$1200 A Day Union Workers Force Shutdown Of 29 West Coast Ports

$1200 A Day Union Workers Force Shutdown Of 29 West Coast Ports - breitbart.com

Excerpt from this article:

"The Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) announced that loading and unloading operations at all 29 West Coast ports would temporarily be suspended this weekend in response to union slowdowns that brought freight movements at the ports to a near standstill.PMA members stated that they cannot afford the almost $1,200 per day cost to employ International Longshore and Warehouse Union members to do little work."

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Here's an idea: why don't we fire all these $1200-a-day" union workers and hire some illegals to take their place? Maybe we could get them to work for less (say, $600 a day?)

Recommended reading and listening (my post)

Working Man (And Women) Blues

Unions Gone Wild

State of the Unions is Bad - And That's Good! Says Gary North

State of the Unions is Bad - And That's Good! Says Gary North - lewrockwell.com

Excerpt from this article:

"Union membership is declining across the board, across America.  Check out this graph to see which areas are most affected and how the labor market is doing away with unionization."
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Recommended reading:

Unions Gone Wild
Should We Blame the UAW for Detroit?
Companies Lay Off Thousands, Then Demand Immigration Reform for New Labor!
Supposed Mystery at AP: Economy Isn't Growing Despite Increased Employment (Can You Say, 'Part-Timers and Temps?')
Working Man (and Women) Blues

Fast-Food Strikes Set for Cities Nationwide

Fast-food strikes set for cities nationwide - Yahoo! Finance:

"Fast-food customers in search of burgers and fries on Thursday might run into striking workers instead.
Organizers say thousands of fast-food workers are set to stage walkouts in dozens of cities around the country, part of a push to get chains such as McDonald's, Taco Bell and Wendy's to pay workers higher wages."

Recommended reading:

How Much Money Would You Pay for A Big Mack?
Robots Taking Over Fast Food Jobs: What's to Become of the "Useless Eaters?"
Should We Blame the UAW for Detroit?

Out of A Job Yet? Keep Demanding Higher Wages! (Tee Shirt)

Union Bosses Headed to Vegas to Salivate Over Obama's Amnesty Plan - Twitchy US Politics

Excerpt:

"Just in case you had any remaining delusions that the modern labor movement cares about its members’ jobs, note that the union top brass are all coming to President Obama’s big rally tomorrow in favor of 'immigration reform.' ...What does Obama’s accelerated path to citizenship do for American union workers? Well, nothing — except maybe put them out of work in favor of lower wage non-union former-illegals. However, if you’re a labor mafia boss, amnesty means lots more people from whom to extort money. "

According to an article in The Arizona Daily Star, January 24, 2013, "Union membership plummeted last year to the lowest level since the 1930s..." (Unions Suffer Sharp Drop in Membership).

I'm not a fan of unions (although I love the pro-union song, Solidarity Forever, written by Ralph Chaplin in 1915). I realize that many of the things we take for granted today have come either directly or indirectly from labor union.  For example, consider the following list from What Have Unions Done For America?):

End child labor
8 hour work day
40 hour work week
Paid Overtime
Weekends (yes, they didn’t exist as days off before unions)
Workers compensation for people injured on the job
Unemployment insurance
Paid sick leave, vacations, and holidays as standard benefits for most workers
Health Insurance for many workers
Pensions or 401Ks for many workers
Improve workplace safety and reduce on the job fatalities
Pushed for Civil Right Acts and Title VII which outlaws job discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin
Occupational Safety and Health Act
Family Medical Leave Act
Push for livable minimum wage

I would like to think that employers would respect their workers enough to provide all these benefits without unions (or the government) getting involved and basically forcing them to do so. I realize that is not the case.

But I don't want to comment on the pros or cons of unions here. Rather I just want to take this opportunity, to plug Patrick Buchanan's excellent book: The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Global Economy.



 Recommended reading (my posts):

Attention Wal Mart Shoppers: Just Remember, Scabs Will Die!
So Mr. Obama, Tell Us: Where Did the Jobs Go?

Michelle Malkin » Hey, Fat Cat Unions: Pay Your “Fair Share”

Michelle Malkin » Hey, Fat Cat Unions: Pay Your “Fair Share”:

"Message for wealth-bashing millionaire actor Ed Asner: Man up and take responsibility for lying to America’s schoolchildren."

'via Blog this'

Wal-Mart Distances itself from Deadly Factory Fire in Bangladesh

Wal-Mart distances itself from deadly factory fire in Bangladesh - CNN.com:

Question: Why is Wal-Mart in Bangladesh in the first place?
Answer: Read The Great Betrayal - How American Sovereignty and Social Justice are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Global Economy, by Patrick Buchanan:

Excerpt from this book:

"No site better captures yesterday's America than Detroit, forge and furnace of America's democracy. Detroit is the burned out case of American cities. The Empire of the Sun has its revenge. Japanese imports helped kill the city that built the weapons that destroyed the empire. Now grandsons of the soldiers of the imperial army work at high paying manufacturing jobs once held by the fathers of ten-dollar-an-hour retail clerks in Macomb County.

"But why blame the Japanese? We did it to ourselves. We Americans created a post war trading regime, in which, over 25 years, Japan bought 400,000 American cars while selling us 40 million Japanese cars, a ratio of 100:1. One president after another sat still while a third of America'a greatest industry was shipped off to Japan...

"Americans no longer make their own cameras, shoes, radios, TVs, toys. A fifth of our steal, a third of our autos, half our machine tools, and two-thirds of our textiles are made abroad...

"The decline and fall of Middle America was neither preordained nor inevitable. It was engineered in Washington D.C. Wages have fallen and the standard of living of American families has stagnated because of a basic law: the law of supply and demand. The price of labor has been dropping because the supply of labor has exploded...

"Having declared free trade and open borders to be American policy, why are we surprised that corporate executives padlocked their plants in the Rust Belt and moved over seas?  Why keep your plants here when you can manufacture at a fraction of the cost abroad, ship your goods back, and pocket the windfall profits that come from firing $20 an hour Americans and hiring fifty-cent-an-hour Asians? A pair of Nikes that sells for $150 in the United States costs $5 in wages to make in Indonesia. Any wonder that Nike president Philip Knight is the fifth richest man in America, with $5.2 billion, while his Indonesian workers make 31 cents an hour?"

Also, see my post:

Attention Wal-Mart Shoppers: Just Remember, Scabs Will Die