The Union Agenda

[BT]

The market is in no way a democracy, by the way.

Why not?

[_JS]

I have to say, I don't see the union = temp agency parallel.

Unions are organizations created and run by the workers. They do not "set wages" at all. They use collective bargaining to reach an agreement with management. Unions also provide training, education, and benefits. I know a couple of Marshall grads who went to school thanks to UMW scholarships.

Temp agencies make money by skimming off the top of what their workers earn. How do they do this? Their workers receive no benefits, which saves companies money, so they can afford the fees that temp agencies charge. They generally charge both the workers and the company. Their workers get shuffled from job to job. The temp agency is not an organization run by the workers or created by them. They rarely provide training and certainly no benefits and no education. They absolutely do not bargain with the employer for the benefit of the worker! They bargain for the benefit of the temp agency.

Not even close to the same thing.

[BT]

Contractor A calls the IBEW Local and says i need 10 electricians for the building upgrade.

Contractor B calls Day Labor Supreme and says i need 10 laborers to help move this warehouse.

Whats the difference?

[Xavier_Onassis]

The market is in no way a democracy, by the way.

Why not?

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Jeez, you really believe your own wacko bullsh*t.

Here is why not, nonetheless:

The basic principle of democracy is one man, one vote. The market follows the principle of one dollar, one vote, and since money is distributed in a very non-egalitarian way, that is in no way related to one man, one vote. If I have one vote, Steve Forbes has ten thousand, and the average guy on the street has none at all.

There is absolutely no benefit to the average Yahoo user in Microsoft taking over Yahoo. There was absolutely no benefit to the users of BellSouth, Cingular and other companies for AT&T taking them over. About all you can say about Microsoft is that it is monopolistic and far too large already. AT&T's real motto is "the highest prices, always: the bigger we get, the more you pay and the crappier the service"

Still, it is the market that favors the gobbling up of the big and small alike by the huge and monopolistic to the disadvantage of the consumers and users.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Contractor A calls the IBEW Local and says i need 10 electricians for the building upgrade.

Contractor B calls Day Labor Supreme and says i need 10 laborers to help move this warehouse.

Whats the difference?

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From the viewpoint of the contractors, perhaps not much, but unions are not founded for the convenience of the stupid contractors.

From the viewpoint of the workers, the electricians are trained professionals. The laborers are simply muscle to be exploited by the temp agency and the contractor alike. The electricians join the union to achieve fair treatment and decent wages. The laborers are forced to join the temp agency because they are desperate and unemployed.

The biggest obvious difference is probably at least $20 per hour and a building that won't burn down in an electrical fire.

[BT]

The biggest obvious difference is probably at least $20 per hour and a building that won't burn down in an electrical fire.

That assumes than non union contractors do not build to code. And it also assumes that building inspectors are incompetent.

So it boils down to money, which makes unions members as big of greedheads as the management they rail against.