Your posting history says otherwise. :)

I keep seeing people point this out, but I believe they are missing the point to a large degree. Youtube for a large segment of listeners isn't advertising for buying a song, its a replacement for it. Why would I spend money and go through the hassle of actually buying a CD when I can have any song/video I want from almost any popular band playing within a matter of seconds on youtube? Its easier and cheaper. (and perfectly legal) Personally, I haven't actually bought music in years for this exact reason and I know that there are a lot of other people out there like me. Statistics for album sales certainly seem to back up my view that this is common. (yeah I know, someone is going to chime in about how sales are abysmal because music isn't as good as it was back in their day. The ratio of good music to bad hasn't changed much in the last few decades, can we please not pretend that the dramatic decrease in music sales is not related to the internet?)

Giving away something for free (or dirt cheap) isn't much of a business model. I do not blame them for taking their ball and going home.

And whats wrong with telling the workers that? Seems like important information to me. There are a lot of businesses that truly CANT survive with a union. If I were a worker considering unionizing I would want to know whether or not my employer would be able to stay in business if I did so.

Would you rather have a situation where workers never heard the other side and then suddenly a little after unionizing the business went kaput and they were all out of jobs?

Why are you putting "uncoerced" in air quotes? ITS A SECRET BALLOT. Management cant coerce employees into voting a certain way cause they dont know how an individual voted!

What the pro union folks are advocating is NOT a secret ballot and IS open to pressure and coercion to varying degrees.

Many times thats actually true. Whats wrong with employees hearing the other side of the story? If they really want a union that bad watching an infomercial before a secret ballot wont change anything. I dont understand this pro-union attitude that no opposing views should ever be heard by employees.

Well they have chosen to go after eliminating the secret ballot instead of putting in place a system like this, so I think that their actions say that they aren't in favor of taking this route instead of killing the secret ballot.

Um, yes, thats exactly why that step is there. And thats a good thing. Can you imagine if a politician said "I am not against secret ballots, what I am trying to do is eliminate a step in the process which is there for the sole purpose of preventing me from staying in office"?

Thats what secret ballot elections are for, to make sure its what people REALLY want. It is necessary to have that check to make sure that the union isnt forcing itself on people who dont want it. You have to protect pro union as well as anti union workers.

Oh please, thats exacty what it does. If the union says "hey we got the signatures, no election" then there wont be an election. Only the people trying to organize can request a secret ballot. Translation: It will never happen.

Secret ballots are necessary to protect both workers who want to unionize and workers who dont. If pro union people can choose not to have a secret ballot at their discretion then that is as big of a problem as if management can choose not to have a secret ballot.

Yes, I am talking about American plants. It wasnt "high union wages" that destroyed the big three, its:

1) The legacy costs of the big three are substantially higher because they agreed to crazy union demands decades ago. The current union wages are actually lower now, but that doesnt begin to compensate for the difference in legacy costs.

2) Productivity at the big three is extremely low because of the union. If it takes half as many man hours to build a toyota car because their workers are much better due to the fact that management is not hamstrung by the union then they an afford to pay them more. Even in blue collar jobs that "anyone" can do, there is a big difference between a good employee and a bad employee.

Wasnt it you who was decrying namecalling in another thread?

I think many would argue that this is exactly what most non-union companies do. Examples: Publix workers and Toyota factory workers. Both have substantially higher morale than their unionized competitors. Both have successfully resisted countless union drives. And both have higher entry level pay.

Not necessarily a bad idea. So why arent unions in favor of this? Why are they so eager to resort to eliminating secret ballots?

Why is it everyone keeps putting "secret ballot" in quotes? You seem to be implying that its not secret but they are definintly truly secret ballots that are supervised and regulated.

You try to cast this as "we need to remove the secret ballot to prevent pro-union people from being harrassed" but thats just silly. There already are laws preventing this from happening. And while it still happens some it certainly is not the norm as you suggest. And no, I am not in favor of firing people who try to organize unions.

Why is it such a horrible thing that management can request a secret ballot when the petition arrives at their doorstep? I dont see why this is a problem. If the workers truly want a union then they should have no problem voting yes in secret.

If the unions are really concerned about misbehaviour by management in the time between when they get the petition and the elections are held then why arent they pushing for a law that says the election must be held within X number of days of receiving Y signatures? Why do they feel the best option is elimination of the secret ballot?

2 years is very much the exception and not the rule. Employees being fired for signing a union petition is illegal and also fairly rare.

And if they are really so concerned about hte length of time before the election why dont they just pass a law that says "the election shall be held within 60 days of receiving X number of signatures"? Why do they have to eliminate the secret ballot to do that?

You talk about companies trying to influence the vote like its a terrible thing. Shouldnt both sides be allowed to state their positions?

That seems like a terrible assumption, how can a ballot cast in secret not be taken as a representation of what a worker wants?

Because workers are left wing activists? I dont think so. Most workers want to work hard, get rewarded for it and go home. The vast majority of them arent interested in left wing politics.

Ok, if you dont think that the purpose of this is to effectively eliminate the secret ballot then why do you think the unions want it so bad? If its such a non-issue why dont they take the elimination of the secret ballot out of the bill?

No, its really not. Unions used to be heavily infested by mobsters once upon a time. Its true that corporations do cross the line sometimes and there should be and are laws against that. But to say that only corporations resort to intimidation or that they do so commonly is not accurate. There are laws to prevent retaliating against employees who sign those petitions and they are usually respected. The United States is a country of hundreds of millions of people though so there are certainly exceptions to the rule.

Here is the fundamental problem with your claim that bosses are intimidating workers into voting against the union on the secret ballot: The bosses DONT KNOW how an individual employee voted and therefore any threats of "you had better vote this way" have no teeth. This is the whole point of a secret ballot.

The reason people are so against it is that its primary purpose is to take away the secret ballot from workers considering joining a union.

Currently if union wants to move in it has to get a certain number of workers to sign a petition and then a secret ballot is held. If the union wins, bam the company is unionized.

What the unions want to do is just collect 50% of the signatures and skip the secret ballot step. This is called the "Card Check" provision, because the workers just sign cards and hand them to the union boss. Why? Because there are an awful lot of people who are willing to sign when the union boss is at their door leaning on them but when the secret ballot comes around the union routinely doesnt get anywhere near the number of votes the thought they had.

This is all about pushing unions into workplaces where the union cant win a secret ballot. The country tilted too far right in the past few years and now we are about to see what kind of legislation gets enacted when the left controls things and wants to push their own agenda on people whether they like it or not. Virtually every democrat supports this because it was made a litmus test on getting the big union campaign funds during the election.

Censored internet? So basically the FCC will have the same level of control over the "free" internet that it does over things like radio stations and television? It sounds likely that this will turn into a situation where the majority of content producers have to conform to what the FCC wants because there is a nontrivial customer base that is using the free version.

Lets keep the current model, I would rather the government not take my tax dollars to pay for their version of what the internet should look like. I prefer paying for it directly and getting what I want rather than indirectly and letting someone else decide for me.