Political Quotes

“Mr. President, most of the small businesspeople I know consider themselves to be part of the middle class. I appreciate the statistics the chairman provided about 90 percent of the elections arriving at agreement prior to the election. What this rule is going to do is change it so that only 10 percent make agreements beforehand because there is no incentive for the union to participate at all. They have the right to just take it over. There are some statistics about unions and the middle class, and kind of a myth, that the current election procedures discourage unionization and are the main cause of private sector union decline. In the 1950s private sector union membership reached its height of 35 percent of the unionized workforce. Today it is less than 7 percent of the private sector workforce that is unionized, and the decline of unionization in the private sector can be attributed to several social, political, and economic factors, including present-day workplace laws at both the State and Federal level that have greatly improved working conditions; a decline in the manufacturing base; the new nature of employment, where people are more transient in their careers; and the desire for contemporary employees to have a more cooperative relationship with their employers, and vice versa. It is kind of a teamwork factor that most businesses operate on today.…”