure I have more power to create change in the union than I have to create change in the corporate board room and executive suites.

[menetopali]

Originally Posted by HM2Viking

I think you better take a little bit of time to read the Kentucky River Decisions which effecctively acts to strip OT eligibility from charge nurses.

BUSHCO has pushed back hard against the rights of workers to collectively bargain for improved wages and working conditions and attempted to restrict the potection of these laws. A few examples come to mind in no particular order:

A. Stripping TSA employees of collective bargaining rights and due process.
B. Attempted suspension of Davis-Bacon in the gulf states following Katrina.
C. Attempting to strip OT rights from workers (And advising employers how to cut pay for workers.)
D. Attempts to destroy SS.

The laws are only as good as those charged with enforcing them. Your belief that the law will protect you as an individual absent a strong labor movement that aggressively protects those laws is naive.

Professionalism and union membership are not mutually exclusive. If anything the unionized hospitals achieve higher quality care which by definition indicates a higher standard of care. For that matter the standard of societal achievement in areas such as education and health outcomes tends to be better in the states with a strong labor movement tradition.

A. TSA should never have been allowed to unionize, as a part of homeland security and the federal government such an arrangement is lunacy (yes that goes for all federal unions). TSA is charged with a vital security function and should have been formed as an armed service under the UCMJ (as ICE and the Border Patrol should have been) but Democrats got their way and weakened any hope of security by selling out to the bosses that paid them off with union dues.

B. Davis-Bacon is a price fixing scheme that compliance with requires an inordinate amount of resources of business and federal oversight, nothing more. why would suspending it in favor of open bidding and a free market be bad exactly?

C. Exactly when did the president "try to strip OT from workers", if you don't want to be a charge or aren't compensated for it the way you think you should be, don't be a charge.

D. Newsflash - SS is failing under its own weight, sombody needs to either fix it or dump it completely before it collapses. it is my money that is taken from me to put in a "lockbox" (it is actually a pay-as-you-go system and no real "lockbox" exists). why shouldn't i be able to invest in a place of my choosing instead of the nanny state choosing for me?

labor unions protect their bosses, not the workers. if they were actually for workers then they wouldn't create such an adversarial atmosphere and destroy the places that employ workers. unions run business into the ground through seniority schemes, 'job security' schemes that includes protection of mediocre and sometimes dangerous workers, make it almost impossible to have flexibility in staffing or be responsive to changing conditions. lets not forget what unions have done for public education (it has become so bad that parents are pulling their kids out in droves and unions have gone to the courts to force kids into failed schools), cruise lines (no major U.S. flagged cruise lines anymore), the auto industry (crumbling), the steel industry (slowly coming back from the union led destruction of the US industry) to name a few.

i've said it before and i'll say it again, nurses need to participate in a professional association to lobby for what we feel is important through political action, voluntary membership, and stick to issues that are appropriate to lobby for from our profession. we should never ever accept a union run by bosses for their own agenda that extorts money (ie you pay a kick-back to the union ["dues"] or you can't work), protects the mediocre or dangerous practitioner, prevents hiring the most qualified person in favor of the most senior, and prevents flexibility in response to changing conditions and once in place ("certified") cannot be removed through routine elections by the entire workforce.

just my humble opinion though.

[HM2Viking]

I have been reading Jeffrey Sachs' new book. Common Wealth Economics for a Crowded Planet.

Anyway given the somewhat vehement opposition to taking the country in a better direction I found the following information intriguing. In comparing US Economic performance to the Nordic Countries or Countries who follow a social welfare model the following data was intriguing.

P 262
In terms of wealth and per capita income, the social-welfare states again defy the stereotype that high taxation leads to lower living standards. On average the social-welfare states have a higher per capita GNP than the free market countries...The poorest 20 percent of households in the social-welfare countries take in around 9.6 percent of the national income, as compared to only 7.3 percent of the national income in free market countries.

(That means the average household in the social welfare countries brings in about 24,465 vs. 17,553 for a free market country.)

Broadly based strategies for prosperity have yielded superior economic performance. The social welfare countries have very high technical innovation and patent creation. (Pull your cell phone out of your pocket. If its a Nolia or Ericsson its from a scandinavian country.)

From page 263

Free Market R&D 1.8% GDP

Social Welfare R&D 3.0%

Advantage Social Welfare model.

World Economic Forum Technology Average Rank (1 best)

Free Market 16

Social-Welfare 6

Advantage: Social Welfare Model.

The advantages of the social welfare model in economic performance are well documented.

[HM2Viking]

Collective bargaining is a right grounded in the right to free association guaranteed by the first amendment. In other words you as an individual have the right to freely associate and join together with others for the purposes of negotiating for improved working conditions.

The problem that I personally have with some of these posts is not that people choose to not be a member. I have a real problem with posters saying that there should not be unions and/or would deny others the choice to form a union.

[HM2Viking]

Originally Posted by diveRN

I come from an entrepreneurial background and have signed both sides of a paycheck. I've been in situations many times where I've paid my people but failed to write myself a check. You seem to believe that employers are nothing more than bottomless money pits that exist for the benefit of workers.

We'll have to agree to disagree.

I agree that we need to disagree. Organizations are not bottomless money pits that exist for the benefit of workers. Organizations are only as good as the people who work there. American workers have not received a fair share of the gains from growth in productivity since 1973. In other words productivity has grown and wages remained flat. Organizations succeed only through the efforts of their workers. I have no problem with owners making profits I do have a problem when the workers do not see wage growth that matches that of productivity gains.



http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/tabfig_01.html

The strong union difference is the results shown between 1945-73. Since 1973 as the unions were deliberately weakened through government policies wages have been flattened for the middle class. Reagan/Bushonomics have resulted in decreased economic mobility for the middle and working classes. A child born in the EU has more opportunity for economic mobility than a child born in the US.

[menetopali]

Originally Posted by HM2Viking

Collective bargaining is a right grounded in the right to free association guaranteed by the first amendment. In other words you as an individual have the right to freely associate and join together with others for the purposes of negotiating for improved working conditions.

The problem that I personally have with some of these posts is not that people choose to not be a member. I have a real problem with posters saying that there should not be unions and/or would deny others the choice to form a union.

1) for unions to have power they must control the labor force, hence they advocate "closed shops" or places where the worker cannot chose membership. if they want to work, they must pay the extortion money. the right to freely associated is violated in every "closed shop" by unions through restrictions on who an employer may hire or negotiate with. you can't claim 'free association' to form a union while taking that same right away from those with whom you disagree.


2) i don't recall anyone saying that you can't have the choice to join a union - only that they are a bad idea, not helpful to the profession, extort money from workers, destroy industries, impede response to changing conditions, protect the mediocre and dangerous. if that's a group you want to belong to, its your right to support such a thing; all i ask is that you be honest about the consequences of unions compared to professional associations.

3) unions are a poor choice for a profession to influence the political process as they consistently side with one party. that effectively destroys any credibility that nurses as a group have to address public health issues. it also alienates at least half the potential supporters from being willing to join. nobody in their right mind believes the teachers unions when they claim school choice and home schooling is bad for children's education (California appellate court this past March), nobody believes the police union when they say no brutality occurred while we watch the video of a police beating (Rodney King), and nobody believes university professors when they claim they maintain academic integrity and intellectual honesty (Ward Churchill). three professions that have no public credibility that were once respected by most of America thanks to unions.

[diveRN]

Sigh.

The root of your being is tied to financial fairness and equality and a fundamental belief that workers are owed something by their employer other than the wage they earn. Apart from wages and those things establishbed by law, employers don't owe ANYTHING to employees.

You mention productivity growth. You're parroting a liberal talking point without giving it much thought. Ever consider that the increases in productivity are tied to large leaps in technology in the time frame you indicate? In terms of advancement, the last 35 years has seen technological gains that exceeds the entire rest of recorded history.

For example, let's take the computer. If I invest in a computer system to keep track of my inventory and my financials, I can eliminate a bookkeeper and the staff required to manage my stock and probably keep better tabs on it because I can manage the data in real time. My productivity goes up. What I hear you saying is that because I invest my money and effort in new technology to increase productivity, I should pay my remaining staff more?

I don't buy it.

Also, the economy from 1947 to the early 1970s was largely manufacturing based. Beginning in the early 1970s, our economy began a transition to being service based. Increasing costs of manufacturing played no small part in effecting this shift. Manufacturing jobs often go overseas because they cost too damn much here.

Wonder why that is?

I have to get ready for work so I'll close with this. Few people ever achieve financial independence by working a job, certainly not in an entry level or blue collar positions. You seek to legislate financial independence through the mandated redistribution of wealth because you think the 'average' worker isn't capable of going out and starting their own successful enterprise.

I think it's just the opposite. I think this country was founded by risk takers who got tired of being under someone else's thumb.

I chose to be an RN because I grew weary of the business world. I sacrificed a significantly higher income for less stress and more time with my family. That was MY choice.

[menetopali]

I refer people to "Capitalism and Freedom" or "Free to Choose" if you are more of a TV watcher. I also recommend "Wealth of Nations" and "The Forgotten Man" is a good starting read about economics and the effects of centrally planned economic policy.