Prisoners to fill jobs that used to be held by unionized workers

[Thorne]

As long as they're doing jobs for the county, or city, or state, or whatever, I don't see a problem with it. Taxpayers are already paying to keep the prisoners in jail. Why not get some benefit from them? And if it's a voluntary program, and the prisoners can accrue good-behavior time along with it, then everybody wins.

Using them to do work for private contractors, on the other hand, is a problem. Too much room for fraud and graft.

[thir]

As long as they're doing jobs for the county, or city, or state, or whatever, I don't see a problem with it. Taxpayers are already paying to keep the prisoners in jail. Why not get some benefit from them? And if it's a voluntary program, and the prisoners can accrue good-behavior time along with it, then everybody wins.

Tax payers do not get anything, the private firms do, and the convicts earn time off their sentence. Ordinary people loose jobs.

Using them to do work for private contractors, on the other hand, is a problem. Too much room for fraud and graft.

I believe that is the idea.

[Thorne]

Tax payers do not get anything, the private firms do, and the convicts earn time off their sentence. Ordinary people loose jobs.

From the OP I got the impression that the prisoners were doing jobs which had formerly been done by county employees, doing county maintenance, not by workers in a private company. Granted, some county workers will probably lose their jobs, but that's almost a foregone conclusion anyway, with governments at every level having to cut back due to falling revenues. At least this way the necessary maintenance gets done.

I've worked in jobs which required union membership, and I've worked in jobs without unions. I much prefer the latter. In my experience, the only people the union leadership was interested in protecting were those who didn't want to actually do any work. Those of us who did our fair share, and then some, were threatened by the union for doing too much! While I realize that the unions have, or did have, their uses, making it mandatory to join in order to work is just plain wrong! If they want members they should be forced to compete, just like any other business.

[MMI]

If [unions] want members they should be forced to compete, just like any other business.

Except unions are not businesses. They are (or were) combinations of workers who united to protect their common interests against oppressive employers and governments.

Competition is anathema to them.

[Thorne]

Except unions are not businesses. They are (or were) combinations of workers who united to protect their common interests against oppressive employers and governments.

Competition is anathema to them.

The operative word here is "were". Many unions have become little more than monopolies, paying huge sums of members' money to politicians in order to insure that real business cannot carry on without their approval. Not to protect the workers, except as an afterthought, but to protect the incomes of the union leaders. The devastation of Detroit, the disappearance of the US steel industry, the transfer of jobs overseas, and many other business collapses can all be laid, directly or indirectly, at the feet of the unions.

[js207]

Except unions are not businesses. They are (or were) combinations of workers who united to protect their common interests against oppressive employers and governments.

Competition is anathema to them.

Just as it is to Microsoft, the IBM of old, Standard Oil ... that doesn't mean it's in anyone else's interests to protect them from competition!

If I have the right to work in a place, and have the right to join a union if I wish, why should I not have the right to join a union which represents my interests better than the one other people there have joined? As in the Wisconsin case, where the teachers' union was hooked up with a health insurance provider charging excessive amounts for coverage (not directly harming the members, because it was the taxpayer getting ripped off), there will come cases where the union's interests conflict with the members' - the ability to switch to a more honest union seems a very useful safeguard there.

As for not being businesses, when they charge people money for a service, fight to keep their customers and sometimes pay their management well into six figures, where is the difference really? That they channel their profits into political activities and/or their senior staff rather than investing it or returning it to investors? That's exactly the basis a lot of small businesses operate on!

[thir]

From the OP I got the impression that the prisoners were doing jobs which had formerly been done by county employees, doing county maintenance, not by workers in a private company. Granted, some county workers will probably lose their jobs, but that's almost a foregone conclusion anyway, with governments at every level having to cut back due to falling revenues. At least this way the necessary maintenance gets done.

To me the point is that regular jobs disappear. I also wonder how voluntary it really is.
In DK someone got the brilliant idea to make people work for their unemployment money - in real jobs. The result was of course that the number of real jobs went down drastically, and people got locked in unemployment, working for very little money.
This sounds like something of the same rather too 'smart' thinking - get them for nothing, and real work vanishes. If it is a real job, pay real money for it. That is our system - we cannot just go out and gather and hunt for a living!

I've worked in jobs which required union membership, and I've worked in jobs without unions. I much prefer the latter. In my experience, the only people the union leadership was interested in protecting were those who didn't want to actually do any work. Those of us who did our fair share, and then some, were threatened by the union for doing too much! While I realize that the unions have, or did have, their uses, making it mandatory to join in order to work is just plain wrong! If they want members they should be forced to compete, just like any other business.

Agreed.
But jobs should be kept with a real wage, not this sham.