What is wrong with this picture?

[fpb]

Or, to be precise, with this quotation? Two successive titles - successive, mind you - on the conservative news service Townhall.com:

Mike Shedlock:
U.S. Local Governments Cut Payrolls to Lowest Level Since 2006

Chris Edwards:
Plunder! How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives, and Bankrupting the Nation

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Nor does money go to a union without passing through the hands of its employees ...

It does when the union gets to directly deduct dues from the employees' wages, which is what some public service unions are able to and others want to do. It also effectively does in jobs where union membership is a requirement for holding the job ("closed shops") and in those circumstances, the employee must pay his dues promptly or risk job termination.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I never would have expected it of you, but you have just made a terrible and elementary mistake in logic. What mindstalk said is that you cannot have a situation where money goes to a union without first at least passing through the hands of its members. And you just confirmed it - the money has to pass through the members' bank accounts before any union deduction, however compulsory, can be made - and actually thought you were contradicting him. Nul points for formal logic; look up "Aristotle's law of non-contradiction".

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

If the union dues are unavoidable, then what difference does it make to the worker if he temporarily has the money in his account? (and sometimes he doesn't -- sometimes the union automatically deducts the dues). It is quite possible for workers to be doing poorly but the union leadership to be doing quite well under such a system -- while the cost of hiring the workers climbs to the state.

You would have no problem recognizing such an exploitation of the workers if it was being carried out by the employers -- why do you have such a problem recognizing it if it's carried out by the unions?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If the unions were not of advantage to the workers, they would not have lasted a couple of centuries. If the worker gets a raise above inflation of five, and the union takes two, the worker is still three better off. And if he were not, the unions would not last. Your constant attempt to associate unionism with mafia-like destructive exploitation is culture-specific but neither well conceived nor well argued. And I still say that you should at least have avoided the obvious violation of the most elementary logic.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Still fails. I imagine union dues will be a fixed dollar amount or a percentage of income, I don't know which. In the first case a raise accrues entirely to the employee, in the second case it accrues largely to the employee. In neither case can the union be said to be plundering the treasury without benefit to its members.