Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire AFL-CIO Supports gun rights:

I have negotiated agreements both as a management and union worker.
Management does get an unfair deal when it wants to talk directly with workers - the union holds the rights to discuss changes.

The union has an unfair deal in that the deck is stacked against the worker who wants to form a union.

The NRA is supported by both business and union members.

I recall that the only place two business/union friends of mine could be polite and even warm-hearted towards each other was at the range.

Membership in the union is a problem for "rugged individualists" because decisions made in a union must benefit all, by definition. On the other hand, owners of anything, whether a car or a business, hate to be told what to do with their own property. Thus, there is tension.

For my part, I have read that in the 1880s workers were hanged from lamposts in Chicago because they were demonstrating for an 8-hour workday. Children, instead of going to school, picked over coal to sort it. The union movement got us all the 8-hour day, overtime pay, and mandatory education ( mandatory so as to free up jobs for men, some claim).

Now the AFL_CIO wishes to help us defend personal freedom? Thank God. It is way past time.

Think about this - conservative NRA members and liberal unionists both defending the 2nd Amendment and the Constitution?

Hallelujah!

Harold

The AFL-CIO is (and has been) in bed with the Dems for many, many years. It is the Dems who are constantly trying to take away our guns. Any vote for the Dems at the national level is a vote for the ANTI-GUN PARTY! The move by the AFL-CIO is just a temporary stance to draw the uninformed into thinking the AFL-CIO is pro gun. The usual lies! When the AFL-CIO officially throws their support to the Dem party, they have also thrown their support to the ANTI-GUN PARTY. To believe anything else is foolish. I wish it weren't true as I believe the unions do a lot of good in some instances, but alas, it is true!

first of all, there is no pro-second amendment political party in these United States...
constitutionally speaking, the current administration has done more to subvert the constitution than any and all previous administrations... blind adherence to any political party is foolhardy...



actually, the move mentioned in the quote is a misguided attempt to see justice done in the working mans behalf... the goals, in this case, sought by both the NRA and the AFL-CIO should be looked upon with great suspicion, as they seek to bring about a legal sea change which would benefit no private property owner...

legislation is not the answer to this problem, wherein employers selectively fire employees for what they carry in their automobiles on company property... leadership would make all the difference..... john w

Looks like they need an infusion of IQ points down there. Whether one has a firearm, a cableknit sweater, or a Red Sox pennant in one's vehicle at work, that is not behavior that is material. And where is any growth in government mentioned? Was there going to be a new Department of Parking Lot Rights Enforcement created and taxes raised to fund it?

I'm all for property rights, but when you invite the public onto your property, whether as customers, suppliers, or employees, I think there's an implicit given that they are not your children. If behavior and possessions are legal and not injurious to the business, the business ought to have better things to do.

I sorta doubt that an ultra conservative voted for or ruled to make the cops go get a warrent.

I think that most of the most of the right wing zealots who wear their conservatism like a badge would not say "Well just come on in boys and rip my house apart an' after yer done we'll all sit down and have a beer."

In short, most of the conservatives are gonna use a liberal trump card to try to get the cops off the porch. In a super conservative society the use of warrants doesn't existand guns are few and far between.Be careful what you ask for.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but... It seems that if the union leadership in this country were truly interested in the welfare of their members they would (if pressed by the membership) view the protection of the gun rights we still have as essential to that welfare. If that were the case, organized labor has enough political clout to make many of the anti-gun politicians they support see the light. Maybe this would happen if enough of the rank and file pushed for it, I don't know.

I wonder if the union role as a champion of workers' rights isn't, for the most part, obsolete in this country. That's not to say that there aren't instances here and there where union intervention isn't a positive thing for some workers in some situations. By and large, however, it seems that the union movement has largely become a mechanism to garner large scale financial and political support for those who would move us toward an ever more socialist society.

I suspect that the situation in Florida is more a "marriage of convenience" that has largely come about because the anti-capitalist, anti-employer aspects of the situation outweigh the anti-gun sentiments of those who are really in charge of the unions.

just where is the conservative American to stand on these issues???

i would think that in a time when a free and sovereign United States is attacked from within, and without, by terrorists and the world courts, as well as the u.n., a conservative administration would seek to enhance personal freedom and sovereignty...

i believe that Teddy Roosevelt would, if he were alive today, personally go armed as a private citizen... i believe that if someone of his caliber was in the white house today that we would have seen the attorney generals office instruct prosecutors not to prosecute upstanding citizens for regulatory offenses concerning firearms...
i believe that we would have seen repeals of firearms regulations at the national level... leading to widespread repeals at the state level as well... leadership .....

instead we have the usa patriot act , a deliberate slap in the face to our constitution...

we have the transportation safety administration , an internal army poised to restrict and control travel within our borders....

we're seeing curtailment of the posse comitatus act, which forbids the central government the use of the armed forces against the citizenry within our borders.....


as to the question of employees being dismissed for what they carry in their cars??? i believe that if T.R. were in the white house today that he would affirm the companies right to do so, while persuading them not to.....

You'll hear a lot of anti-union blathering especially from southerners. It is part of the reason that for a century the South remained the poorest and most undeveloped section of America. Another reason was racism.

While also an admirer of the great TR, I can find little reason in the inferred position of "until you give me the "perfect conservative" I am going to support every Socialist that comes along".

The equal of a TR or RR maybe a long time coming. The "What Would TR Do?" or "What Would Reagan Do?" question are pretty solid tests of policy. The concept of waiting for their equal to appear and believing that no lessor leader can do their bit to preserve our liberties or at least slow the rate of infringement surrenders generations to the enemies of liberty.

The "con" is twofold:

Firstly, that unions produce anything or benefit anyone. Unions are non-productive extra governmental bureaucracies that bleed both employees and businesses.

Secondly, that unions exist to help employees. A sale pitch and nothing more from those who at best seek to create an income and power source for them and theirs greater than and easier to "earn" than the employees they con can earn at their work, and at worst to promote a Socialist or a quasi-Socialist political agenda often contrary to the beliefs of many members and the interests of nearly all.

Fireplug

Not so easy to say. People who have challenged their union dues being spent on political lobbying have been presented with cooked figures that show the union spends >90% of their dues contribution on legitimate expenses associated with contract negotiations. The Dept. of Labor and the courts usually rubber stamp the fraud. Anybody wanna buy a bridge?

On unions supporting their members' political interests: HA! My own union (Operating Engineers) has--for years--supported driling for oil in ANWR. They rarely fail to endorse candidates who oppose same. They will always jump at the bone of short-term economic gain thrown them by left/liberal Democrat politicians.

The roles of the two major political parties have been reversed over the centuries. Those who tout TR as an archetypal conservative have things totally backwards. He was the archetypical liberal. He introduced food and drug legislation, the national park system (making him the first 'Greenie' President), controls on big business such as the railroad monopolies, etc. He was no isolationist, instead made America a world power, militarily and economically.

time to wake up mister...

it aint the democrats who wanna drill the anwr...

back later...
we're driving into the city for supper.....

some guys make for easy targets.....

My point exactly. The IUOE strongly supports ANWR drilling but endorsed Kerry-Edwards in '04. Not that I believe a union should become a single-issue voting bloc, but organized labor routinely rates the long-term economic well being of their members after socilialist/redistributionist policies of the left wing of the Democrat party. The AFL-CIO has endorsed amnesty for illegals. As near as I can figure, only the top leadership of organized labor would benefit from that plan. Certainly not the rank and file members. It's simple enough math: they'd rather have 20 million members making $10.00 per hour, than 500,000 making $60.00/hr..

Anyone who thinks that union jobs pay more is simply uninformed. If you look at the SAME SIZED companies in the SAME industries, there is usually no real difference between union and non-union jobs.

While it was once true that UAW or USW workers got paid more than union-free workers,they also worked in big companies, in industries where there were no union-free workers. Now Toyota workers, who are free of unions, actually earn more than UAW workers at the "big 3," and they aren't in danger of getting laid off and losing their benefits.

What is true today about the union-dominated companies is that the incompetent and the lazy get paid as much as the competent, productivity is low due to archaic work rules, and people in general are more miserable at their jobs because the company has no incentive to make workers like their jobs. These reasons--not higher wages--are why you ALWAYS find, in an industry where there are both unionized and union-free companies, that the union-free companies slowly drive the unionized companies out of business.

The union bosses have been left with politics as the only arena in which they can, they hope, make gains to keep up their opulent life styles. It is simply not true that federal law prohibits unions fropm using involuntarily extracted dues for political purposes. There are many loopholes in those laws.

What would be fair would be to allow each union member (and all other workers) to decide individually if he/she wanted to be a member or not. But if employees of the big unionized companies were allowed to exercise this basic freedom, instead of being prohibited from quitting a union, the traditional unions would probably disappear overnight, replaced with ones which were resoponsive to the wishes of their members. Left-wing causes would experience a severe drop in funding, of course.

The South was poor long before there were any labor unions, and still poor long after the influence of labor unions has waned. Looking at the metropolitan areas of Virginia, where I live, and there's a strong negative correlation between union penetration and median income. The areas in the South that are doing well aren't big industry unionized cities, they are cities dominated by white collar work.

Where I live, there are many big unions but AFAIK not one of them offers any training nor provides any semblance of quality control. They do go on strike a lot. And they are losing jobs left and right (Ford's F-150 plant in Norfolk is a goner for example). No doubt there are individual exceptions, but most of the time I don't see any net benefit. And America's heavily unionized industries have the drag not only of all those union officials and expenditures, but all those additional beancounters and managers on the company side who have to deal with the unions. We're competing in a global economy and all that unnecessary drag doesn't help.

Change is in the wind for Toyota. Might just surprise you!


The UAW went to bat for the employees from the GM Oklahoma City plant that got fired for having firearms in their vehicles while on company property. An appeals court ruled in favor for companys to prohibit firearms on company property. I can't say if anyone who was terminated eventually returned to their jobs.

a] first off, the unions produce the most skilled, safest, and most cost effective labor source on the planet... they market skilled labor, plain and simple... if they were not cost effective, they would simply cease to exist... a market driven force.....

when hitachi proposed the 790 MW unit 4 project at the council bluffs energy center in western iowa, they intended to build it non union... mid america energy who owns and operates the site insisted that the boiler be built union... and there's a reason for that...
40 miles or so down the road, at nebraska city, ne., the non union contractor who was building the 660 MW unit 2 project there promised 200 experienced, certified, pressure vessel welders on the site by mid september '06... as of halloween they had 5 certified welders, 2 of which they tested out of the carpenters gang...
i have friends with the consulting engineers working there on site... i will find out what is happening and bring it here...

sorry wuzza, i call bullshit...

the northwest illinois building council meets every 2 years to negotiate contracts... it's a pretty straightforward process, and the unions, i'm sure spend a lot of money getting it right... nowhere near 90% of our dues... nowhere near 10%.....

i detailed above what dues money is spent on in the boilermakers, and the evidence is there to see... it's in the apprentices they train, the continous training that goes on for the entire career of our trade, and in the concrete and steel of the facilities that we build to enhance our training and readiness.....
we also have a continent wide skills referral system, which gives boilermaker dispatchers across the Americas the ability to check on skills, qualifications, and training before a tradesman is dispatched to a job...
i referenced the nebraska city job in an above post... that job paid prevailing wage (union scale) because it was built with public funds... it wasn't that they didn't have welders show up for the job... they showed up in hoards... most did not meet basic skill qualification standards when they tested... they reportedly had good welders show up who turned around and left because of delays getting tested and hired... they had many who were, by reputation, good welders... many of those did not pass pre employment drug screening...

as i said above, i will check on the current situation there and see what has happened..... john w

AJ300,

i applaud the UAW for working to get those employee's jobs back... still, i would not characterize that as being pro second amendment... more like pro worker..... john w