Please....

Unions negotiate the pay packages for the workers all the time. When one man does the same thing and is successful in doing so, he is suddenly "over compensated"?

The problem with the auto industry is not a mangement issue, and it never has been. The price of those automobiles is the issue, and it always has been. When people find that they can purchase vehicles of superior quality, at a price that has been at times, HALF of a similar American product, it's not hard to see what sways people to abandon the American automobile market.

There is no way, whatsoever to dispute the fact that the number one cost that makes up the price of an automobile, is the wages that the workers receive for their labor. The ever rising wages, has led to the rising cost of those cars.

Consumer complaints, monitored by several independent firms, have repeatedly shown that the craftmanship has been steadily declining for those automobiles assembled by American workers. There's no way around that.

Blame the CEO if you want, but he's not the one out there putting the things together that people in this country no longer care to own, or cannot afford to own.

I read that same article some months ago, and posted it elsewhere in this section of the forums, and I found it very enlightening and just as credible.

No thanks. I've been there and done that. I prefer to seek employment at my behest, and not when I am thrown out of a job by the wills of people who refuse to read between the lines.

As far as I can tell, you are stating labor unions are at the root of America's problems and you have chosen your path as you feel whatever is handed to you is what you apparently deserve....I'm not reading much else from your lengthy and muddling discourse.

According to you, workers/ craftspeople shouldn't band together to improve their wages, benefits and working conditions....you need to study what was going on prior to the rise of the labor movement. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what would happen if the labor movement disappeared tomorrow. The labor movement is evolving, has evolved from the beginning and will evolve as long as it exists.

Truckload Freight (Schneider, Wiseway, Swift, etc.) as it exists is a 'stepping stone' forward at best for the skilled worker, providing opportunity to those where none apparently existed before - NOT an 'end all', 'be all' solution except to those who are myopic at best. My current terminal manager, extending his hand to introduce himself for the first time, uttered the 'fact' he had worked for Schneider for 13 years? The first thought through my mind was 'how foolish' and this has tainted our relationship ever since.

The 'volume' of your discourse lacks credible content but I suspect it does make you 'feel good'.

No Sir. You're choosing to read it that way. I have no complaint whatsoever. Unions only affected me for one brief period of my life, and that was when I had to seek another job to head off being forced out of one, which would have been the case if I had stayed on the job I had for another four weeks.

Now, when it comes to all the complaining that I have read over the years by those people who have been displaced by various companies who have closed the doors, moved the plants to the south in the seventies and eighties, and then across then across the waters or south of the border more recently, those people fail to realize what the root of their problems are, and how they might have been avoided.

I have. And I repeat. That battle was won decades ago. But once it was won, people then decided to see just how far they could push things. Eventually and one by one, the breaking point was reached. What goes up, must come down.

The labor movement, as you view it, has been declining for at least 26 years now.

Wiseway, my friend, is no "stepping stone", and how nice of you to include them in your diatribe. They choose their people well, and they are not a portal company to this industry. I defend them, because there are no labor issues there. Management freely and willingly treats people with respect, courtesy, and they pony up the dough without endless negotiating. People also stick around and work there often into retirement, which is what I plan to do.

Which exposes the problem that you have, and why I would never allow myself to become tainted by the mentality that you hold. You look down your nose at people because they are not among your exclusive group that you feel so necessary to protect and defend. How quaint.

I would rather live in a cardboard box, and dirt poor, than to ever become a person so shallow and self-righteous, that I would size up a person simply by the mention of them having held a job that was not on par with your standards.

It's interesting to note, that you chose not to address any specific point that I raised in my "discourse" that you find so lacking in content. This is typical for those who cannot back up their assertions, stances, or points. The usual response from one who cannot refute the message is to then go after the messenger. I thank you for illustrating this for others to see firsthand.

If I had ever had any doubts about my choices in life, you just reaffirmed the fact that I should be proud of them. Your assessment of my credibility and the content in which they were expressed means nothing to myself. I assure you, that I don't live my life to impress anyone, or to convince them of a thing.

I have to live with myself and I certainly am more than capable of thinking for myself.

You Sir, should try that sometime. Don't quit your job or anything, but when you find yourself out on the unemployment line at some point in the future, you might be wise to remember this discussion, to reflect upon it, and understand what has happened to you and why.

Then again, I'm writing this to the wrong person. Your head is way up in the clouds, and I absolutely feel sorry for you. It's not your fault. You've been brainwashed by others.

Another example of how unions help their members.



"AKRON, Ohio Goodyear says it plans to close a plant in Tyler, Texas.
The move comes three weeks after workers at the factory and 15 other facilities went on strike in part because of the tire maker's plan to shut down the plant.The move will eliminate about 11-hundred jobs, said to be part of Goodyear's strategy to end some of its private label tire business.United Steelworkers members in North America went on strike after months of talks with the world's third biggest tire maker.Akron, Ohio-based Goodyear has said the union refused to agree to help it remain competitive in a global economy. The union said the company's last proposal would have included two plant closings and other concessions.The Texas plant opened in 1962. It produces about 25-thousand tires a day."

This is from Google News

Turbo:

After winding my way through your meandering discourse I vaciliate between two conclusions: intellectual impotence and/or intellectual intransigence. Lesser minds may be impressed by your contentious and self serving propostions regarding my capacity to make an informed extrapolation based on experience and historical retrospect. I choose not to waste the board’s time and space addressing your empty premises. Your writing style projecting self aggrandizement is transparent.

I’ve chosen my comments carefully so as to not be misconstrued. I wish you no ‘ill will’; we as humans are blessed with the capacity to determine our fates - constructive (encouraging lucidity) or otherwise. Many of us have made concious decisions regarding our purpose in life; I’ve chosen to make a difference based on the human struggle to achieve dignified aspirations and not grovel to political and media propaganda.

The American Labor Movement is dynamic and continues to evolve. The following quotes sum up my discourse nicely:

It is essential that there should be organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize. - Theodore Roosevelt

With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association of men. - Clarence Darrow

Without the power of the Industrial Union behind it, Democracy can only enter the State as the victim enters the gullet of the Serpent. - James Connolly

Gerald Friedman of UMASS Amherst seems to have a good handle on the current health of the American Labor Movement:


Outside the United States, unions grew through the 1970s and, despite some decline since the 1980s, European and Canadian unions remain large and powerful. The United States is different. Union decline since World War II has brought the United States private-sector labor movement down to early twentieth century levels. As a share of the nonagricultural labor force, union membership fell from its 1945 peak of 35 percent down to under 30 percent in the early 1970s. From there, decline became a general rout. In the 1970s, rising unemployment, increasing international competition, and the movement of industry to the nonunion South and to rural areas undermined the bargaining position of many American unions leaving them vulnerable to a renewed management offensive. Returning to pre-New Deal practices, some employers established new welfare and employee representation programs, hoping to lure worker away from unions (Heckscher, 1987; Jacoby, 1997). Others returned to pre-New Deal repression. By the early 1980s, union avoidance had become an industry. Anti-union consultants and lawyers openly counseled employers how to use labor law to evade unions. Findings of employers' unfair labor practices in violation of the Wagner Act tripled in the 1970s; by the 1980s, the NLRB reinstated over 10,000 workers a year who were illegally discharged for union activity, nearly one for every twenty who voted for a union in an NLRB election (Weiler, 1983). By the 1990s, the unionization rate in the United States fell to under 14 percent, including only 9 percent of the private sector workers and 37 percent of those in the public sector. Unions now have minimal impact on wages or working conditions for most American workers.

Nowhere else have unions collapsed as in the United States. With a unionization rate dramatically below that of other countries, including Canada, the United States has achieved exceptional status (see Table 7). There remains great interest in unions among American workers; where employers do not resist, unions thrive. In the public sector and in some private employers where workers have free choice to join a union, they are as likely as they ever were, and as likely as workers anywhere. In the past, as after 1886 and in the 1920s, when American employers broke unions, they revived when a government committed to workplace democracy sheltered them from employer repression. If we see another such government, we may yet see another union revival.

We have our work cut out for us. We have three choices: Stagnation (status quo), Repression (ascending trend) or Proactive Participation in our Destiny. It’s up to us.

unions are unions some good some bad it just depends

The problem most echoed here witth unions is not their existence, but their modus operandi, i.e. the way they do things.

What happens anymore is that they involve themselves too deeply into wage and compensation issues, rather than what they do best, which is to protect against unfair labor practices and unjust firings. If they would only keep to the job security side of things, than a return to the use of unionized labor by industries that have since rejected it may be deemed acceptable.

__________________
Z-Lady's devoted hubby.

My beef with unions is the "that's not in my contract, so I'm not going to do it" attitude. To get the floor swept you have to speak to the floorsweepers union, the windowwasher union is forbidden from sweeping. Also, they "protect" their members right out of jobs by not being reasonable with struggling industries and/or companies. It seems like the union leadership would rather see thousands of their members lose their jobs versus taking a pay cut from 28 to 26 bucks an hour.

Unions are so concerned with protecting their own turf, they are unable to see the big picture, the majority of union jobs can be moved overseas, and most of them will be gone in the next 20 years.

Or those that demand a strike because "someone did some else's job", such as checking your own oil. Dear Lord, what an uproar that would cause. That requires union hood raisers, union dip stick wipers, and union oil bottle openers.

__________________
Z-Lady's devoted hubby.

WHACK! WHACK! THUD! THUMP!

The sound of a dead horse being beat.