Do you honestly know what a union does or has done for this country? Do you like your 40 hour work week? Paid Vacations? Holidays? Your children not having to work? How about minimum wage? What about working in safe conditions?

These were made the standard by unions!

I rather pay a higher price in groceries when I know the people making, producing, and stocking my grocery store are working in safe conditions, getting the health insurance they need provided to them without fail, being paid what is considered a living wage for this country, and having a portion of our earnings go to a retirement fund that is automatically put away so my husband and I can live without fear if something would happen to one of us.

Do you know that part of our dues go to the families that have lost one of brothers or sisters from our union hall to help off set the cost of funeral or medical expenses left by the deceased? The actual set of dues is not that much but obviously the writer isn't educated about what unions have done and will continue to do this for country with or without wally-world behind them or not.

Kat:

You talk about yesterday, I am talking about today. High taxes to pay for "labor peace:, high food costs, to pay for "labor peace", forced membership or you are not allowed to work.

That is what unions mean today. In the end unions need to be voluntary associations instead of mandatory.

Things change over time. Yesterday unions met a need. Today it harms the worker. Unions call for higher taxes, more government spending, less freedom. Only in a totalitarian society do you NOT have secret ballots--yet unions are demanding the end of secret ballots.

When strikes occur, we have violence, all by the unions...that is what unions means today--high taxes, high food prices, end of democracy, bribes to work, intimidation.

Is that the society you want for your children?

Yesterday is gone, we are in the 21st century.

I can't believe what a right-wing hack you are. How did you get on a respectable newspaper's website?

You make Jonah Goldberg look like Walter Cronkite.

Name calling does not change the price of a pound of tomatoes--are you willing to pay $3.00 for a pound of tomatoes or would you prefer to pay $.49 a pound? You must be very rich to afford the $3.00 a pound tomatoes!

Steve,

Time for you to change the subject and attack Obama again.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/14/opinion/polls/main4522273.shtml?tag=topStory;topStoryHeadline

LOL at the right wing fringe wingnuts. Their attacks just make Obama stronger.

Well, Stevarino....your lack luster "union-busting" campaign continues.

What is it exactly that your would prefer? Drive wages to rock bottom levels across the board? Should everyone maybe work for minimum wage? Who'd buy all the fancy crap then?

Yah, you'll get a lot of folks wanting that!

We'll leave aside your lack of credentials yet un-presented as a nutritionist. Where did those $0.49 tomatoes come from.

My wife and I pay a lot more than that 49 cents for tomatoes, but its at the Farmer's Market (about $2.50 a pound...fresh and usually organic and pesticide free) where I also support local and California farmers!

I'm guessing you don't think the recent upgrades of Von's, Ralph's and Albertson's markets to appeal to upscale or psuedo-upscale buyers has anthing to do with prices? Fancy lighing, LCD monitors displaying food prep options, checkstand video.

Well leave aside corporate CEO greed...that isn't anything new really.

Bud, don't know about you, but I have family working in a major grocery chain, and it's not an easy way to earn a living. Most are part-time, it routine to have management find ways to cut hours to deny benefits they otherwise would promise.

Yep...the Repub-American way there. Drive the workforce down! Jeeze! They are just your FELLOW AMERICANS aren't they? They don't deserve decent wages, heck, government sponsored health care is for Congress, per-diem rates for living at home..hmm...that's for Alaska governors!

And you're cheesed off about the price of brussel sprouts? How much of that crap do you eat??

Now, on the other hand, and this might seem sacrilegious for a "Union Man" (as I am) but turn to a market like Trader Joe's. No Union, lower prices. Apparently very happy employees, working full time if they choose to. Good benefits. One of the Ventura TJ's employees has lived near me, he's upgraded vehicles over the years and now moved to upgraded housing.

What's the point you ask? Well, I should think it's obvious. When employers treat workers fairly, compensate them reasonably, they don't generally need (or want) Unions.

There's the key: Treat people right. Observe some sort of "social contract".

By all means, patronize exploiters of labor...seems to be the Republican way.

Hang on a second there, Tom. Everybody is all for a living wage, earned, not extorted. I take home a decent wage because I sought out a skill set that holds market value, not because I organized a group of unskilled laborers. If you're going to try and convince me that I need to pay higher prices so that the guy who slides my food across a scanner and places it in a bag can get the same health care benefits as I do in a technical trade, you'll have to make that argument while I'm at the automated check out stand. I will scan, bag, and pay for my groceries without the aid of the guy moving stuff the last three feet and asking "paper or plastic". But by all means, tell me why he gets paid more than I do. I think its fantastic that there are entry level jobs out there, but they are not meant to be careers that you can provide a family with a high standard of living with. You still have to educate yourself in a trade or career that holds value in order to earn that standard. Extorting it from the government, and therefore, the taxpayer, isn't right. No matter how many of your relatives work very hard every day to unpack and shelve food, put it into bags and collect money. Steve's point is that the exploiters of labor are the unions themselves. Thats great that union dues pay medical benefits that regular non union folks can only dream of and pay for through higher taxes and prices, thats great that union dues pay for funeral expenses, God forbid the worst happens. But union dues totaling millions of dollars also pay for political ads that no union member ever votes for. Why isn't that expenditure voted on by membership? Wouldn't that money be better in the hands of members to decide for themselves to spend or contribute to a campaign?

Justin...first, thanks for a literate and thoughtful counterpoint. That does not happen often enough on Frank's blog/page/whatever this is.

I agree, and hate to admit it, that in the grocery trades, the "times they are a changin'".

First off, I don't know who gets paid more, you or the checker. At least in represented grocery workers the wages earned were not "extorted", they were negotiated. Management agreed to pay them. Calling it extortion implies something very different and I'd say in this instance it is a "spin" word.

I think as a general rule, we need to be careful about driving many traditional jobs to minimum wage. It may come about, but done quickly it can have very profound social ramifications. There needs to be thought about this.

I don't think I would have worked in such an occupation for very long! Hey, I went to some effort to learn a very specific technical trade (life support) to escape that whole thing, so I'm with you there.

I differ with Stevie that Unions are exploiters of labor. Even were they are, c'mon, management/corporations do so even more and in a direct way. Re-visit the "Trader Joe's" part of this. Treat people right in the first place, and they don't need or want unions. There may be Unions that "exploit" but there are far more corporations that exploit IMHO!

Whatever the grocery unions are doing, I don't think they extort it from the government...your grocery dollar I admit is up for discussion, but I would pose that in context with (at least in our county, physical plant upgrades, and CEO compensation) worker issues are at most a only a part of increased consumer costs.

Whatever it is that you do...don't you ever raise your prices...or ask for more money for doing what you do...to keep up with the inflationary nature of enterprise?

Why shouldn't someone else?

I believe that Unions at the very least provide workers with a mechanism to speak up for themselves in an organized fashion. For sure Management is organized...why not Labor? The relationship between Labor and Management is symbiotic. Neither should be a parasite consuming the other. Why is it that working people wanting some degree of control are so very different from CEO's and stockholders? Neither would exist without the other really.

As for the politics...I'd agree that members should be the ones that commit money to action, political or otherwise. Too often the member's who claim to not have their interests represented, well, they just aren't there when decisions are made. You need to show up to participate. Not every decision can be a "vote of the body". This is the crux of representative governance, whether the State of California, the USA or a grocery union. You need to participate. If you don't. Well, those that do decide don't they?

Thanks Justin for the thoughtful discussion!

Tom, you should not rewrite history or omit the truth.

You wrote, "At least in represented grocery workers the wages earned were not "extorted", they were negotiated. Management agreed to pay them. Calling it extortion implies something very different and I'd say in this instance it is a "spin" word."

In fact, those negotiations were extortions. So much so, that some Ralph executives, who hired people during the recent grocery strike, who wanted to work, might go to jail for hiring workers. That is extortion.

If you had gone to Von's on Erringer in Simi Valley you would have noticed union members harassed the elderly. In two cases, I had to rescue the elderly from union members "informing" these folks about the issues of the strike.,

I do not have to tell you about the slashed tires and other violence against those who did work.

By the way, if unions are so good, why do they force people to pay bribes (dues) or are not allowed to work. If this was a free choice a union could not get a worker fired for refusal to pay them.

Tom, freedom means allowing people to make decisions. In a totalitarian society, citizens are told what they are allowed to do. I do not have to remind you about the SEIU and its massive corruption--do you support that as well?

Samuel Gompers, the founder of the American Federation of Labor, believed unionism as a voluntary institution. He noted that:

"The workers of America adhere to voluntary institutions in preference to compulsory systems which are held to be not only impractical but a menace to their rights, welfare and their liberty."

Gompers was right, he opposed extortion.