Thats all well and good if you feel you don't need that, but why begrudge it to others? We all know what I wrote is true about many companies and their treatment of workers. It is absolutely fact. I myself make less money than I did 8 years ago. Unions will probably all fade away anyway, outsourcing has ensured that and the loss of all our manufacturing companies here, etc. Here is some interesting info about outsourcing. Outsourcing does not stem from unions it stems from tax breaks and the ability now with a global economy to make more money sending work overseas, paying a worker pennies and many times slave labor for a profit. In your mind, they may not constitute greed, even if it means destroying America and running it into the ground. (Another reason we need to protect our workers.) Others such as myself call it what it is. Read below. Why should they keep their work here when they have tax breaks, etc., when they can hire people for pennies? Tell me why, tell me how we are going to compete with that. Funny thing if you read below, white collar jobs also are now being outsourced.
While low wages are the main reason for outsourcing, one corporate tax break provides an important incentive for the practice. Under U.S. law, companies can indefinitely defer any payment of federal taxes on profits earned overseas. The law states they are to pay taxes on that income only when they return those profits to the United States.
I don't begrudge union protections to others. I merely point out that these protections come at a cost, i.e., the risk that the organized company will relocate to a different area because it can produce its goods more cheaply with a non-union workforce. That's a fact, and is corroborated by the excerpt that you posted.
Okay... now to the rest of this comment. You point out that unions are not the cause of outsourcing, but that in fact it is tax breaks. Then you quote something that says "low wages are the main reason for outsourcing" but goes on to acknowledge that tax breaks also play a part. That's exactly what I've been saying. I said that unions contribute to outsourcing, not that they are the sole cause.
Unions are a part of outsourcing because those unionized garment makers, automakers, whatever, tend to require higher wages and benefits than the company could get away with if it produces goods overseas. Again, for the tenth time, I'm not saying unions are the only culprit; I'm saying that they have contributed to the situation. It's clear from the quote you put in that comment that this is true; the author cites how much cheaper it is wage-wise to produce goods in countries where the corporations can take advantage of lax labor laws.
I grant you that companies take advantage of tax breaks in moving overseas. The quote you put in the comment doesn't actually describe how the tax works very well; the author doesn't have a clear understanding of how it works and is clearly just trying to make a point without being clear. Still, the general point is valid, i.e., that companies take advantage of tax breaks to move to other countries. Still, the main reason they move is cheaper cost of production.
As to one other point that I think you make in this comment and in a couple of later ones... I think you mentioned something about how I must think that it's okay that companies go to sweatshop nations and force people to work for pennies a day. I don't think that at all. I've never come out one way or another on the moral question of whether what the companies do is right, and I don't think we've actually discussed it yet.
Instead, what I'm saying is that this is what companies do. Whether it's right or wrong, companies make goods in sweatshop countries because it's cheaper, because they need to grab market share and make a good profit, and because United States import/export laws permit them to do it. Unless these things change (i.e., it becomes just as expensive to produce a shoe in China as it does in the United States or unless the government requires everything to be produced in America) companies will continue to operate this way. Some people get upset about sweatshop goods that they buy from Wal-Mart, but most Americans turn a blind eye because they want the cheapest widget they can find and because those sweatshops are thousands of miles away.
I know a bunch of horror stories about sweatshop operations even in US territories. What happens is really terrible. But most people in the United States don't care enough about it to actually demand that companies not make goods in sweatshops... why? Because of money. It's sad but it's true.
