Consideration of Unionization and Utah

The RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity has been working to ensure that the employees of Rhode Island’s various levels of government are well informed about their rights when it comes to unionization.  An email from the Center last week stated :

Union bosses don’t want public employees, especially teachers, to know about their newly restored rights… because, some workers may choose to leave the broken union system.

Some people don’t like that a contrary point of view is being expressed (note that the asterisks have been added to the original email):

This email is total bull**** and you should be ASHAMED of peddling this total BALONEY.  STOP putting out this crap.
For you to write such HORSECRAP CLEARLY EXHIBITS THAT YOU ARE A NAZI.

Unions are GREAT.

Go to Utah where there are NO unions and people are in hock up to their eyeballs, they work at factories like Amazon,
they drive junk bomber cars, many work 60 hrs a week to make ends meet. They earn 12 bucks an hour, have not been on a
vacation in 20 years, are exhausted, they get home at 7pm and go straight to bed! Only to get up and do it again. AND THEY
HAVE ZERO JOB SECURITY BECAUSE IF A BOSS DOES NOT LIKE THEM, THE BOSS WILL MAKE UP A LIE ABOUT THEM AND FIRE THEM, BASED ON TOTAL LIES AND THE BOSS GETS AWAY WITH MURDER SCOTT FREE.  They are allowed to abuse employees and no one is checking on the crooked lying boss.  100% of the bosses in Utah are pathological liars, and they KNOW they can get away with Lying because they have NO ONE TO ANSWER TO.  They act as if they are GOD ALMIGHTY.

THAT is what you are peddaling without any union.  THAT is the God’s HONEST TRUTH OF THE MATTER.

My family had a Union DAD, IBEW, who owned STOCK in COM SAT, communications satelite, we went on vacation every single summer with our travel trailer, we had steak on the plate 7 days a week for 8 people, and we drove in cars that were only 3 years old.  He also had Mortgage insurance if he became disabled, the insurance would PAY FOR THE ENTIRE HOME IN FULL! THIS IS THE DIFFERENCE IN UNIONS VS NO UNIONS.

BENEFITS & JOB SECURITY!  NO scum bag boss gets away with firing an employee based on total LIES. NOT HAPPENING IN UNIONS.  A nice big fat FINE gets slapped on the scum bag bosses ASS, and the corporation has to PAY for their Filthy dishonor.

NO UNIONS = TOTAL AND ABSOLUTE POVERTY.
Poverty is not FREEDOM. UNIONS MAKE PEOPLE THE FREEDOM THEY DESERVE!

You are a stupid IDIOT for peddaling this total and absolute horsecrap. I wouldn’t give you 2 cents. You have the nerve to send out ANTI UNION email.

If there is a problem with the Union not helping the employees, then the employees merely VOT IN NEW LEADERS.

You are probably an anti Union shill, working for the corporations and that makes you a whore.
As well as a NAZI.

Hopefully the people of Rhode Island wont be stupid enough to fall for your Nazi tactics.

EmployeesNOT IN A UNION get ABUSED by SCUM BAG LYING BOSSES.  EVEN FEED THEMSELVES!!!  THAT IS THE TRUTH!

REMOVE ME OFF YOUR NAZI EMAIL LIST!!!

In an emailed response, the Center’s CEO, Mike Stenhouse, pointed out that most of the 84% of Rhode Islanders who are not in unions are not in poverty and are, indeed, doing well and that Utah does very well in comparisons with other states.  On the U.S. News & World Report Best States ranking, for example, Utah is 4th best.

Taking the pro-union email more seriously than it may deserve suggests to a more detailed response:  The writer notes his or her father’s membership in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW).  Anybody who has needed an electrician in Rhode Island has reason to know that they do very well regardless of union membership.

Electricians do well in Utah, too.  By way of comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that Rhode Island’s average electrician makes $57,620 per year, to Utah’s $54,120, which amounts to a 6% difference.  At the same time, there is a 31% difference between the states when it comes to the cost of living, with Utah coming in as the 12th most affordable state, to Rhode Island’s 49th.  Additionally, Utah is much (much) bigger than Rhode Island and contains metropolitan areas several times the size of the Ocean State that pay electricians at essentially the same rate.

In other words, as a general proposition, Utah is much more desirable for an electrician, as is evident in the fact that Utah has the third highest number of electricians per 1,000 jobs.  The economy is thriving, and that creates work.

One of the reasons the economy is thriving out there, we could reasonably speculate, is that unions aren’t inflating the value of workers in specific jobs and industries as much.  Most notably, that applies to the government industry, which is what the Center’s email was about.

 

Featured image: Bureau of Labor Statistics map of U.S. metropolitan areas by annual mean wage of electricians.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in The Ocean State Current, including text, graphics, images, and information are solely those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the views and opinions of The Current, the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity, or its members or staff. The Current cannot be held responsible for information posted or provided by third-party sources. Readers are encouraged to fact check any information on this web site with other sources.

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