Wis. GOP strips public workers' bargaining rights

http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/03/101091-average-annual-compensation-milwaukee-teachers

Now let's put that in perspective, which of course gunga never bothers to do. Teachers are much more highly educated than the overall population. You pretty much have to have at least a BA to be a teacher, and many have MAs as well.

In 2000, 10 years ago, the average salary for someone with a BA countrywide, according to the US Census Bureau was $52,200. For someone with an MA it was $62,300. Average salaries have certainly gone up some since then, though most of the gains in the US, thanks to disastrous Republican economic policies did not go to the middle class. So the Milwaukee teachers now are earning just about what the average wage for equivalent education was ten years ago for the country. As usual, you're wacked, gunga.

okay, here's some data from the Census Bureau via the University of Maryland, from 2008,
So Milwaukee teachers are well BELOW average for their educational level in today's market, 8 to 10 grand a year BELOW. You're even more wacked, gunga. Hell, they need the unions to stay even, since you parsimonious bastards keep talking about how important good education is but then you want to pay teachers comparative peanuts to do it, and keep trying to cut their salaries. You people are disgusting.

You're sitting there calling me names and you haven't produced anything to indicate that the people paying those teacher salaries in Wisconsin are making more money in total compensation than the teachers are. I mean what you have is people with 40 semester hours of ed courses and (if the taxpayers are lucky) 20 - 25 hours of some subject area working 9 months out of the year for a total compensation of over 100,000 USD at taxpayer expense, and I don't see any indicating that the people paying for all of that aren't just being fucked and, again, they elected Scot Walker to do precisely what he just did.

All I see happening here is the people (dems) who ALWAYS seek to win by gaming just got outgamed and they'r squealing like a bunch of little pigs.

It was my way of saying that Rabel's following post was ridiculously one-sided.


I presented another way to look at the issue. You should try it.

I agree that it is a complex issue. You should have told Rabel that.

Labor Racketeering

Labor racketeering is the domination, manipulation, and control of a labor movement in order to affect related businesses and industries. It can lead to the denial of workers’ rights and inflicts an economic loss on the workers, business, industry, insurer, or consumer.

The historical involvement of La Cosa Nostra in labor racketeering has been thoroughly documented:

* More than one-third of the 58 members arrested in 1957 at the Apalachin conference in New York listed their employment as “labor” or “labor-management relations.”
* Three major U.S. Senate investigations have documented La Cosa Nostra’s involvement in labor racketeering. One of these, the McClellan Committee, in the late-1950s, found systemic racketeering in both the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union.
* In 1986, the President’s Council on Organized Crime reported that five major unions—including the Teamsters and the Laborers International Union of North America—were dominated by organized crime.
* In the early 1980s, former Gambino Family Boss Paul Castellano was overheard saying, “Our job is to run the unions.”

Labor racketeering has become one of La Cosa Nostra’s fundamental sources of profit, national power, and influence.

FBI investigations over the years have clearly demonstrated that labor racketeering costs the American public millions of dollars each year through increased labor costs that are eventually passed on to consumers.

Labor unions provide a rich source for organized criminal groups to exploit: their pension, welfare, and health funds. There are approximately 75,000 union locals in the U.S., and many of them maintain their own benefit funds. In the mid-1980s, the Teamsters controlled more than 1,000 funds with total assets of more than $9 billion.

Labor racketeers attempt to control health, welfare, and pension plans by offering “sweetheart” contracts, peaceful labor relations, and relaxed work rules to companies, or by rigging union elections.

Labor law violations occur primarily in large cities with both a strong industrial base and strong labor unions, like New York, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia. These cities also have a large presence of organized crime figures.

We have several investigative techniques to root out labor law violations: electronic surveillance, undercover operations, confidential sources, and victim interviews. We also have numerous criminal and civil statutes to use at our disposal, primarily through the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Statute.

The civil provisions of the RICO statute have proven to be very powerful weapons, especially the consent decrees. They are often more productive because they attack the entire corrupt entity instead of imprisoning individuals, who can easily be replaced with other organized crime members or associates.

Consent decrees are most effective when there is long-term, systemic corruption at virtually every level of a labor union by criminal organizations. A civil RICO complaint and subsequent consent decree can restore democracy to a corrupt union by imposing civil remedies designed to eliminate such corruption and deter its re-emergence.

The Teamsters are the best example of how efficiently the civil RICO process can be used. For decades, the Teamsters has been substantially controlled by La Cosa Nostra. In recent years, four of eight Teamster presidents were indicted, yet the union continued to be controlled by organized crime elements. The government has been fairly successful at removing the extensive criminal influence from this 1.4 million-member union by using the civil process.

We work closely with the Office of Labor Racketeering in the Department of Labor and with the U.S. Attorneys' offices in investigating violations of labor law.
http://www.fbi.gov/

I am coerced to pay union dues and call myself a member of a union against my will. There is something very wrong with that.

You are not coerced to do anything. You chose to work where you work.

Go get a job at Kwik Trip if you don't want to pay union dues.

Two questions... Does the United States still need unions of any sort and, if so and in the situations in which it does, do those unions still need to collect dues of any sort?

I mean, take the money out of any sort of a situation, and the crime goes out of it the next minute.

Sure.. if we stopped paying workers any money at all, there would be no crime...
Great idea there gunga..

They are simply stupid... If you want children educated, you would pay the teachers millions... If you want to prove to kids that there is nothing of value at the end of education just pay teachers nothing...

Part of the problem is that people do not need to meet any sort of objective educational requirements to exercise their right to vote... There is a lot of religious elitiism in this country, people who actually believe they are better for living in faith and ignorance on purpose... They think all the educated fools hold them in contempt when the truly educated have little interest in them at all...People have to ask, should ask, and need to ask who benefits from uneducated people in the population... The prisons like the churches are full of uneducated... The cost of education is primarily born by those who achieve education, and such people then feel they owe nothing to their society... They care not to see others educated to the same standard because they will then be in competition with them...When people become educated they serve industry and commerce primarily, and little benefit in comparison... They are to all intents and purposes like people who must buy cars, insurance, and gasoline when its sole use is to serve their employers when the cost is not returned to them... We invest while employers gain, and for us the only return is survival...

How about having the whole society consider where the benefit of education lies... Why not ask those who can afford to educate their children well to help others... There is no reason the rich should want to see the children of others educated at their expense when other children would soon displace their own in power because they are more ambitious... But to not educate the whole of the society empowers the rich, and enrichens the rich even more while it is breaking the rest of us on the world stage... It is penny wise and pound foolish to deny education sufficient resource; but some people benefit from it while it hurts the whole people... The churches benefit from widespread ignorance... The republican party counts on the ignorant... Some employers, knowing there will always be enough people willing to invest in their own education care nothing for the rest... But as a whole people, we must all bear the burden of the uneducated and ignorant that the rich and the powerful and the churches want in quantity to prey upon... We cannot allow the poor to be denied education which is really the denial of hope and social mobility...We have got to consider the whole situation, because the uneducated are good for nothing be slavery, and the world already has enough uneducated slaves...

The Republican have passed laws for the benefit of single brain dead people in this country... Do you think the fact is entirely missed that the republicans will help the dead, but do nothing for the living... The people have a right to education even if, as it stands about 90% of it is pro government and pro business propaganda... It the kids really are intelligent they will be able to see through the nonsense to a better future; but only idiots think unpaid teachers will ever teach anything but resentment to their charges...

I said, take the money out of union activities.

No.. you said this...



Unless you mean that all situations include union activities your statement means what you say you mean; 'any sort of situation'.

Cute, Parados. However, I went to school for five years to be an educator. If I want to exercise my right to work in my chosen profession, I am strong-armed by the state to join. Coersion to join a group and have money legally extorted from me is against the basic tenets of the freedom I love about my country.

Where you unaware that there was a union before you started school?

Do you know any "unpaid teachers?" In what way are students taught "90% pro-government and pro-business propaganda"?

I was unaware that in the USA, a person could be forced to join a union in order to work as a teacher in the state of California.

Then that was you choice to not inform yourself.

You are also "coerced" into accepting union won wages and benefits.