[quote=ravinos]That’s a historically new, revisionist, American and Anglo, corporate unproven theory in the campaign against organized labor. They’ve replaced the Pinkerton thugs of earlier America with lobbyists and subsidized lackey “think-tanks “.
Many EU countries have significant labor/union organizations,(reaching up to even white collar jobs), well above US levels.
Their economic performance even in this crisis, is much better than ours, and their societies are strikingly absent of an underclass, so persistent in the US.
Germany,not only the most productive economy of the world, but the biggest exporter, (yeah, bigger that Wal-China), has very high levels of union membership and influence in a cross section of its industries with wages matching and even surpassing US incomes.
As for GM, their “union” factories are more like sweatshops compared to German counterparts. Just visit BMW’s Munich and Mercedes Stuttgart union plants,… I have.[/quote]
Ravinos: Talk about throwing out an argument that’s completely apples to oranges. Let’s forget about Germany and it’s manifold problems regarding underfunded pensions for a second(Ravinos, care to throw out how big the persistent overhang in German pensions is?), and focus on how German unions are organized and, even more importantly, how much influence they wield in the German political system. Far from being a clean, well-run system, Germany has significant issues confronting the country, not the least of which is the inability of its workforce to produce competitively.
As to this supposedly “new and revisionist” history, attached please find a link to a series of US Chamber of Commerce papers on the true “value” of unionization in America. Link: http://www.uschamber.com/publications/reports/unionrhetoric
Also, spare me the racism directed at my Anglo heritage, please. It doesn’t have a place on this forum.
