“Last week, Michigan’s House passed a right-to-work law. Michigan’s Senate had passed its own version earlier, and lawmakers will reconcile the pieces of legislation this week.
Obama said those laws will give Michigan workers “the right to work for less money” and said Michigan legislators should not be trying to “take away your rights to bargain for better wages or working conditions.”

Another bald faced lie from the President. There is no legislation to take away anyones rights to bargain for better wages or working conditions. Why does this President feel the need to marginalize those who have different views than him? This legislation is all about giving workers freedom to choose a job without paying someone else to represent them in negotiations. Nothing prevents them from paying for union representation, but it never should be a requirement for employment. It seems the only choice democrats care about protecting is a womans choice to kill her fetus before it is out of her body.

Somehow, the logic of working for less money is good for you is a convoluted logic that goes over my intellect. I don’t understand it at all.

Its perfectly logical cat. If your low on the totem pole, your the first to go when a company downsizes with or without union representation. Wages and benefits have to be sustainable, and when a company struggles and can’t afford the compensation negotiated by the union, the guy (or gal) thats been there less than a year will be the first one to go. If your looking for work, you best be consciencious of whether your employer can afford to keep you or not. Secondly, an employee has a right to keep his professional duties and political convictions separate. Union shops force one to merge the two. If employees want to work for less, or put their money where their mouth is, more power to them.

Hee hee, you mean some people want the benefits of union negotiations without paying for them? Where have we heard something like that before?

A “T” word comes to mind.

Eek, I just agitated again. Bad girl, bad girl.

I wonder if it would be poor form to file a grievance against the IBEW union members who tore down Americans for Prosperity tent, since that sort of set-up and take down work is usually the sole right/responsibility of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters? And which union has the rights to slugging reporters?

Color it any way you care to, the reality of “right to work” is reduced take home, less money circulating in the economy, and a direct attack on collective bargining, which is as integral to the free enterprise system as the stock market or manufacturing.
True, right to work states will to an extent attract some manufacturers. That hardly translates to a booming economy or improved quality of life.
Giving wage earners the “freedom” to work for a diminished wage is nonsense. I have the freedom not to buy food or pay for utilities–that doesn’t mean I’m better off.

“If the union is truely serving their membership, not one single worker will CHOOSE not to pay union dues.”

Really? I’m looking straight at one, who commented immediately above you. The boy’s raking in his government lifestyle with a big smile on his face. For something that’s supposedly so awful and unamerican, he sure feels that he deserves it.

Seriously, I’m less old-style union-friendly that it may seem of late, especially toward public employee unions.

However, unions are catching on to the fact that they need to represent the interests of all labor, not just their own associated shops or their own industries. Unions are a labor market force, and at this time a counter-force to the greedy depression of wages to benefit the very top is needed.

Unions in this new and future form are good and necessary things.

The GOP pretends to be the party that represents working people. They are the party who wants to see everyone working for their own. Why, then, do they get so upset when these working people band together to look out for their own interests?

Who else gets nervous when working people unite? Antebellum plantation owners and sweatshop operators, to name a few.

Stop fighting against the interests of 52 of the so-called 53% that you claim to take sides with.