House to vote on bill targeting Boeing labor case

Originally posted by SmedleyBurlap
reply to post by sonofliberty1776

 

This makes no sense. Unions depend on jobs existing in America. How does it work in their interest to drive jobs out of America altogether?

Great question. I wish I knew why.

You say that Obama wants this even though he has taken no position on this matter. How do you know? Can you read his mind? Do you have some secret correspondences you'd like to share? Or is it a typically baseless partisan comment like "HE'S A DEMOCRAT OF COURSE HE LOVES UNIONS AND HATES BUSINESS" or "HE'S A REPUBLICAN OF COURSE HE LOVES BUSINESS AND HATES UNIONS"?

Look at what he says versus his actions. He SAYS he wants Americans back to work That his new focus is jobs(why did he wait so long?) BUT his actions indicate otherwise. Every single policy decision and action this man has taken has had a negative effect on the economy. He has taken a position, don't fool yourself. IF he really supported Americans working decent jobs, he would put the kibosh on this NLRB thing. He has made his position loud and clear.

Why do you blame unions for driving jobs out of America?

They haven't done it by themselves, but they certainly do not help matters. Why should they be allowed to control where Boeing builds their new plant? Boeing did not close any of their union shops. They built a new plant somewhere else.

You should blame free-trade Republicans like Reagan and Bush for making it possible to export labour and import Boeing jets back from Mexico! If it hadn't been for their efforts to demolish labour unions by giving corporations free rein to export labour, then the unions wouldn't need to fight back!

You forgot Clinton. He did nothing to oppose NAFTA or any of the other free trade BS. If you have read any of my posts on the subject, you would know I oppose free trade in it's current form. I support free trade among equals only.

Do you want every American to be reduced to poverty or something?

You are asking the wrong person. You need to ask the free trade supporters. You also need to take the blinders off and really examine the contributions unions have made and continue to make to this situation.

The article plainly states that the plant was moved because union labour is too expensive.

Union labor is more expensive. Look at what China pays their workers. How can American companies compete with that? Boeing built their new plant in AMERICA. They are employing American workers. Do you hate the people of South Carolina? Should they be forced to live in poverty? They are Americans too. You get that, right?

Do you know the actual value of what skilled machinists do? Are you qualified to say that they are demanding more wages than their labour is worth? Or do you subscribe to the free market theory that something is only worth as much as a corporation is willing to pay for it?

Apparently they are demanding more than they are worth. I have worked with machinists. I have repaired multi-axis CNC milling machines, lathes, and other types of industrial machinery. I worked in a union shop in Philadelphia for a year. Union workers really piss me off. They take no initiative. I was taken aside several times and counseled to slow down. After a year of that crap, I quit and moved to Virginia. I have always been able to make very good money without being in a union. I do it by being the very best at what I do. Unions encourage mediocrity.

Originally posted by JIMC5499

Originally posted by buster2010
A bill putting corporations above the law. Who in their right mind would even think of supporting this. Obama isn't even involved in this Boeing moved the plant to another state to try to get away from the unions.

No this is a bill that puts a leash on a NLRB that has overstepped it's boundries. If Boeing had CLOSED one of it's union shops in favor of the South Carolina plan that would be one thing, but, Boeing actually INCREASED it's union workforce at it's existing plants.

NLRB has no business being involved in this issue. This is just a payback to the unions for their support of Obama.

Obama should sign the bill.
He killed 1,100 jobs at Solyndra.
The least he could do is allow Boeing to create 1,000 new jobs in South Carolina.

reply to post by sonofliberty1776


You're one of the few conservatives I have argued with on this board that actually makes reasonable responses based on well-thought out principles and personal experience. I am glad that, for once, this didn't degenerate into the senseless ramblings of neo96 or ressurectio or some other ideologue, refusing to budge from the party line. I apologize for my aggressive tone earlier, I was expecting you to be as much as nut as the average ATSer.

I can see the sense in what you are saying, but I think that you are hurling invective at the unions when free trade is the real heart of the problem. Yes, Clinton affirmed NAFTA, which was negotiated by his predecessors and the previous governments of Mexico and Canada. The liberals of the 1990s were shamelessly neoliberal in their economic views and betrayed the trade unionism that had made the liberal parties succeed in the past. However, I think that the actions of corporations in the age of free trade vindicates unionism.

The real problem now is that unions are prevented from forming in third world nations, and the unions of America lack the moral, diplomatic and logistical support needed to spread unions across the world. The working conditions of millions are appalling, but there is no serious political force anywhere in the world that wants to see the workers of the world benefit. Personally, I think that the decline and fall of the USSR was terrible because of the loss of international opposition to gross abuses of human rights by capitalists. Now there is no serious competition in world politics and only the wealthy benefit.

If Chinese workers were allowed to form unions or guilds, and those unions could provide decent living and working conditions for their members while remaining competitive with American unions, then I would be OK with that. If American unions remained lazy and complacent then they would be overtaken by foreign labourers. However, they would not be overtaken by a legion of slaves, which is the important thing in my eyes.

Free trade is the real cause of the decline of the Western working class, and this only because of the suppression of workers around the world. Maybe there will be a revolution in the third world as they industrialize; Marx said that an industrial proletariat was the necessary precursor to any socialist revolution.

reply to post by SmedleyBurlap
Yes, Clinton affirmed NAFTA. Obozo is affirming agreements with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea. What does this tell us? It is not just one party. Both parties are screwing us over.
You say the actions of corporations vindicate the actions of the unions. First, two wrongs don't make a right. Second, history proves you wrong. Look at the US automotive industry in the 70s and 80s. The big three had almost total dominance of the US and much of the world automobile markets. So, what happened? IMO, unions got greedy and lazy both at the same time. Instead of continuing their mission to protect the workers, they seemed to adopt a new mission of getting as much as they possibly could for doing as little as possible. This was before any of the various free trade agreements. Look at what the outcome was. The Japanese auto industry overtook the American auto industry to the point where Chrysler had to be bailed out in the 1980s. They should have been sent to bankruptcy court. I wonder how different the world and especially the American business world would be right now if we had not bailed out Chrysler in the 80s?
I do agree that unions will not be allowed to form in third world countries. We need to accept this reality. Unions need to learn to compromise or we are all going to be even worse off than we are now as more and more businesses flee America for those third world nations. "Free trade" is a big, even huge part of the problem. I support ending those agreements and adopting protectionist tariffs on manufactured goods and raw materials. I also think we should tax penalize companies that outsource jobs. Another thing. I would support a law allowing all government agencies to purchase goods only if they are made in America by Americans. Especially with regards to DoD.

Free trade is the real cause of the decline of the Western working class, and this only because of the suppression of workers around the world. Maybe there will be a revolution in the third world as they industrialize; Marx said that an industrial proletariat was the necessary precursor to any socialist revolution.

Here we definitely part ways. I do not support socialism or communism in any form. I believe socialism kills the soul. It sucks the life out of you. It removes all motivation to better ones self. From what I saw of unions, they already do that to a degree. As for China allowing their workers to unionize, I can only say You do remember Tiananmen Square, right?

reply to post by sonofliberty1776


I don't think that socialism is desirable, I think that it emerges naturally when the conditions are right. That's why the USSR was obsessed with industrialisation and the race to match the West's mass production. It wanted to industrialize because it would convert the agricultural peasantry into an industrial proletariat living in cities; without a proletariat, socialism and worker solidarity mean nothing and the permanent revolution would come to an end. The natural development, without state encouragement, is the emergence of labour unions as work conditions become unbearable and the working class grows large enough to pose a real threat to the urban elites. This precipitated the Italian Renaissance, when the various workers of cities like Florence formed guilds (unions; cartels) to protect and nurture their own influence.

Socialism is a stop-gap solution, a compromise between hereditary owners and workers. The elites make some concessions to unions or guilds, but retain their control of capital. Personally, I would rather see some real communism show up. I don't think that corruption and decadence on the part of the unions should be solved by letting the elites take power back. They are lazy and decadent because they lack the vision to see beyond the comforts of socialism. That's the trap that capitalists set for labourers when they make these concessions in the first place. They hope to pacify the proletariat by giving them the fruit of bourgeois existence; when workers at the Ford plant can afford their own house, car, TV and they can eat out once a week, they feel like they're rich. They don't want anything more.

Of course it is a boring existence - - it's modern mass-consumption culture, where mass-production is turned against the masses as a subtle weapon of class warfare. The working classes, Lenin noted, were unfortunately disinterested in carrying out an actual revolution. They lacked the vision to see beyond a future with full bellies, new shoes and a roof over their head. The fact of the matter is that the owners of America, the owners of any country, are the laziest people on earth. They do nothing to earn their wealth and claim the right to own everything that other people produce. The elites are disproportionately spoiled and unproductive as a class (the best of them are totally awesome dudes and dudettes). I would rather see them torn down from their pedestals than given free reign to abuse the unions once more. I would rather live in the fulfilling humanist world of Island than the degrading mass-produced world of Brave New World.

Unfortunately, we are seeing the rise of a mix between Huxley's Brave New World, and Orwell's 1984. Your comments about socialism making you lazy is spot on. That is what I mean about killing the soul. Socialism removes all "drive". Communism would be even worse. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Claptrap. Why should I work my fingers to the bone to support you? Then everybody does just the bear minimum for maximum gain. Society stagnates. Look at the Soviet Union. They could not feed themselves. Their electronics were pure Kludge. If it were not for the KGB stealing every bit of technology they could, the Soviets could never have kept close to us technologically. When Reagan unleashed the for might of capitalist construction capacity and the Soviets tried to keep up, they imploded. I like most of the Russians I have met. Even when they were my enemies, I had respect for the people. I felt bad for the government they were trapped under, but I liked the people. Kind of the way I feel about France and the French. I really like the Slovaks and Poles I have met. They both seem to have recovered from Communism. The ideals of communism may be laudable in theory, but it would never work with real live humans. Have you ever read Animal Farm?

reply to post by sonofliberty1776


That's why I used Huxley's last novel, Island, as an example of a preferable communist society. It's based entirely on principles of compassion, personal responsibility and mutual aid. The whole society, its entire ethic, is consistently reinforced by science, education, and social structures throughout one's life; and once you reach a certain age, you are introduced to the psychoactive moksha-medicine, which gives you direct access to the experience of universal oneness described by Buddha, Christ, Krishna and so forth. The only characters in the book who find this arrangement unpleasant are those who refuse to take the medicine because it gives 'False Spirituality.'

There is no good reason for naturally occurring psychoactive vegetables to be illegal. The amount of good that they can do for human society is incalculable, but they almost universally discourage mass-production, mass-consumption, mass-labour. That's why they're illegal, as far as I can tell. They demoralize wage slaves and make them want something more fulfilling and less alienating than their current existence.

Animal Farm and 1984 and Leninist-Stalinist Russia are all examples of 'communist' societies that engaged in the War on Consciousness. The Junior Anti-Sex League, the Stalinist orthodoxies, the ever-changing commandments of Animal Farm, the 'professional revolutionaries;' these are the tactics of so-called communists who lacked real compassion but made up for it in spades with their drive and zeal. They were not real communists because they did not understand the basic humanism that underlies communism. Lenin, for example, despised the working classes once he became the leader of the revolution because he had never really been exposed to them before. He was a bourgeois fat-cat. Stalin was a sycophant and a gangster. The pigs of Animal Farm were fraudsters. O'Brien was a perverter of the revolution in the vein of Stalin. One thing that they all held in common was their hatred of 'Christian' (human) morals and their militant commitment to a revolution that had the benefit of 'All' in mind but not the benefit of every individual. They were heartless collectivists.

Real communism, like in Island, is more like the small band societies that still exist in parts of the world. Real communism exists in anarchist communes and in revolutionary communities in Mexico. It is possible, it does work, but not if it is enforced on people. It cannot be a state policy. As Marx says, communism is only possible when the state mechanism withers away and dies. Maybe it could emerge as a result of very careful and deliberate state action over a long period of time but in the end its goal includes the end of the state as a force to be reckoned with.

What you are saying makes no sense. I will have to read the book, but I have to say that I would be one of those refusing to take such a drug. It seems that they are replacing "the opiate of the masses" with a real opiate. That would not suit me in any way shape or form. I will read the book though.

reply to post by sonofliberty1776


The drug in the book is a magic mushroom that increases sensitivity, not an opiate that dulls the mind. The author was one of the first test subjects of mescaline and tested other psychedelic drugs in the first half of the 20th century as well. He coined the term 'psychedelic,' in fact. In his book Brave New World, the drug that keeps people happy and complacent is called soma and is more comparable to ecstacy (MDMA) than psylocibin.