AFL-CIO rallies against right-to-work (at West Virginia Republican Party Summer Conference )

Source: The Herald-Dispatch

By KALI GELDIS

HUNTINGTON -- The West Virginia Republican Party Summer Conference sparked a rally Saturday morning.

The conference featured Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, the Magic Dinner and Dance and some protests from the AFL-CIO.

The block of 3rd Avenue in front of Pullman Plaza Hotel was closed Saturday morning for an AFL-CIO rally to oppose those at the conference who support right-to work legislation.

Rally organizers said the event was sparked by information on the West Virginia GOP's Web site regarding a speech on the subject of right-to-work laws, which are statutes that outlaw trade unions from making membership and dues a condition of employment.


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The right to work laws are one giant pain in the neck.

Here in Georgia we are working under such a handicap with this idiotic law.

cuz even saying "right-to-work" spreads propaganda: the stinkin laws don't give nobody a "right to work"

"Right to fire your ass just because I don't like the expression on your face today"

Because that's what it is.

these laws are mascarading for anti-union legislation.

Facts show that whenever there is a union presence in the labor market of similar job skills, the wages tend to increase for everyone across the board, even the non-union hires.

There will always be a segment of the population that will believe that unions are no longer necessary and counter-productive, but I think there is not sufficient evidence to support those claims.

They always forget the last part.

A while back, I was conversing on the sales floor with a gentleman who somehow turned the discussion from the cons and cons of atactic polypropylene roofing (this product is the least expensive quality roofing system on the market, but it's the number-one reason black churches burn down--you install it by heating the back of the membrane with a flamethrower then sticking it to the roof deck real quick, and WAY too many people accidentally let the flame contact the roof deck...which chars it and causes it to catch fire a few hours later) to unions. The customer was a repuke who claimed that no real North Carolinian would EVER take a union job. Claimed it loudly, too.

Unfortunately for him, a customer who works at the unionized Goodyear plant on the edge of town heard that and informed the first gentleman that the most-sought-after, highest-paid and most-humane jobs in Cumberland County are at a unionized factory. The "but...but...but" thing was pretty humorous.

On edit: I better extend my comment about black churches. We all know that, every once in a while, a church whose congregation is one hundred percent working-class African-American catches fire and burns to the ground. When I see an article of this nature in the paper, I always read it close and usually gain two pieces of information: "racism" is almost always initially blamed for the fire, and "someone was observed working on the church's roof with a torch" is very often way down low in the text. Here's the problem in a nutshell: working-class African-American churches would prefer to spend their money on doing the Lord's work than on fixing the hole in the Lord's roof. But when the Lord's roof wears out, you've got to replace it or the Lord's carpet and the Lord's piano are going to get ruined. As I said before, the least expensive roof you can buy is atactic polypropylene, which is one of the modified bitumen systems commonly referred to as a "rubber roof." (There are four rubber roofing systems I know of--APP, styrene-butadiene-styrene or SBS, thermoplastic olefin or TPO, and ethylene-propylene diene monomer or EPDM. YOU keep all that shit aligned in your head...) What makes it so inexpensive is that it doesn't use any adhesives. It is applied by nailing one end of the membrane to the roof, then heating the back of the material with a blowtorch until it melts while another worker rolls it out over the roof deck. If you do it right, this is great shit; it lasts a very long time and about the only way to get a leak in it is to tear a hole in it. If you do it wrong, it sets the building on fire...and it's the kind of a fire you can't put out. When a church burns down because of a terroristic roofing system, it is almost always because the Men's Committee decided to re-roof the church.

gained by the unions.