Where is the US economy headed?

And yet, federal (and usually, state) law requires that labor on federal projects requires wages to be paid at the prevailing rate, which is the union rate.

Its not always.
There are no unions in this area, so the prevailing rate would be the normal wage for this area, and not union rate.

Sure. Otherwise the closed union shops wouldn't be unable to compete at all. But it does drive up the costs of federal (and usually state) projects and pretty well shuts the small contractor out of the process altogether. Returning to a free market system would be advantageous for all.

Small contractors are not shut out of the process because of wages.

Look at the Katrina rebuilding for an example of how small contractors are used by the large companies for the building but not allowed to bid by the Bush government.

God forbid that the worker gets a decent wage, treated with dignity, etc. He or she should just accept the crumbs that trickle down.

I'm not aware of any federal projects that requires "union" prevailing rates. Can you support this claim from their contract requirements?

Good evening to yall.
I spent 15 or so minutes wandering around Statistics Land on Google re the topic of "Union Membership by State." Here is some stuff I found.
Nationwide, 12.4% of workers belong to a union. That is down from 20.1% in 1983. I reckon some would argue that decline is attributable to unions making unsustainable demands on employers. It could also be due to the auto industry making some poor decisions re car design and putting out products that were perceived as being of inferior quality. Or it could be due to globalization of manufacturing. China, for example, killed our steel industry not only because of lower wages but also lower environmental standards. I reckon that deserves its own discussion.

The table below starts with:
1) Unemployment rates by state. Okie did not provide a source for his numbers. I stopped after the 7 in double digits
2) Union Membership by state as a % of the workforce;
3) Union Membership in the private sector by state. This was kind of interesting. The numbers in (2) include, as I read it, public sector employees (garbage collectors to teachers). Big numbers-much more than I anticipated.

So here we go, using (1) and (2) and (3) above:
Michigan: (1) 12% (2) 18.3% (3) 13.1%
South Carolina: (1) 11 (2) 3.9% (3) 2.4%
Oregon: (1) 10.8% (2) 16.6% (3) 9.0%
North Carolina: (1) 10.7% (2) 3.5% (3) 5.0% (I may have that wrong)
Rhode Island: (1) 10.5% (2) 16.5% (3) 8.7%
California: (1) 10.1% (2) 18.4% (3) 10.7%
Nevada: (1) 10.1% (2) 16.7% (3) 13.9%

I have my links for this data as being unionstats.com and bls.gov/news.release
But I don't know how to do links. Let me know if that doesn't work.

rjb, To do links, just click on the URL box, and click the link in the middle; the cursor will automatically rest there to post your link. [URL] post your link here [\URL]

um, you are talking to a computer idiot, ci. We bought a new computer for the store and my employees also got me a lap top (which I paid for-it was a good price I was told). URL? You lost me in only several words.

When you click on Reply, you'll see a box with URL written inside it. Just click on that box.

Just for background, URL stands for Universal Resource Locator. It's basically an address.

Thank you, roger. It was in the recess of my mind, but couldn't recall it when rjb asked his q.

Ah, but it matters not to the idiot. You say hit Reply and some letters will appear. Hit reply where? On my original posting about the links? It didn't work. No big deal. I can get my yard boy to teach me that next week if need be.

The Reply box is the one right next (on the right side) of the thumbs up/thumbs down logo.

The green box when you post on a2k. There's a row of BBCode that are boxed beginning with B for bold, i for italics, u for underline, Quote, Code, Img (to post images), and URL. You can change the size of the font when you hit the arrow in the Normal box, change the Font colour, and lastly the Emoticons.

Hit the Open BBCode Editor if you haven't done so.

It boils down to the Republicans thinking that low-income workers are just scum who don't deserve decent pay, good treatment, or dignity. They even fought against an increased minimum wage. They will get theirs.

That's not what mystifies me; a) they're against unions, b) most Americans haven't seen a pay increase since 2000 to keep up with inflation, and c) Obama will provide a tax cut for most workers.

I have to assume that even most conservatives fall into that category listed above, but they keep crying for more tax cuts for the wealthy.

I'm surely missing something here, but I'm not sure what it is.

According to a cnn show today, Americans pay one of the lowest taxes of any developed country.

More tax cuts? HUH?

Oh good grief, knock off the garbage. I could tell you stories, a guy was telling me the other day, a licensed plumber got laid off from a private firm and went to work for a union. He said its a joke, the union foreman told him not to lay more than a foot of pipe per hour, if he wanted to stay in good graces with the union. He can't wait for the work to pick up so he can go back to his old job, the union job is an absolute joke, they don't do much work, and half the time the people are standing around or even leave for part of the day. Its all about making the job last as long as they can milk it for, and alot of their jobs are government jobs.

If you would actually get out in the work places, you might find out how some of this stuff works. Guys have told me stories about the union assembly lines at auto makers, some of what goes on, no wonder some of these companies are going broke.

Advocate, I have been a low income worker when I was young, I grew up relatively poor, I know lots of people with low income jobs, including many relatives. I am not part of a family with lots of money. All of us have had to work for every dime we own. So your comments are just ignorant of the real world.

Okie, do you realize that you replied with an anecdote and a nonsequitur?

okie wrote :



that's a good story indeed !

licensed plumber with a job : "i got a good job - to he.l with the union ! "
same licensed plumber without a job : "he , union , get me a job will ya ! " .

he must be a pretty poor plumber if he can't find a job when more people are having the plumbing in their old houses fixed rather than buying a new house .

btw i too have lots of stories the "friend of ... ... told me " .

any possibility that the laid-off plumber was "joe the plumber" ?
hbg

The real joke is that the licensed plumber got laid off his job, and got a union job that where he was told to slow down his work.

He's licensed? LOL