In honor of Labor Day.... I work at a nationally known labor union. AMA questions about the labor movement and general labor law in the US.

With the fact that our country (USA) has pretty extensive labor laws, why do we need unions? It seems to me that it results in many entry level positions being paid considerably more than they're worth. With the increased wage, it would seem to me, that as the head of..say a manufacturing company, that it would be more cost effective to outsource the labor to other countries. By outsourcing these jobs, there are less jobs available, so in turn there's less money being injected back into our economy. So I guess my question for you is, why do we need unions in present day America?

Awesome question! Labor law doesn't even come CLOSE to covering everything. OSHA laws cover general situations but do not always cover specific issues that might come up in the work place. FMLA is also great but it does not mean you will get paid for maternity leave or family leave. Also, if you are fired form a non-union job in an at-will state then that's it. As long it wasn't because of a federally protected reason, you're out of luck. With a union, you are usually entitled to a grievance or arbitration at no cost to you if you feel you were unjustly fired.

My feeling is that if you can make 14 billion by outsourcing jobs then thats you're right but I believe is it in the best interest of our country to say, make 10 billion and put money back into the american workforce.

I work as a contractor,overseas,12 hour days,seven days a week.Our first forty hours we get,uplift and hazardous duty pay.Our next 44 hours we get paid overtime straight,which is just our hourly pay.How is this legal?

I work for a large defense contractor in Afghanistan.Let me say my hourly is 21.00.My first forty hours are paid my hourly wage (21.00) plus 35 per cent for uplift-which is 7.00 more and hour, plus another 35 per cent for hazardous duty which is 7.00 more an hour. So my first forty hours I am paid 35.00 per hour.

My next 44 hours I am paid 21.00 dollars an hour-this is called overtime straight.Just wondering how is this legal?

Can you break that down for me a bit more? I'm not following.