| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
|
 Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 6:41 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
Obama's Labor Dept is preparing to launch a law requiring any lawyer who represents or advises any business on labor law to report ALL his clients' names and costs to the government. It estimates the program's compliance cost to those businesses at hundreds of millions of dollars.
What's wrong with that, besides the obvious?
1. It excludes lawyers advising or representing the UNIONS. They report squat.
2. The costs to businesses will run into many billions.
Sez who? A former Labor Dept chief economist.
Source: That economist in today's WSJ. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
pointster
Joined: 22 Jul 2010
Posts: 376
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2016 1:53 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| isobars wrote: | Obama's Labor Dept is preparing to launch a law requiring any lawyer who represents or advises any business on labor law to report ALL his clients' names and costs to the government. It estimates the program's compliance cost to those businesses at hundreds of millions of dollars.
What's wrong with that, besides the obvious?
1. It excludes lawyers advising or representing the UNIONS. They report squat.
2. The costs to businesses will run into many billions.
Sez who? A former Labor Dept chief economist.
Source: That economist in today's WSJ. |
The labor department is not launching a new law, but a rule change for a law passed in 1959, during the Eisenhower administration.
It does not require all lawyers who represent or advise businesses on labor law to report their activities. It does require all consultants, including lawyers, who prepare communications to employees for companies trying to dissuade their employees from establishing a union, to file the reports. Lawyers who solely advise the employers on the law do not have to file.
The rule does not address union lawyers, because the section of the law the rule applies to only applies to employer consultants.
The Office of Management and Budget estimates that it will only take
about one hour to fill out the the forms the businesses will be required to file, total cost to all businesses about $825,000.
I believe the the former head Labor Dept economist who gave the high estimate worked for the George W. Bush administration, and before that for the George HW Bush and Reagan administrations, and is on the staff of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2016 2:30 pm Post subject: |
|
|
So you're saying you know more about the Labor Dept than does its former chief economist, who is lying because she worked for Bush.
Um, hm.
We've seen her numbers. Where are yours? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
pointster
Joined: 22 Jul 2010
Posts: 376
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 2:52 am Post subject: |
|
|
| isobars wrote: | So you're saying you know more about the Labor Dept than does its former chief economist, who is lying because she worked for Bush.
Um, hm.
We've seen her numbers. Where are yours? |
I note that you have ignored my points that it is not a new law, but a rule change, it does not require all lawyers who represent or advise businesses on labor law to report their activities, and that it does not address union lawyers because the law itself is about employer consultants, and not about union lawyers.
As to her numbers, they are based on unsupported assumptions, for example:
"The United States has 2.2 million enterprises with five or more employees, consisting of 3.8 million establishments. Of these, 1.7 million were establishments of enterprises with 50 or more employees, and 1.2
million establishments were part of enterprises with more than 500 employees.
We assume that each establishment will spend two hours on the low end, or four hours on the high end,becoming familiar with Form 10 in the first year. This is the basis for our range of costs."
According to her, at $104.33 per hour this amounts to $796 million to $1.5 billion for the first year, just to get familiar with the forms. Yet if you think about it, most firms probably won't even concern themselves with hiring a consultant until they perceive a real threat of a union organizing drive, and therefore probably won't even know about the existence of Form 10.
Now, since there are only about 1,600 NLRB supervised union elections a year, the number of firms needing to familiarize themselves with Form 10 certainly is in the low thousands, not millions. She also gives no basis for it taking 2-4 hours per company.
The rest of the assumptions she makes are just as unwarranted and unsupported. You can see for yourself here:
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/download/5715/article.pdf
Note that on page 9 she lays out her assumptions, but there are no supporting citations or references for any of them. (In the military this is known as a "SWAG".)
I would also point out that this is a "white paper" of the conservative Manhattan Institute, and not a peer-reviewed economics journal article. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 4:47 pm Post subject: |
|
|
And your credentials are ... ?
I merely pointed out the article. I have neither the expertise, the time, nor any interest in debating her claims or numbers, especially with an anonymous internet typist. I have at least 20 infinitely more important and urgent items on my plate.
Who reviews your numbers? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 8:57 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| **** Gen Campbell, our commander in Afghanistan, told the Congress that he has no authority to go on the offense against the Taliban. He can only shoot back when attacked. This is our Commander in Chief's idea of fighting an enemy, and it's costing lives of Afghanis and American GIs. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
swchandler
Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 9:09 pm Post subject: |
|
|
"And your credentials are ... ?
I merely pointed out the article. I have neither the expertise, the time, nor any interest in debating her claims or numbers, especially with an anonymous internet typist. I have at least 20 infinitely more important and urgent items on my plate.
Who reviews your numbers?"
Any big surprise that isobars offers such a weaselly lightweight response? One wonders why he even bothered to respond at all given the better than 20 infinitely more important and urgent items on his plate. What a pantload. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
LHDR
Joined: 22 Jun 2007
Posts: 528
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 11:39 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Great clarification, pointster. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
|
| Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 9:36 am Post subject: |
|
|
Clarification .... or mere counter-opinion by some guy on the internet?
That's yet another reason I don't debate these things at length. It's all too often "he said, she said", so both sides just believe what they want to believe ... or merely bring it up for discussion. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
pointster
Joined: 22 Jul 2010
Posts: 376
|
| Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 6:13 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| isobars wrote: | Clarification .... or mere counter-opinion by some guy on the internet?
That's yet another reason I don't debate these things at length. It's all too often "he said, she said", so both sides just believe what they want to believe ... or merely bring it up for discussion. |
Mike, we're both just guys on the internet. You posted about something I'm interested in, so I looked up the proposed regulation and the white paper the WSJ article was based upon, and posted my opinion and my reasoning. Others who are interested in the subject can follow the link to the white paper and draw their own conclusions. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum
|
|
|
Search
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Register
