In ‘Right to Work’ Battle, Narrative Trumps Fact on NPR
On the morning of December 29, I was driving and listening to the radio. A National Public Radio anchor, discussing assorted issues being considered by prospective voters in the New Hampshire primary, described a proposed “right-to-work” law as one that would enable employees to benefit from collective bargaining agreements without having to pay dues to the unions negotiating for them.
No further definition was offered, much less any elaboration of the possible benefits of “right-to-work” laws, which protect workers from compulsory union membership. As a government-subsidized media outlet, and as a fundamental principle of sound journalism, one would think that NPR would seek to report accurately and to avoid embedding political narratives in its ostensibly objective commentary.
On reflection, it seemed to me there must be more to this particular story. So I looked at the NPR website, hopeful that I would readily find that I missed the more balanced analysis somewhere else in the program that morning. What I found, however, was that NPR has a “story” on the right-to-work issue, and by golly they’re sticking to it.
I found the program I had heard in late December, and also a May 24 article about the effort to pass right-to-work legislation in New Hampshire. In the earlier story, NPR defined the right-to-work measure as one that would “forbid union contracts that charge nonmembers a share of collective bargaining costs.”
Now, I think it’s fair to understand “a share of collective bargaining costs” as a reference to union dues. I think it’s also fair to say that union dues do much more than reimburse the costs of collective bargaining for the union members paying them. In fact, a portion of union dues goes to the national organization, where it is spent by union bigwigs whose use of the funds is not really subject to effective auditing. Although NPR overlooked this point, I think there is abundant evidence that union dues often benefit Democratic political candidates more than the workers forced to pay them.
Nevertheless, it was clearly implied by NPR’s statements that union efforts bring benefits to workers superior to those enjoyed by non-union employees. Moreover, NPR further implied that union dues merely reimburse the union for its share of the cost of bargaining for these benefits. If there is another way to look at the issue, I do not think you will find it laid out for you by NPR.
Of course, federally funded NPR is notorious for policing the content of its programming to expunge what it considers to be politically incorrect content. Just ask Juan Williams. So perhaps it’s no surprise, during the reign of this most pro-union administration in memory, that NPR’s stories seem to overlook some facts that the folks listening might actually find of significant interest. (Now, we can check in on NPR’s reporting about Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, but that’s a subject for another day.)
I never even heard of “competition law” till this morning, but allow me to say that it has a really promisin’ ring to it. A scam like that ought to fit into the upcomin’ Age of Mittens admirably.
Like pretty well everything legal, it cannot be outsourced. Should anybody try to set up a “International Competition Court,” of course Rear-Colonel Ambassador J. R. Bolton will call out the Pitchfork People in a flash to defend our holy Homeland™’s most precious body fluid, her national sovereignty. That means, I suppose, that Hartmann, Esq., has not much chance of actually recoverin’ royalties from the Chicoms an’ other Lesser breeds Without.
Yet of course actual recovery would only be icin’ on the cake. If his freelordship knows what he is scammin’, he will have made a successful I.P.O. off the sizzle of “competition law” an’ be safely retired well before any dangerous number of marks an’ dupes have actually tried to chew the steak.
Pretty nifty.
Happy days.
Huh?
If anyone can translate this to something understandable, I would appreciate it.
Ahh, the wonder of narcotics mixed with public education…..
I wonder what Occupying Force this person camps out with.
Not surpriseing. If you were to criticisize this story at the npr web site, you could expect to be called a plant, a defender of the 1%, or a collaborator. Then you would be reminded in the nicest way what happens to collaborators.
NPR employees such as Robert Siegal, Mara Liar-son, Renee Montaign are all getting fat and happy off the taxpayer money PBS gives them for disseminating and reading progressive propaganda. These millionairs produce NOTHING, and TAKE as much as they can skulk off with, in a Bernie Maddoff fashion. THEY are the fatcats, not the hard working business owners that have their earning confiscated at gunpoint only to be redistributed to the scum that call them “greedy”.
The afore named employees of NPR should be dues paying members of a government employees union.
Does anyone know if the above mentioned broadcasters are required to join Screen Actor’s Guild (a Union)?
I live in right to work state (FLORIDA) but if you land an acting gig for a union company from LA (union state) for example, you are required to join that union before yo are allowed on set.
Ray….you cant deny that the non-union workers at the Twinkie factory are currently enjoying the benefits gained by union efforts. The unions definitely deserve to be compensated for that by the non-union workers. How can you be against someone getting what they deserve?
I was thinking they deserve at least a trip to the woodshed.
Well, the National Labor Relations Act does not require the unions to represent non-union members. The unions could simply negotiate on behalf of their members leaving the non-members to strike their own bargain with the employer. Now, if the employer paid non-members less, then the employee would seek to join the union. Of course, this could lead to a situation of the employer rewarding high-performing non-members with higher salaries and non-seniority promotions while being contractually banned from offering the same to the union members. So, most unions see exclusive bargaining to protect their “turf” and avoid the advancement of high-performing new comers over time-serving union members.
But the fact remains, a man/woman should not have to pay off the union for a job. An employer should be able to hire anyone that can provide the services they need they wish. Employees should be able to enter into voluntary associations to negotiated work conditions but not be coerced, bound or required as a condition of employment.
Yes it does! A union once certified as the exclusive representative of an appropriate bargaining unit has a legal duty of fair representation of all members of the bargaining unit, not just to those who have joined the union. That’s black letter, so there is no reason to misrepresent it. As a matter of law, under Beck v. CWA and Hudson v. Chicago Board, an objecting bargaining unit member cannot be compelled as a condition of employment to pay to support the “social, fraternal, and political” activities of the union, but can be charged a fee for collective bargaining representation as a condition of employment.
Unfortunately, even in Republican controlled states employees are commonly on their own to know and assert their right to pay only an appropriate “agency fee” rather than full dues. That said, there is hardly a union in the Country that has adequate accounting and timekeeping systems in place to accurately distinguish between chargeable costs of representation and non-chargeable costs for social, fraternal, and political activities, so this is a fertile ground for any Republican governor and AG who’d like to put a dent in union power, but here angels fear to tread. And I’ll admit that when I was in a postion to take it on, I could find lots of better things to do with my State’s time and money than fight an existential battle with the unions; it’s a lot easier to keep them merely sullen but not mutinous.
From the link, unions are not required to petition to be “exclusive bargaining representatives.” They could petition to represent their members only
I read the link, and I don’t think the guy knows what he’s talking about, and one Democrat appointee’s opinion certainly isn’t dispositive. I can see how Democrats/unions would think they’d like it that way because contesting the unit definition is a primary employer tool in thwarting unionization and a handy tool to punish a misbehaving union. I knew I could certainly crystalize a union’s perceptions when the contract bar period opened and I started talking about how some or another group of employees seemed to have more of a community of interest with another bargaining unit than with the one that union represented. In any event, an employer is only legally obligated to bargain with a representative of an appropriate bargaining unit, and no employer in their right mind would recognize a union as the representative of only a specified list of employees; it is hard enough to manage things when one logical section of your workforce is unionized and another isn’t. If nothing else, that is just a prescription for whipsawing.
Most of the people holding forth on this stuff these days are self-styled employment lawyers and arm chair experts who’ve never actually represented an employer in an adversarial relationship with unions. An employer with a brain likes having the option of an open or union shop; if you get what you want in economic and operational terms under the contract, you give the union a union shop and a dues checkoff. That way, they don’e have any excuse for slithering around your workplace during the contract term trying to get employees to join and pay dues. If the union wants to be unreasonable, assuming you’ve made the union shop and dues checkoff only for the duration of the contract, you get them to impasse and stop enforcing the union security agreement and stop transmitting dues for them; they become amazingly reasonable when you cut off their income.
What you have in most of the private sector is really third sector industries that rely on government funding, government regulation of competition, or government imposed barriers to entry, e.g., defense and aerospace, ship building and maritime trades, regulated monopoly utilities, publicly funded construction, automobile manufacturing, healthcare, etc. In these industries, the union(s) and management essentially work together to influence the government to throw more money to the industry or to eliminate or advantageously regulate the industry; they really don’t bargain as the economic endeavor that was contemplated at the time of the NLRA’s passage. It is worse in most of the public sector because at any given time all but two or three of the states that sanction widespread public employee bargaining are deeply and irredeemably Blue. My state, Alaska, is the only unionized state that has consistently maintained at least one branch of government in Republican hands pretty much all the time since public employee bargaining was authorized in ’72, and thus we are the only state with any tradition of actual bargaining or with the skills to actually do it. When I was the appointed head of labor relations, I knew most of my peers around the Country and they were almost all either powerless technocrats or Democrat apparatchiks. I think at that time the CA guy and I were the only Republican appointees in the Country heading a state’s labor relations program, and the guy in CA didn’t have a Republican AG, so he was pretty much powerless on any of the legal issues.
Without the “exclusive bargaining representative” designation, different unions could represent different segments of the work force, and compete against each other. There would be pressure from the workers to raise their compensation, and competitive pressure from the managers to reduce market share for those highly compensated.
That was part of the reason why the ‘craft union’ AFL approach did poorly compared to the CIO approach that had less competition between different craft unions. The electricians would argue with the carpenters over whether a carpenter could plug in a drill, demanding that it took an electrician.
Ray….you cant deny that the non-union workers at the Twinkie factory are currently enjoying the benefits gained by union efforts.
Do those “benefits” include the company filing for bankrupsy?
Thank you Larry. You appear to be the only one who got it. My post was sarcasm….but then for those who didnt get it, explaining that it was sarcasm wont help.
Yes, the union workers have killed the twinkie. The company is bankrupted by union pay and pensions. Thus, the non-union workers are out on the street as well.
The twinkee factory benefits are secure. They’re covered by ME, the taxpayer.
You say “deserve”, don’t you mean “entitled” to be compensated.
Why should someone pay for something they never wanted in the first place?
Apparently NPR has never heard of agency fees (or Google, where you can find out lots about them). For NPR listeners, agency fees are fees collected from non-union workers in union shops that are in right-to-work states. Agency fees are explicitly intended to cover the costs of collective bargaining efforts by the unions on behalf of the non-union workers. There have even been lawsuits by workers who charge that the unions inflate the agency fees to effectively cover political activities by the union outside of the collective bargaining role.
NPR has no interest in being fair. During the recent caucuses, comments were made that Iowa was not representative of the nation because its unemployment rate was much lower than the national average. No one, however, tied this to the fact that Iowa is a right-to-work state. Neighboring Illinois, home of President Barack Hussein Obama, is similarly situated but has much higher unemployment, state debt and political corruption. Illinois is a non-right-to-work union shop state, with the unions heavily supporting Democrat majorities in Chicago and Springfield.
Bob – Aw, give NPR a break, they’re only aping the NYT: All the news that fits our views, that’s we print (or in NPR’s case, air).
“As a government-subsidized media outlet, and as a fundamental principle of sound journalism, one would think that NPR would seek to report accurately and to avoid embedding political narratives in its ostensibly objective commentary.”
Mr. Hartwell, do you seriously believe that? Please explain why you think National Propaganda Radio would do that.
But at what point are you people satisfied with news? What would it take for you to trust a source? I feel like NPR does a good job of presenting different views and allowing all sides to talk. If you have ever watched the intelligence squared program– a debate show– I know that several of the more conservative debaters were able to convince the audience of their position and thus win the debate. The planet money program talked about the advantages and disadvantages of Hayek and Keynes — not just one or the other. NPR is also critical of the NDAA which was Obama’s idea. It seems like they wouldn’t allot much time fir that topic if they were strictly in favor of one party or the other.
So jazzy, Do you feel the same way about FOX news too? they put libs/Dems/lefties on air to tell their side.
Perspective is all that is required. As publicly funded media, all the copyrights are shared with the public. “Public radio” right? Until they start announcing that everything produced in their studios is free for the public I think the Congress should make the note themselves. But–they won’t. It is much more fun arguing about their stance, taking money from producers, and refusing to act.
At Christmas, while shopping I looked for the Union Label. Everything was made in China, Sri Lanka, Mexico and the Republic of Vietnam. I wonder if unions had anything to do with that?
If you were looking at textiles, the EPA bears a large share of the responsibility. But unions certainly played a part.
Don’t get me started on the Environmental Persecution Agency.
I does cut both ways, though. Back when every little town in The South was trying to attract Yankee plants so they could get people off the north end of southbound mules, my little town attracted a big textile printing and finishing plant, lotta’ jobs! For the twenty years or so that it was in town, it dumped raw dye and waste into a nearby creek and in a few years there wasn’t a living thing within 100 feet of the creek bank for fifteen or twenty miles. When the State and the US dared suggest they stop doing that and begin cleaning up their mess, they filed for bankrupcy, laid off the entire workforce, and closed the plant. The plant site is slowly being cleaned up as a SuperFund Site and with a lot of work over the last twenty years or so the creek and the river into which it feeds are returning to health. Those were some high=priced jobs.
And just in case you think that’s all a thing of the past, within the last five years a metal plating company in that town got busted by the State and EPA for dumping their plating waste, including cadmium, chromium, and all sorts of other highly toxic metals, into the groundwater. They’d built all the right holding tanks and even went so far as to pay a guy to come out and make it look like he was pumping the tanks and hauling the waste away for proper disposal. But he wasn’t; he was in on the scam. They had replumbed the waste plumbing so that rather than going to the tanks, it went to a leachfield. Of course, they closed immediately upon being cited and laid off their workforce. I think eventually a couple of people went to jail over that one.
I really don’t like the greenies here because they’re not really pro-evironment, they’re anti-development and many of them are anti-American; watermelons – green on the outside, red on the inside. In any event, one of my state’s greatest resources is its natural beauty, and it is not in our economic or social interest to let enybody despoil that beauty. That said, if I were back living in The South, I’d be one Helluva greenie because I know how the cheap, unscrupulous bastards try to operate there and how ineffective state and local governments can be made to be in dealing with it.
What a load of leftie crap, some dye “somehow” stayed tranquil, in a moving stream for twenty years, really? Thank god for the EPA and superfunds (rob the tax payers fund).
Learn to read you effin’ idiot.
States are quite capable of handling their own environmental issues. Cheap, unscrupulous bastards reside throughout the U.S. We need to rein in the EPA.
The best way to rein in EPA is first cut its budget and then amend the CWA and ESA to make them more specific and to reduce the regulation power of EPA. As much as I hated it, I can’t say the USSC was wrong in deciding the EPA had the power to determine if CO2 was a pollutant and then regulate it as a pollutant. The vagueness of the laws gives unaccountable bureaucrats and, worse, judges incredible power. What you get in a lawsuit is the greenies’ paid liars and the developer’s paid liars mooting each other and the judge then trading his black robe for a scientist’s white lab coat and making a decision that is purely reflective of the judges ideology, not science.
That is the union label! Because of unions almost everything is made over seas. So in the future when you see made in ——-, you will know that the unions did it.
……or Federal regulations, which in many cases favor unions or add to the cost of doing business in the U.S.A., as poster HeatherRadish, above, also notes.
I listen to NPR because they cover things that conservative sites don’t. It is fine as long as you remember that it has a lefty bias.
Like the try to be more objective lol. That’s the difference.
Publicly funded conservative sites? What are they, I would like to see what stories they report.
That’s the problem though. We shouldn’t be creating stricly liberal or strictly conservative news sources. Those are by definition biased.
You’re talking “perfect world” where news outlets are not owned & operated by people who have agendas to forge.
We should strive to be as objective as possible.
This argument predates our nation, predates the Hudson Bay company. Whenever a sovereign (the guys with the guns) conveys a monopoly (lets only a select elite make money), then you inevitably reach this sorry state. NPR is filled with talent, but they refuse to compete with other media companies. With cards close to their chest, they claim that only a small amount of seed money comes from the US taxpayer. They stand in a long line of people whose hands legally stay in our pocket, for generations.
Now that we have buried our grandchildren with a life long debt caused by our generation’s irresponsible decisions, it is time to consider which pigs are pulled from the warm teat of taxpayer funding. NPR should compete or die.
This cold reality would pervade their journalistic philosophy, and salary structure.
While I believe that all workers have benefited from pioneering union organizing, like Big Business, Big Government etc., Big Union is an expensive bureaucracy that is now more about itself and feathering the nests of its executive(s) than representing its members.
The answer to Big Union is the same as for Big Business…make them subject to the antitrust laws. Make the union at one company compete with unions at similar companies, not have the big get-together to target one at a time.
I have a relation that had a small all union shop that went bankrupt. He tried to diversify and change his business model with a combination of union skills and non union but was blocked by the union and the state backed them up. According to the contract he paid the highest wages in town and paid for the very best health care plan with no copay to even those that were laid off. When the economy slowed only slightly it did not take long to run the company out of cash. Only big companies like GM and Chrysler have the cash to sustain this wreckless spending. Then again, maybe they don’t.
Ray Hartwell …do you really expect honesty from NPR or unions.
Collective bargaining, as it exists in non-right-to-work states, is almost non-existent in right-to-work states. Why? Because there is no Gov’t/union labor cartel. i.e., a labor monopoly. Without a monopoly, there is no leverage. For instance, in Georgia, less than 5% of teachers actually belong to the NEA or AFT and can’t remember the last time they held a strike…in fact I can’t remember the last time any union held a strike in Georgia; maybe that’s why outfits like Kia, Mercedes Benz and Hyndai tend to locate new plants in right-work-states.
I was a member of the IBEW and later the Steelworkers in a Right to work state, both of which engaged in collective bargaining. Both jobs no longer exist. When I was a steelworker, we had around 50 people in our local shop, about 10 did most the work, the others just got by. Turns out you can hire a contractor, pay for far less people, and do the same amount of work. Who to blame for the loss of those jobs?
There is no organic right to strike or to engage in concerted activity such as strikes; the right must be conferred statutorily. GA teachers do not have a right to collectively bargain as that word has meaning under the federal Labor-Management Relations Act or various states’ public employee bargaining authorization laws. Consequently, GA teachers cannot legally strike.
Oh, and there were plenty of strikes in GA in the war industries during WWII; the original National Labor Relations Act didn’t have the so-called right to work provision in it and most war production was done through what we now call project labor agreements and almost all of the work was unionized. I still have my fathers union card and button from when he was with the Machinists at the Southeastern Shipyard building Liberty Ships in Savannah.
Uh oh. Here we go again, if it doesn’t line up with “conservatism” it must be a liberal gobment conspiracy thing-amajig! NPR is great. Get off it!
Fox news rules, and George W. Bush was one of our greatest presidents.
Thanks for reminding me! I had almost forgotten
“if it doesn’t line up with “conservatism” it must be a liberal gobment conspiracy thing-amajig! NPR is great. Get off it!”
Under your rules, there can never be a liberal bias in anything. Would those rules of yours be in effect if everything was 180 degrees changed politically? Or would you have a problem with funding a conservative biased public outlet?
Never said there couldn’t be a liberal bias. Be careful not to argue straw men. And yes I would have a problem funding any site that is strictly liberal or strictly conservative, as anyone should. I just dont believe NPR is that biased. Promoting political philosophies or ideologies should not be the business of journalism.
Bias can take different forms in “journalism”. Omission or implication are two other ways. The author writes that NPR “implied” that the benefits of union membership were greater than non-union and that non-union workers benefited from union bargaining. That can be considered as bias, if not reporting or mentioning disadvantages of unionism to the consumer and businesses in higher costs, if the advantages are highlighted.
Omission and implication… Exactly right! I agree with you. The goal is to strive to be as unbiased as possible. But I don’t think this example should serve to indict NPR as a whole.
“As a government-subsidized media outlet, and as a fundamental principle of sound journalism, one would think that NPR would seek to report accurately and to avoid embedding political narratives in its ostensibly objective commentary.”
O my, have I stumbled upon the classic repository of satire, lampoon, and parody, MAD Magazine???
Why would an employer care about closed shop rules except as a means to weaken the union. That’s a fair objective but it makes no sense to say as Mitch Daniels is saying that its not about that. Then what is it about?
Most of the reasons given for the exodus of manufacturing give taxes and regulation as the cause. Some would inculde currency maniplulations and energy costs. Mitch Daniels is saying its because a closed shop laws chase employers who recoil from the thoughts that an employee might have to join a union. That’s not credulous.
Then how does it make sense to compare wages of a sector hammerrd by regulation and taxes to sectors that weren’t, relatively speaking?
If open shop makes no change to rights to organize and join unions, which it doesn’t seek to do, where is the employer advantage? If a union is in a shop or comes into a shop the advantage comes frim an opening to disuade employees that are members from maintaining that membership. Again, to what advantage? Outside the union structure an employer can promote, give raises, assign workloads, transfer and fire an employee at will. That is the good and the bad of it. But its not being said.
If his competitors are unionized as well, an employer doesn’t really care. In fact it is a whole bunch better to have the option of an open or union shop as a bargaining tool. If you get what you want in economic and operational terms, you give the union a union security clause and dues checkoff; they go away and you pretty much don’t see them again until next negotiation time. If you have an open shop and no checkoff, the union is constantly slithering around your workplace trying to get people to join and trying to collect dues.
The way the automakers took their sleighride to Hell was with pattern bargaining; they didn’t care what the union got as long as it got the same from all of them. When the imports came in with a different cost paradigm, the automakers couldn’t compete; as much as a third of the cost of a new “Big Three” automobile is legacy benefits to some guy who last worked putting lugnuts on the right rear wheel of a ’59 Edsel.
And as to all that hire, fire, transfer, suspend, demote stuff, they’re all mandatory subjects of bargaining, but the employer doesn’t have to agree to any limitation on them. Granted, either party can persist to impasse on a mandatory subject and at impasse strike, lock out, or impose terms, but it is damned unlikely that a union would actually strike over anything other than money or layoff protection. Most of those Godawful restrictions on management rights that you hear so much about were either given away by a complicit management in some Third Sector industry, or given away by a bought and paid for Democrat government in the public sector. An employer who’s willing to look them in the eye and tell them they’ll have to strike to get something will usually get his way, and if he’s got the money and willpower, he’ll even get his way if they’re striking over money or job security. The deal is that most unionization today in both the public and private sectors is basically a joint venture between the union and management to screw the shareholders or the taxpayers, or in the case of government contractors, to screw both the shareholders and taxpayers.
Art is dead right. As was Mao Zedong, power comes out of the barrel of a gun.
The reason that unions flourished prior to WWII was incredibly brutal work conditions and economic conditions akin to slavery. America killed one worker per day in the coal mines, for more than a century. Violent death was an accepted work condition. The unions changed this paradigm. But that age no longer exists (for the most part.) In today’s global economy, unions lost their monopoly power, for the simple reason that US management no longer enjoys a monopoly. Large corporations do not care what the cost item is, so long as they can pass it along, with a profit, to the customer. However some forty years ago, particularly after the USSR collapsed, sophisticated managers looked at US regulations and union contracts, and left our nation. The only large industries left on our dirt, are ones which could not transplant, e.g. electric power plants. If some one could invent an intercontinental extension cord, these would also go.
To counter this reality, unions have infiltrated government, since these jobs must stay put. In addition, management, e.g. NPR, also has infiltrated government, a non competitive source of funding. Finally, we see that the life science professions have come to rely on government funding for their rice bowl. Ditto war industries, with some justification. Everybody feeds off the taxpayer, more precisely the yet-to-be-born taxpayer.
But the game is over, from Greece to GM retirees. Nobody is standing up to ancient wealth transfer terms and conditions, e.g. fat retirement agreements, with no provision to pay for them. This is a big reason why millions of unionized state workers are retiring, but now realize there is no money to pay them. Politicians do that, lie through their teeth. On paper, my grand kids must pay ~ 70% of their life’s income to pay for the current generation.
This game is over, for unions, for NPR, for government workers, but primarily for the voters. America is broke; it can not continue under the old order. We need a new deal, a new unmarked deck, an honest dealer, and no smoke and mirrors. Hopefully we will peacefully evolve. Mao did not.
Actually, WWII was the heyday of unionization in the US. The right-to-work provisions of the Taft-Hartley Amendments to the National Labor Relations Act, passed over Truman’s veto in ’48, were a direct reaction to union excesses in the War period. It was in that brief, shining “Had enough yet?” moment after WWII and the New Deal when the Republicans took over the Congress. If for no other reason, unions will never forgive Republicans for Taft-Hartley, will never forgive Republicans, and will never really support a Republican except briefly as a matter of convenience
The War Labor Board essentially decided who worked and who got drafted and set the terms and conditions of employment on defense contracts. Most war production was done on what we’d now call project labor agreements and almost all the war work was union, even in The South. The grievance-arbitration schemes and no-strike, no lockout agreements as a quid pro quo were a device common in the war production contracts in order to assure uninterrupted production, and which continue to this day.
Whatever bad you can say about union behavior during the War and, especially, in the first years after the War, the War Labor Board’s scheme were a major part of a truly prodigious feat of industrial production. If you’ll recall the scene just after the actual invasion scenes in “Saving Private Ryan,” the camera looks out to sea over Omaha Beach and there are ships, vehicles, planes, materiel, and men from horizon to horizon. That is a re-enactment of an actual photograph. The ONLY things in that scene on June 7, 1944, that existed on December 7, 1941, were two WWI battleships in the bombardment fleet and the men themselves who were mostly still in high school.
After the War, the res publica had pretty much had it with union protests and strikes and increasing and open pro-communist activity that had been tolerated when the US and USSR were war allies was steadily suppressed as Soviet intentions became more clear and more hostile. Under Meany, the AFL and then the merged AFL-CIO ran the communists underground if not entirely out of labor and an agressive USDOJ and USDOL worked to limit, if never to eliminate, mob influence. Somehow or another after the collapse of the USSR, we decided that there were no more communists and the unions had become good guys. By the late ’90s it had become OK to pretty much be an open communist again in the big industrial unions and in the public employee unions. Now we’ve elected one as President. Had enough yet?
I am a a public-sector employee (at a state college library), I am part of our union, and I am following this conversation with interest. I see Mr. Hartwell’s figures from the National Institute for Labor Relations Research on the benefits of right-to-work legislation deal with the private sector only. Are there any for the public sector?
Someone mentioned the Twinkie factory, so this is pertinent. Hostess Foods has filed for Chapter 11. Business for their type of snack foods has decreased due to changes in eating habits. However, one of its disadvantages compared to other similar snack food manufacturers is that Hostess is union and the others aren’t. So, it has higher pension and benefits costs. If nothing else, unions reduce the flexibility of companies to respond to changing economies, especially to deal with economic downturns. When business is slow, costs for pensions and other benefits remain.
Public sector unions in California pay a substantial fraction of the total costs of the elections statewide. California has a budget crisis due in large part to unsustainable salaries and benefits for public employees.
It’s a hazard that goes with the territory.
You guys all do realize that NPR is mainly funded through fees, private contributions, and corps right?
Yes, and we don’t need lefty useful idiots to remind us. That said, Communist Radio and Television get public funds which should be cut off yesterday. And, when we restore a legitimate government, it might be fun to look at the tax exempt status of the many Democrat front groups that contribute to NPR/PBS.
Obviously you do you stooge, you seem to think everything is a conspiracy.
Why aren’t you over at dKos or some such idiot hangout; you make no contribution here.
Art, I make your day; everyone else on this site seems to fall head over heels for everything you say whereas I argue with you. I don’t even know what dkos is.
“Mainly”? Why is the government involved in funding NPR at all? NPR and member stations receive federal, state and local funds, as well as money from the Depts. of Education and Commerce. It comes to about $10 mln/year. Why?
I’ve worked for an affiliate and written about NPR bias
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/10/journalistic_malpractice_and_n.html
It’s thick and deep. Defund NPR
Read your article — your argument needs work. I think trying to appeal on the basis of “your tax dollars fund it” is a bad strategy. NPR gets something like 50 percent of it’s funds through fees it charges its host stations, then from grants and donations, and last but not least, from taxpayers. Taxpayers foot even less of the bill than they have in NPR history since 2009 due in part to private largesse. The other reason your tax dollar strategy isn’t particularly effective is that most people enjoy NPR. I think you would have to admit that even conservatives listen to NPR for NPR to enjoy such success. Surely if conservatives listen to NPR and if the bias is as evident and dire as you claim more listeners would complain of this? The second flaw is that you mentioned only 3 different NPR contributors as if their opinions are representative of the whole group. Surely every media outlet has pundits and personalities with opinions. But does the expression of such opinions constitute an outright bias if a diversity of opinions are allowed? I think NPR does a good job of showing diverse opinions. But as you know, sometimes people are fired for their opinions, as in the case of Juan. I think NPR was trying to save face to appease a group of people who would not like to see Williams associated with the outfit– though I did not agree with his firing.
I also take issue with the fact that you did not address the range of hosts and programs on NPR. They cover many different topics from economics to history to philosophy. I have heard conservatives debate on intelligence squared and win and I have listened to programs that talked about the benefits of Hayek. It’s an unfair criticism.
I also didn’t get the point of counting how many times NPR used liberal vs. conservative without any context. I mean they said conservative or right wing more often — that could be a sign that they pay attention to conservative issues more often, couldn’t it? I mean i could easily claim NPR as conservative biased based on your logic; more right-wing and conservative words were used after all. But there is no way to tell because you have no context. Maybe more people interviewed were conservative? Pointing out facts doesn’t constitute bias. On a side note: if fox news was the outlet in question and they had used the same terms the exact amount of times as you claimed for NPR, would they be considered biased simply for using a term more often? That sounds unreasonable; especially since you gave no context for the usage of the terms.
The counting seemed pointless as it is but then you wanted to squabble over 190 Joe Wilson mentions vs 158 Charlie rangel mentions? Whining over 32 more mentions sounds petty to me. Maybe people are more interested in Joe Wilson? Just as more people may know more about the Tiller case because it was such a high profile case. Mentioning that more would be natural if it is a hit with the broader media and more people.
I think you also use a lot of red-herrings such as the Mao quote (so what/ context?) and the Juan Williams laugh– which was particularly egregious because you used him to prove your point then as a whipping boy to discredit NPR. The laugh was stupid but I don’t see how it suggests bias? Again, it’s one guy with one perspective slipping up. If it was found that one of the hosts of a tv show was a pedophile– even after a thorough vetting process–would that serve to indict all hosts on the show as such? Would it be fair to say the tv show supports pedophiles, even though they didn’t know? Also, why should a news outlet present only the stories you want to hear in the way you want them to be presented to be unbiased? This is fallacious reasoning. It’s like saying if CNN doesn’t talk about x important issue of the day then CNN must be biased towards thing y or in favor of thing z.
Overall I would say your article lacked sufficient evidence and was too disjointed.
Jazzy J, if all is as you say that the last/lowest amount of contribution to NPR or PBS comes from Taxpayer contribution then what is your objection to defund NPR or PBS? If they are already receiving funding from the private sector then removing the tax payer money should have little or no impact. Why should I as a tax payer be forced to fund something which is not in my best interest.
Because you are one person and most people don’t mind funding NPR. It’s also not very expensive. I think you raise an interesting point however. I was listening to a conservative woman being interviewed on, NPR no less, talking about tax funding. This woman was from a small county in a smaller southern state. If I remember correctly she was basically saying that the tax funds help those stations broadcast in smaller counties with less money. She went on to say that her station would be gutted if it didn’t receive the tax funds from the state and other local levels. So I think larger affiliate stations would do fine without most tax funds but those funds mainly help smaller stations. I think the NPR budget was like 120,000,000 in 2010 but I don’t know how that money is allocated.
I mind- NPR is nicknamed National Palestine Radio in my circles- NPR never met an ISLAMIC cause they don’t support,(Juan was fired for daring to say the truth to the multiculti jewhater Muslim asskisssers over there)
NPR never ever miss chance to disrespect and lie about ISRAEL- One reporter caught their execs willing to take bribe money from pretend sheiks in exchange for proISLAMIC Jihad coverage.
They are BIASEd, they are sleazy, and they should not get one damn cent of taxpayer money.
Well Isaiah you are certainly not the first or last person to make outrageous charges against NPR. But luckily, millions disagree with you.
“One reporter caught their execs willing to take bribe money from pretend sheiks”
Wow. You actually believe that.
I believe my own eyes and ears- they were caught on tape- admitting they don’t need fed money, that they would change the reportage for money, that their do indeed have bias against GOP and teaparty and yes they would take Saudi money witha quid pro quo to make nice with enemies of USA- enough truth and facts there that they resigned in disgrace- reported by liberal news ABC, CNN etc- guess they are duped as well.
keep holding your hands in your ears crying LA LA LA- the turh might hurt if you allowed yourself to hear it
They do pay their CEOs waaaaayyyy too much.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2009/09/29/survey-npr-ceo-made-1-3-million-bucks-year
But I still love it, and value the heck out of it.
I would understand if you were complaining about “paying” for NPR if you just didn’t like it or even thought it was biased. But my word, if you do not understand how NPR, PBS, and the whole CPB are “not in [your] best interest” then you are completely lost in this world and I have trouble understanding how you could even walk and talk at the same time.
Have a look at this, http://www.cpb.org/. Think about all the teachers in your life and what education means to our society, geez.
De-fund NPR.
I really didn’t think anyone listened to NPR anymore except for the music. It has been so long since objectivity and NPR became an oxymoron that most grownups just tuned to another station when the music ended and a voice emerged.
Lord knows anyone under the age of 35 couldn’t bear to listen to the droning, emotionless voices of the “news and information” folk.
Since 1980 I assumed they were computer generated voices driven by Artificial Intelligence Software designed by George McGovern.
Once I have to page down 13 times, there are too many comments to read. I wish comments without support could be culled in some way so the better points (hopefully) could be more easily found.
Regarding unions, it would be a vast improvement if they were restricted to the company’s employees they represent. How does any employee benefit from a national organization except through coercive bargaining that would land company management in jail. Allowing unions to secure pay and benefits that are not economically justified just makes companies less competitive, and today, that means a long slow death – if you are lucky.
Just listened to the last episode of “tell me more” (Jan 13, 2012) and their coverage seemed to be pretty balanced. They clearly spelled out the union’s interests (or “self interest”), the right of people to be represented vs the need for unions to be accountable, the low levels of union membership, the likely impact on jobs.
Admittedly that’s only one program, but it did seem pretty balanced.
I think it’s a policy that could backfire anyway. If it reduced the benefits of free-riding, more people might actually join a union out of self-interest.
So in the end where is the virtue behind leaching off of anybody who isn’t voluntarily wanting to pay in the taxpayer case of institutions such as NPR?and in the closed shop view of supposing one should be given the right to force membership thereby making the nonmemberthinking person illegitimate. Value and virtue of anyone”s point
is tied up in whether or not he is willing or desirous to do this for someonelse.?
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