Re-posted from RightMichigan.com
Unemployment is high. Manufacturing is moving out of state, and sometimes taking a “moving” opportunity” moving out of country.. Permanently.While the meat heads in the labor unions are figuring out new ways to persuade our leaders to LIMIT the ability of Michigan business to operate, the scholars in many other countries are figuring out what made America so great for so many years. And while our leaders in Michigan insert their own brand of controls on Michigan residents and business owners, it offers an opportunity for those who create jobs to “supersize” their crap sandwich from the drive-through window of Lansing’s growing bureaucracy.
Laws that tell you what you pay.. Laws that tell you whom you can hire.. Laws that tell you what legal substances can be used in the business you “own.” Laws that govern whether you dismiss someone appropriately, the hours they work, and soon whether you should be providing insurance for them. Add to this, the business owner has become the tax collector.
Is this truly Liberty? The top four definitions would say not:
lib·er·ty
Showing Spelled[lib-er-tee]
-noun, plural -ties.
1. freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.
2. freedom from external or foreign rule; independence.
3. freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.
4. freedom from captivity, confinement, or physical restraint: The prisoner soon regained his liberty.
Even as “right-to-work” legislation is being discussed, there is still absent a consideration of what it is that allows the government to set such controls on our ability to contract for ourselves in the first place.
Does it not seem strange that there is a disconnect between those who believe in Strong unions, minimum wages, minimum controls, and maximum interference by government, when they in fact wish to relegate to the owners of business, a “minimum existence?” Can those who wish to be free of an “oppressed” lifestyle, and want to maintain their precious “middle class” living even understand the contradictory nature of their position?To start with, shouldn’t the question be asked.. what is a union?
To Wit:
- 1. An organization that has as its purpose, survival for its components and a design of profiteering from those components
- An organization that hires lobbyists to convince legislation that has positive effect on its operation.
- An organization that has a hierarchical structure to make decisions about whether its efforts are fruitful, or productive. It has stewards, officers, and a leader that are elected by the workers.
- An organization that controls the manner in which the workers operate, placing limits on duties and assigning responsibility in as highly a segmented manner as is possible.
Components = Workers
Lobbyists = Salesmen
Workers = Stockholders
Stewards = Managers
Officers = Officers or Board Members
Leader = CEO
The union is a business. It is a business that has “stockholders” with a valueless stock. If they leave the union, and the job it “protects”, then they receive nothing for their sale of their stake. Any investment given in the form of submission to seniority rules, inability to independently contract to higher positions, and the inability to make a better work ethic pay, is lost. The officers and board members get the rewards the stockholder had hoped for.
The worker is not a slave to the company the union represents to be sure. Merely to the union that prevents the worker from realizing a profit from his or her own investments.
Some might argue… “the worker doesn’t have to work in a union shop.”
True. But does this not make an even better argument for the lack of need for unions in the first place? I wonder if the same considerations would be made by those who argue FOR smoking bans in private businesses as well. Indeed, the fact remains there are some industries which are 100% closed shops, and require union membership for employment, which limits those who might have a single skill to participating in a “brotherhood” social program. A non smoker however, can always eat, or drink.. at home.
But our marvelous manipulators of mandates and manufacturers of misguided management from Lansing continue the drumbeat of legislative force in how we live, work, and breathe, in a manner that deafens common sense. “Arbitrary” governance that is merely highlighted by laws which exempt one institution of the same type that is otherwise well heeled by law. Minimums of compensation decided by people other than the people actually engaged in a mutual arrangement?
It seems we have already a basis for constitutional challenges, as our natural rights have not been taken (they cannot be taken), but rather have not been PROTECTED by our state appropriately.
The Life, Liberty, and pursuit of happiness as mentioned in the declaration has as its defenders the bill of rights. Yet the very people who would be charged with providing that defense against a FEDERAL usurpation of those rights, have simply added their own flavor of tyranny by imposing artificial restraint on our own ability to negotiate what is rightfully ours.
I support right to work legislation. But I would encourage that we recognize the necessary legislation has already been passed as noted in the declaration of independence.. by our creator.
Government has its place. Aside from being a framework for infrastructure of communities, it is a place that as a design provides limits, not upon the citizens, but itself and other intrusive entities. It is merely a tool with which to enforce the laws given by our maker, that we are truly free. Our government’s role is to serve and protect us FROM those who infringe on our freedoms, not to serve as a tool FOR them.
So what do we do?
Support right to work in Michigan, but continue to push harder and support the repeal of laws which violate the spirit of it as well. Minimum wages, government forced labor contracts, mandates on business, and property rights abrogations all contribute to the loss of our ability to freely control our own path ..as is our design.
