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RICHMOND
Senate Democrats turned back a Republican attempt to write Virginia's ban on compulsory union membership into the state Constitution.
The Senate Privileges and Elections Committee rejected Del. Chris Saxman's proposed constitutional amendment on a 9-5 party-line vote Tuesday.
Saxman, owner of a bottled water company in Staunton, said Virginia's right-to-work law is so important for economic development that it should be made part of the Constitution to guard against attempts to weaken it.
The same committee previously killed a Senate companion bill.
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I will come back and ditto
I will come back and ditto HM's comment. There are probably several reasons why companies move overseas. One is that they are forced to pay high wages for unskilled labor. Another is the tax compliance policy that our government has is another. I don't believe that any company should be bailed out, whether auto industry, bank, or otherwise. It isn't the function of government to decide who will sink and who will swim. As a UAW member, would you have accepted a lesser wage to have a job if the Ford Plant would have stayed open? Of course not. Unions have priced themselves out of the market. Unions don't strike anymore for safety reasons. They strike to see how much more they can soak the companies they work for. Time and 1/2 for a toilet break.
Come on, Give Unions their due, They did a lot to improve
Work Conditions. Having worked most of my more than 30 year work life as a part of management, I say the only places that ended up with unions in the last 20 years were those companies that asked for it by how they treated their employees. I remember one company in Tennessee where the plant floor workers were not allowed any emergency phone calls and they had bathroom monitors. The workers had to clock in and out for all breaks including the bathroom. Even though several restaurants were within walking distance of the plant, employees could not leave plant property for lunch. Hourly employees either had to bring their lunch or eat in the company cafeteria. The employees spent 12 years getting a union, and the company spent millions in legal fees and millions more in Federal fines for violating several laws stopping the union. The sad result was 2 years after the employees got their union the plant was closed and moved to Mexico and a rural area of Tennessee lost 1,200 jobs and an industry that had been there for over 100 years. For the most part, if management treats their workers well the word union never comes up.
Without Unions...
Unions gave you a 40 work week, overtime, health care, abolished child labor, and a means to grieve the old boy system. Some Unions also provide a means to learn a trade and make a decent wage. Unions are pro-American-made... Something that we could really use these days since they shipped off most of our manufacturing jobs!
Good Unions also provide quality products. Have you not noticed some of the defecient products being sold these days? Unions gave us OSHA which was written in blood, but not inforced as much as I would like to see.
Therefore, don't knock the Unions. They have already given you much that you don't even know. Just because we had a few bad apples in the past, does not mean that they are all corrupt.
Want to see a corporate mafia in action? Look at the first bailout last Fall... More like corporate welfare!!! Think corporates like Unions? Aparently, they don't at the Bottle Factory!
Senate kills anti union law
Amazing how much union bashing that goes on..Sure every organization has problems, but with all these U.S. companies engaged in the "race to the bottom" with regards to pay and benefits, I look to see union membership increase as people continue to lose jobs overseas..We in this country cannot compete with overseas labor because they are content to work for next to nothing. Unions ensure that the workers share in a company's success. Ask someone recently laid off if they would like to have a union scale job with union benefits and retirement. Yes, as a union member I don't always see eye to eye with leadership, but I'll trade 600 bucks a YEAR in dues for a 60k-plus job with rights in the workplace and the best insurance in the world anytime.....
No suprise here.
It's no suprise that democrats want to make sure everyone in the state has to pay extortion in order to work. Basically a union is nothing more than a legal mafia.
Barack Obama and the Democrats just love unions....
...that's why they're really trying to bail out the United Auto Workers at taxpayers expense. Remember this the next time you buy a car: Because of the UAW, your car is much, much more expensive. The UAW currently is paying more than 12,000 of its union member employees NOT TO WORK. They are sitting at home drawing their salary and benefits. And people wonder why the auto makers are going bankrupt? Unions have been corrupted to the point that they will destroy Virginia if it no longer is a right to work State.
Careful what you wish for...
Be careful what you wish for as you may just get it. We no longer live in a country where one family breadwinner can live the lifestyle of the 60s (house/car/retirement). Unions have elevated the wages of all regardless of your love them or hate for them. If you work a 40 hour week thank the unions. If you think unions have killed some industries remember the "giant sucking sound" Ross Perot warned us about (NAFTA, et al). We are fighting a trade war with the rest of the globe whether you want to admit it or not. I don't apologize for some union excesses, just try to see the big picture and don't throw out the baby with the bathwater!
Workers of the World Unite!
It's nice to see that our corporate politicians have done the right thing for once. Until the day when corporations are locally owned and worker controlled, the right to unionize the work place is paramount for the well being of the labor class. All work places, weather public or private, should have the right to organize. Corporations do not care about labor; all they care about is profit. The workers of the world need to unite to force corporations to have production for sustainability, not profit.