Organized Labor is good for everyone

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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The legal, recognized agreement between labor, capital, and objects/material in the independent spirit of the Organized Labor contract is good for everyone.

This holy trilogy of labor, capital, and material/objects is so important to individuals and to society in general, that free, independent, recognized Organized Labor contracts deserve the title of the world’s first meta-religion.

Organized Labor agreements transcend time, culture, and language and provide the framework for humanistic answers that thrive in a liberal democracy.

The angels, saints, and Gods of our time are the men and women who are a part of or who support the concepts and the contracts of Organized Labor. The world is begging for the voices of Organized Labor, the believers of miracles; the harbingers of the coming good and the visions of hope.

The two major problems that face individual men today and reside in every nation are;

Religions have become meaningless. True spiritual experiences cannot and do not result in pronouncements of hatred, intolerance and aggression. Yet this is how religion has become defined in our world.


There is a world wide race to an economic bottom producing lower wages for labor, disrespect for the science of matrerial/objects and a momentarily misappropriated profit for capital. None of these results are good for any of the three components of the Organized Labor contract. These results are devastating to each community and every nation as a whole.

The existing structure of existing successful Organized Labor Agreements directly addresses both problems simultaneously. Organized Labor contracts do not replace religious beliefs or teachings they encompass them, thus the word meta-religion.

Organized Labor agreements spell out humanistic business relationships that recognize and address the best interest of the holy trinity of Organized Labor; capital, labor and material/objects.

Free, independent, legally recognized Organized Labor Agreements are successfully negotiated tens of thousands of times each year world wide to the benefit of all three participating parties and to their immediate community.

Organized Labor supports and compliments government, especially liberal democracies.

Organized Labor assists all governments and cultures in promoting a rich, stable society that is able to support higher education, the arts and moral purpose in freedom of religious beliefs.

Organized Labor Agreements are extremely responsive to economic changes and represent one of the purest forms of liberal democracy and humanistic approach to problem solving as they enrich all individuals, their community, and individual liberty in a continually rising level of world wide economic and humanistic evolution.


My thesis for this thread: Philosophically, the concepts and contracts of Organized Labor are a God-given fruit.
That philosophical fruit is nutritious and healthy for everyone.
Work to ingrain this fruit into every aspect of your life.
If you have any questions PLEASE challenge me.
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Take a look at Minimum Wage laws. During the time before minimum wage laws were implaced, african-americans were specialist in certain jobs like bricklaying. There was no minimum wage laws and they made good money will having skills that could develop material from one thing to another, and this other thing being of value which is the capital.

Later a minimum wage law is passed and the african-american bricklayers were let go. Why would a white business owner hiring a black person over a white person whent hey have to be payed the same minimum wage? The minimum wage law even allows for businesses to have incentive to not hire people, and so some will get jobs and others not.

Some minimum laws are passed because one company lobbied to have it increased, since this company has a rival that creates a better material and does it at a cheaper price. The consumers go for the better material and cheaper one, and the other company brings this about because pays workers less. The consumer in this case loses out on a better product, and those people who worked on them now lose their jobs because company worked for went out of business.

Since you linked Labor Unions with minimum wage laws, and capital, labor, and material, it appears that Labor Unions only benefit a few and not all. Consumers lose out by having to spend more capital for products that are not as good material and loses out on capital, and some people are prevented from obtaining jobs and thus capital and taking part in labor.

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I think this is the first time I’ve said this, but that was a pretty reasonable post, Zen.

I’m not going to say that things like minimum wage are, on the whole, bad, but I will contend with Zen that to say they’re “good for everybody” is a bit extreme. It’s arguable that they’re a net good, but, as per some of the examples that Zen gave, they’re not good for everyone. If I’m willing to work for $5/hr, and my competitor only willing to go down to $6, then I have a competitive edge. If minimum wage is brought to $6, I lose my edge, don’t I? That’s what Zen Kitty was talking about with his Black Brick Layer example – black brick layers had an edge in the market because they were willing to work for cheaper. Minimum wage laws take away that edge.

So, maybe it’s a net good, but it’s certainly not good for everyone, as is said in the OP. Namely, it’s not good for those people who’s only edge was working for cheap.

I need to repeat this again: just because it has one down-side doesn’t mean it’s a net bad, so you don’t really need to get all up-in-arms about this particular downside. You’re totally allowed to say, “Yes, that’s one down-side, but it’s still a net-positive.” Good ideas don’t have to be all good. In fact, if an idea seems all-good to you, you’re almost certainly making a mistake in your thinking somewhere. Policy debates should not appear one-sided.

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[size=112]Thank god you guys agree.

What I will tell you both is that what each of you are describing is the world-wide race to the bottom in a nutshell.

There is an inherent good inOrganized Labor.

Whenever Organized Labor is ingrained into a moment, that moment becomes inherently better.[/size]

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How about the moment of working and the moment of not working? Which one is inherently a better moment?

Take this example: There was a time when there was child labor, and these children were payed less than adults. Now there was an economic bubble that happened and collapsed the market. This was the Great Depression. Millions of grown men were let go from work or fired. However, there were still children that could work because they were payed less. This made it so that the children were the bread winners in some homes (i.e. mother doesn’t work and father was fired or mother doesn’t work and father was dead).

Now some of the adults did not like being out of jobs and children had jobs. So an economic argument would be to make sure that the children lose their jobs and this opens up the market for some adults to fill in those holes. Thus, some people moved to end child labor and had laws passed. This immediately lead to children not making money that they did before, and in some cases having a family where the child was the bread winner to lose their job. The implementation of child labor laws helped some companies to get other companies to go out of business and also gave the jobs of these children to those of adults that did not have jobs.

But to point out, some would use moral arguments to end child labor while the economic argument appears to have been that children should have kept their jobs. It also gives experience to these children for them to rise up in the field of work or labor.

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Great example. I’ve read your post three times now and I keep missing the part where you mention Organized Labor. Could you be so gratious as to point out those words in your above post. Not trying to be scarcastic but, it’s late and I’m not that sharp right now.[/size]

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Most people learn this lesson early on on the internet:

Don’t respond to people who have overly gimmicky post-structures. They never have anything thoughtful to say. That’s why they have to compensate with an ‘interesting’ (read ‘annoying’) post structure.

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qft

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Hey guys: I don’t want to confuse organised labour with labor laws, although in many ways they have a coincidental similarity. But let’s take the context we find our self, arguing this issue.

For starters, politically and economically and looks like socially, Capitalism has finally won out as an ideology. The word is still out, but this seems to be the consensus, with hold outs such as cuba, north korea, and ambiguous places like china venezuela.

The how’s and why’s of this is beyond my scope here, but, the bare fact is, with Murphy’s law factored in, is, if equalisation of the world society had not begun, the following things may have happened.

  1. The collapse of Capitalism as we know it, and a subsequent world depression the likes of which may never would have been precedented.

2.Mass starvation, disruption of markets.

3.A certain WW3, where the end of world scenario could have been a possible scenario.

The consequences of the necessity of world equalisation does 2 things.

 A/ labor unions loosing bargaining power, since equalisation of world wide wages have to figure in wages as low as 10 cents an hour in certain countries

 B.     A loss of reality as far as sustainability of class values, since the unpredictability of lowering standards in the western economies have the imprint of a distabilized , boundary seeking societies, where the social/psychological bounderies are being de-differentiated.


 C.  Unions usually do not parallel the per hourly wage value of non union private wage, and hence an artificial, wage fixing problem would be created, another form of class warfare.

 D as a parting shot, only a compromise and a regional focus can save the economies of the western industrial world, since the shift of focus from troubled societies like Greece, can have dire political and humanitarian consequences.

 The schizoid position of a social/capitalistic society as in some nordic countries, may not necessarily apply as a model, owing to qualitative/quantitative differences.

 Finally, the economic affordability of a general labor unionization, begs the question of whether employability and universilasition could ascribe to the qualifications of workers, avability of jobs, overcoming of political opposition, etc.

 For these reasons, such a scenario as the OP suggests, is unlikely, but even now as we speak, a weaker wilsonian consensus has been demonstrated with the election of Obama.  Everybody feels some kind of angst, of the coming tribulations, but the genius of man is even now preparing a soft landing.
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Not sure you are grasping the reality outside of your bubble.

No one questioned Capitalism. The discussion of Capitalism is NOT part of this thread.


As Americans our thoughts and LOVE of Democracy far out weigh our responsibility to Capitalism.

I find, in general, people who bring up the concept of the threat of Capitalism to be quite eccentric.

Other than that your response was quite weak.

I do appreciate your effort.
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without the gimmicks, I agree that organized labor is good for
everybody. Without labor to protect everyone rights, people would be
risking life and limb for pennies a day, 7 days a week, 15 hours of a day.
365 days a year. We would not have social security or medicaid or paid health care
of any kind. Once these these laws protecting people went into effect, roughly 1900,
for child labor, length of working, number of days worked, that is when we have
a dramatic jump in the life expectancy of people in the U.S.

Let us talk specifically of the minimum wage law. This one law has
helped kept people from being too poor to be able to afford the basic minimum,
food, shelter, clothing. There have been a couple of arguments against minimum
laws. One: It prevents employers from hiring people. If everyone is in the same
boat, paying a minimum of say, 9 dollars an hour, then it is no different then
paying people 5 dollars an hour. You have the exact same level playing field.
So you do what you do when the cost is 5 dollars an hour and the cost is 9 dollars,
an hour, you simply pass it on to your consumers. There is no difference from
a job creation standpoint. The idea is to hire the best people for your business,
that means paying for the best people, if you are cheap and hiring people cheap,
you get the workers you are paying for, bad pay =bad workers. A level playing field,
is just that, level and everyone has the same situation.

Now as a worker, if everyone is making 5 dollars an hour and you have a level playing
field, if the minimum wage is increased to 9 dollars, you still have the exact same
level playing field. everyone is getting the same wage and no one can undercut you by
going to 8 dollars. To pay a worker less then minimum wage is illegal and we don’t condone
illegal activity.

From a consumer standpoint, minimum wage is good because it helps
those who are waiting on you or serving you or cooking for you,
it means they have a steadier income and that help one have
a peace of mind working if you know, you can survive on your wages.
Minimum wage helps everybody.

Kropotkin

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[size=50]…[/size][size=200]Welcome aboard![/size]

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PK, I thought you would be above that one-sided thinking.

I mean, I totally understand that you think Organized Labor is good, but that you can’t admit the existence of any downsides…for anybody…that’s a pretty clear sign of bias. You’re totally allowed to say, “I think Organized Labor is great, but yes, it has this downside and this downside. They’re not bad enough to outweigh the goods though.”

When someone does thinks like this about any given policy – that there are only pros, no cons – they’re treating arguments as soldiers.

It’s a human tendency to do this, particularly in the case of politics. It’s one that you should consciously avoid (that is, if you care more about truth than about ‘your side’).

Admit a downside, PK. Do it for practice. Do it for fun. Do it for truth. You’re above this one-sided, treating-arguments-as-soldiers bullshit. I know you are.

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[size=113]Actually, if I may intervene here, the concepts and contracts of Organized Labor do not exist in an insulated bubble.

There is an inherent good of Organized Labor means that whenever Organized Labor is ingrained into a moment, that moment becomes inherently better.

All the laws of nature are still enforced.

Hope that helps.[/size]

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I belong to a union and I am guessing I am one of the few around
here who is actually in a union. My father belonged to a union.

I believed in unions long before I ever joined a union because I
have seen their value. Is there corruption and other issues with
unions? Yes, any institution has the same issues as a union. However,
the good done by a union far outweighs any bad.

the same internal forces that compelled men to form government
is the same forces that have men form unions, for self protection
and mutual benefit are the same forces that compelled
large scale movements such as civil rights, gay rights, women rights for example.

If a large group of people benefit from
actions taken, such as the civil right movement, it benefits
all of society and not just blacks

When rights are protected, justice promoted and freedom
expanded, we all win. miniumum wage is just one aspect of
rights protected and justice promoted.

Kropotkin

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You sir, are a GOD![/size]

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Peter I once worked in a factory for an ironworkers union knee deep in this grease no lie. They made huge steel pipes there and the were red hot and rolling over our heads on these cooling racks. We we’re trying to reinforce a wall that this cooling rack was putting a lot of it’s weight on, so essentially, I was under an insane amount of red hot huge steel pipes rolling over my head trying to fix the wall that was holding the whole thing up. It was nuts man. I had this green flame retardant suit and some earplugs and a hardhat and some steel toed boots and all that stuff. Protective goggles even. I would stand there all day holding a fire extinguisher waiting for something to catch fire, then after 2 shifts I’d be off the rest of the week and get almost $600. It was insane man. I really felt like I was getting away with something.

I had to quit doing it because they wanted us to go to these meetings that were supposed to be about OSHA regulations, then when I’d get there the whole thing was like one guy teaching communism or socialism or something to the dumbest crowd of dudes I’d ever met. I was way out of place. I mean…I’m not against communists or socialists or anything for real…but just the extremism I guess. I mean to come up with a tricky curriculum that’s supposed to be about safety so that you can indoctrinate people who’d never been exposed to a well articulated political view of any kind, for the purposes of getting them to involuntarily support your position just seemed a little unethical. It was like communist church. Church just grosses me out man.

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Actually bill, I retired from a union job, after 25 years, and you are the first person to have pointed out to me that I am living in a bubble. I contest not what’s outside the bubble, meaning the consensual certainty that is perhaps unaware of the concept of the internalisation of labor, and the implications, thereof, of what the dynamics involved in other than local or perhaps national goings on, rather than ones of wider scopes.

Capitalism and democracy are related, inasmuch freedoms and their enjoyment, constitutionally black letter in terms of constitutional dynamics, but, enjoyment being a measure of profit motives, are very much related.

My inner bubble is not quite exclusive, I am retired yes, and not one to bite the hand that feeds me, what I am trying to sustain is a level of understanding relating the issues which are obvious to almost everyone, that of,the process of deunianisation, trickle down process which started way back with Regan’s economic policies.

I believe capitalism and democracy are or can be related, as social systems, economic systems, and financial systems are irreparably associated.

As far as a weakness of strength of an argument is concerned, their objective, start off point, for a benevolent and non-biased necessity includes facts without such a bias. The reason being, is that bias introduces an element of uncertainty into arguments, which would do a disservice to not only either side of an argument, but to both. If one can absolutely declare labor to be based an absolute certainty, then debatability is forclosed, on basis of more then just democratic principles.

Politically those can be dangerous, Precedented, the labor movement becoming a moving force in a lot of uncertainties relating political outcomes, is why caused the rising of quasi authoritarian figures arising as social democrats, etc, and changing into fascists later on, causing the problems in the european and later the world theatre. I am sorry, but I cannot figure any argument,b which could be any stronger, even ideologically, inside a bubble.

In fact isn’t the seeming “outside” the inside, looking at it from the point of view of trying to figure out where is inside?

Other than that, regionally, to regard unionization as an absolute, as a right equivocal by implication to the democratic rights,is missing a point. Knowledge of this is what will further the cause of a real move, toward looking at labor, with a well gauged point of view.

In this scheme, I find your argument as lacking in strength, as you do mine.

Thank you for being kind enough to continue a non emotive and rational discussion in this matter,b because otherwise the truth of the matter is very hard to be understood.

Labor can do a disservice to itself, by short changing and short circuiting it’s own arguments, by excluding, even internal dynamics, which are not synonymous to singular and eccentric points of view. Not that such views should not have any significance at all.

Thanks for listening.

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[size=112]Not a problem.

Thank you for participating.

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Worker unions started with noble intend, to rid the jobs of slave like conditions, to introduce good and fair mentallity and justice for all.

In these modern times the tables has turned in many industrial countries, where the unions now act like tyrants with unreasonable demands and illogically behaviour. They will ruin our competetive abilities.