hr800/ union rant ( I put effort into this so read it)

I'm a bit late with this seeing as it has already passed in the house but there is still the senate.
Here is the first of what will probably be many articles that I read on the subject.

This is the one "issue" where I completely disagree with most of my fellow liberals and with the democratic party. I'll admit that I have a personal grievance against the unions. So you could look at what I say as being biased from the start, or it could be the views of someone who has a fairly unique perspective of unions in general. I'm a proud liberal, I want people to at least be close to equal and for everyone to have their basic needs meet, basic needs meaning food, clothing, shelter, education and if your country can afford it health care (BTW the USA Can afford it). So whats this rant about specifically. Well the Dems are moving forward they are pushing through some legislation that they had promised, which is good at least they aren't sitting on their asses anymore. Unfortunately from the limited information I have on this bill it seems like they have stood up and pushed through a heavily flawed bill. So lets more on to specifics.

The biggest and most blatant flaw is the removal of the secret ballot. Theres a good reason we use secret ballots for every thing, how you vote is your business and the total is the only thing that matters to the group as a whole. If both the employees and the the employers know how each individual voted it makes it possible for the company to try to force people to vote against the union, but the bill has provisions for severe penalties if they do that. But what penalties are their if the union tries to pressure workers to vote union? What repercussions are there in that very very plausible case? Unions are corporations with a different title, the only difference is that they don't produce a product. They protect the jobs of those who should be fired and hold back those able to earn more without them. They have been a part of why it is no longer viable to manufacture anything in this country, so by protecting the jobs of a few, they have destroyed the jobs for many. Sorry thats a side topic, this post is not simply about why unions are relic of a former age that do provide a service, but a service that could be provided in more economically viable ways. No thats not what I am here to talk about, I am here to talk about HR 800.

As with anything today you cannot find a moderate response, I hear the typical liberal democrat stance saying how this will save the middle class and bring about social equality and the typical conservative republican stance of how this will ruin businesses and how only godless commies could be for it. Of course the fact that I seem to be finding only opinion pieces on it does tend to lead to that situation.

Here was one that at least had a good quote in it so here's this.

On August 29, 2001, sixteen Democratic members of Congress (led by Miller, but joined by Barney Frank, Pete Stark, Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, and others) wrote to the Mexican government about private-ballot rights for Mexican workers. In the letter, they state, “We feel that the secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union that they might not otherwise choose.” In other words, a federally supervised, private ballot election is needed to make sure that workers can make a free choice. Opening up worker choices to public card-check campaigns doesn’t “ensure that workers are not intimidated.”

Those of us opposed to H.R. 800 could not agree more. We just wish that George Miller wanted to preserve American workers’ private-ballot rights as much as he wants to preserve it for Mexican workers.

This is an important issue, I am NOT at all in favor of large corporations, I hate the fact that this country is controlled by money. I hate that corporations have far more influence over our government than the people. But unions are just another corporation that has no right to influence my, or anyone else's, political will. This law just seems ill conceived. I'm not a socialist, I'm not a capitalist, there needs to be a system in between the two that allows those who are willing to work hard to succeed and gain advantages for their efforts, but no one should be without anything, and even those who work hard do not deserve hundreds of times what the average person get. If they work twice as hard they get twice the money, or maybe even quadruple the money, but not 400 times, thats simply obscene. Which is why Im going to include this segment of an atricle that I could hardly read because the entire beginning is some religious mumbo jumbo and I really wasn't concerned with how Hammurabi's code dealt with this issue.

The average salary of CEO's has gone from 25 times the average of employee salaries (at which it remains in much of Europe and Asia) to up to 550 times the average employee salary. That is a shameful drain on employees, especially in light of recent "give-Backs" which have further eroded the income, health and welfare of America's working classes. Moreover, the multi-million dollar executive compensation packages, exorbitant Executive retirement plans and "Golden Parachutes" for executives have short-changed investors and taxpayers, as well.

This may have something to do with why European countries that may have similar GDP per capita have higher quality of life than the US. If the sum is the same and the top .01% are making that kind of money then the people in the middle of the bell curve have less, which lowers the quality of life, of course for the extreme minority the quality of life is a bit better, but at some point the exact number in your bank account is irrelevant when you can buy anything you see. I want social justice not social equality, I think I actually mean not economic equality, justice means that if you work harder you you get more, you work less you get less, but everyone has an equal chance. The wealth of your parents should not determine what you are able to achieve. It is not possible to have an elite hereditary ruling class and call yourself a democracy at the same time.

I could go on but you get the point, I love my liberals but this is one place where I draw the line. Unions cannot save this country, they are large corporations just like wal-mart and should be vilified to a fitting degree.