1. There is no accountability with union workers.
Everyplace i have worked where unions were involved they did less work with more attitude. I used to pick up paper from 2 fiber companys. The union one had "appointments" so there was a very limited number of trucks they did every day. The appointments were 20 minutes apart. It took five to load each truck. The rest of the time the would sit in the break room. And dont bother getting there early, they would not load you.
The would also start work late and back from luch never on time.

The other fiber place was non union. The busted their buts got trucks loads i would say three times the trucks per day as the union place.
If those guys were to slack off they would get fired so they worked hard. The union guys did whatever they wanted when they wanted and were not in a hurry to do it, and they knew there was nothing anybody could do about it.

2. Strikes
If you want to get together with the rest of your workers and stop working, fine. But if you dont want to do the job for what the employer want to pay then go find another job. And let sombody else do it. Its nothing short of extorsion what unions do to get their way.
Plain and simple unions have too much power, or i should say they want to much power.

Joined Teamsters local 407 this week, could have got free initiation as a former member 25 years ago... 100 bucks wasted, plus one hours wage/ week.
My last union sold me out cause my race...
Unions? Yeah, if your not the minority
I actually knew the big dog Jackie Presser here in Cleveland,Ohio

Alright, here we go...

Only 8.5% of American workers are union members. Putting your ills on 8.5% of the American workforce is ridiculous.

I'm a boilermaker, that's what I decided to do when I got out of 14 years of OTR. To become a journeyman boilermaker I had to go through a 4 year apprenticeship program, 5,000 clock hours of welding school, 3,000 clock hours at a steam mechanics school, and take tests for 127 welding certifications. To become nuclear powerplant qualified took 20 semester hours at college, an extensive background check, and 56 additional welding certifications. Without a union paying for the education my profession would cease to exist. Unless you're rich or willing to go into debt up to your eyeballs nobody can afford that kind of training and education. That's why I make from $46 to $68 per hour depending on the job I'm working. That's why I get a pension and my whole family (my wife and 10 children) can enjoy the security of full health insurance. Not working full time (I'll only work construction, not maintenance or shipyards) I can make $50K+ a year. That's working 6-8 months out of the year. Sure, you can get the job done cheaper. However do you really want joe blow welder working on a nuclear powerplant a few miles from your home? Do you want to trust non-union welds on the oil refinery that supplies your gas? Do you want to rely on electricity generated at a power plant when the welds aren't done to union specs?

"Not in my job description."
You just don't get it to you? Unions benefit you when they say this. All I do is rig, weld, and handle the steam plant at a job. Yes I could wire it, but that would put an electrician out of a job. Sure a teamster could load and unload his own truck, but that would put a dock worker out of a job. Do you get it now?

Unions help America. Unions make America great. Would you rather have that bridge you drive your 80,000lb truck across built by union iron workers who build according to quality, or the lowest bidder who cuts corners to get his early finish bonus? Unions give people affordable health care, pensions they can rely on, and create safe work envioronments. Unions protect workers who take the time to learn a skilled trade. That's why I happily pay $50/month union dues and 6% of my gross. Not a bad deal for all that I get. When I don't work I still get full medical/dental/ and vision for myself and my family. Not bad for $50 a month.

I want the bridges and steam plants built correctly and safely. But there is nothing that I know of that guarantees that a union built bridge is any better than a bridge built by non union labor, assuming that the requirements for building it were properly done, the correct materials were used, and the construction process was properly supervised and the job inspected. The road down the street from me is being rebuilt and repaved, and i can see in no way how the union membership or lack of it has any effect on that job. I can see where it might add costs to the work, but nothing about hiring union employees guarantees that the job is being done a certain way.

In fact, in the 70's, when General Dynamics had to literally tear apart nearly finished submarines and do welds that their workers had skipped doing, and their inspectors found, I believe those were all union trained and certified welders that neglected to follow the blueprints and their work assignments and do the job properly.

As I said above, if a no corruption union in transportation came along, and strictly involved itself with wages and benefit bargaining, without wasting my dues on their own political goals that conflict with my own views, and didn't plan strikes just to demonstrate their power, then I would consider them. I would be better off with a form of collective bargaining. But the structure of every current union leaves me cold, and I have no plan to join an organizaion that would kill off my employer, then tell me how much better off I am collecting unemployment.

Wrong, the General Dynamics incident is one I learned about in school. That failure came from the top. The wrong welding specification was handed down. Basically they were given the wrong codes to weld to, to put it in laymans terms. All the welds were up to code, they were just up to the wrong code. That was a white hat problem.

Union welders, be they boilermakers or just welders, get bonuses for having 100% of welds pass. During high tolerance jobs, such as stainless steel at nuc plants, my bonus is around $2,000 per week. See they pay me to be accurate. It doesn't matter if I do one weld a day or twenty. As long as they all pass I get my bonus money. I bet you if you were in a union and they offered weekly safe driving bonuses you'd be a safer driver.

Yes, unions care about jobs. Every American has the RIGHT to earn a living that can support his family without working like a dog, 50 to 60 hours a week. At construction sites I work with laborers. Normally a menial $10/hour job with no benefits. It's just grunt work. Unload trucks, move materials and equipment, etc. Thanks to their union they get $18/hour, pensions, and health insurance. In addition they recieve modest weekly bonuses for being accident free. I do my job and only my job. I'm not going to put an electrician, crane rigger, or anybody else out of a job because I can do it up to code as easily as they can.

Union workers build better products. Period. They work safer as well. A union electrician, plumber, welder, boilermaker, etc. will follow the codes and specifications given because they are bonus driven. Very, very few private contractors offer the kind of bonus that unions can get.

Yeah, we'll strike and shut a job site down. As a last resort, we won't give up anything we've fought to get in the past. We won't take a cut in pay or benefits. We don't roll over and take it.

In assuming anybody else will do it as well you're taking a big gamble. If I'm delivered the wrong material I shut down and don't work until I get the right material. If they deliver blackwall pipe and I need stainless, I don't touch it and I'm not in fear of losing my job. It's that way across the board.

Like I said Your wasting your time talkin union here. I work for a union company that is making record profits year after year after year. We have been giving back year after year after year to keep the record profits. But the company is still moving jobs overseas and building plants. Why, because they can make even more there. We all have our own opinions why this country is moving overseas. I don't think they have to, I think they just want to. I think when the unions are gone our standards of living will be gone. And they will be gone. I feel sorry for the kids that have to get jobs and work for a living.

Are you trying to tell me I don't work for a living? Whoa, whoa, whoa hit the brakes partner. Have you ever worked construction? Have you ever run a welder in your life? Try crawling into a 120 degree hole wearing 2 layers of cotton and a layer of leather to weld fittings, pipe, plate or anything else for that matter. Do you know how much skill it takes to uniformly make a bevel cut on a 6 inch hardened stainless pipe? I do work for a mliving, matter of fact I work very hard. I deserve to be fairly compensated for my skilled work.

What we're seeing here is the education/ experience 'gap'. Those who largely came into the workforce during the late '70s and later and/or came from regressive 'schooling-social systems' are literally 'victims' of the 'diversified' and 'social promoted' school system and workforce. These same folks are also largely vulnerable to the 'propaganda' put out in the media as their 'reasoning capacity' has been largely 'neutralized'.

Unions make this nation strong. Corrupt politicans and businessmen (businesswomen) weaken it. Any intelligent rebuttals?

Your 'copy and paste job' sounds good to the 'congregation' but doesn't stand up to the standards of intelligent discourse. Yep, UAW is the 'Emanuel Goldstein' of the automaker's problems - let's take time out now for our ritual 'one minute of hate'.

Many way 'over compensated' management types in the auto industry have mis-managed their companies nearly into oblivion. Union 'givebacks' are inevitable. Look at what happened to the airline industry during the merger maina. Many 'overinflated deals' and 'comissions' lined the pockets of some very notable people - many should have been prosecuted. Turndown in business and inflated operating costs due to the fuel price jump lead to predicted bankruptcies of airlines already in trouble. Did the Unions cause it? Not hardly and there have been many 'givebacks' in an attempt to keep jobs and airlines afloat.

Just because someone writes a book or hosts a radio or tv show doesn't mean they have credibility regarding issues, this only means there is 'money' and 'muscle' behind the scenes hoping to impose their self serving agenda.

Unions can be strong again; let's make it so.

Who's doing that? I've not lost my job, nor do I expect to. It's the union jobs that are disappearing, and that process began two decades ago.

I seriously doubt that. Not to in any way demean what you are saying, there are plenty of examples of professions that have evolved from union control, to private enterprises, complete with the training required to assume them.

If someone comes along and proposes a plan to cut those costs, it may well be considered. The trigger has always been the demeanor of the workers and their union representation. It may well be that in your current profession, that there have not been any major labor issues. But understand that if the tide should turn, and the union thinks that they have a lock on the situation and feels that they control all aspects of a situation, and they then decide to exert pressure, that it can and most likely will be met with sufficient resistance from the other side.

Look at what happened to the air traffic controllers. I was reading an article just the other day, where some of those workers have NEVER been able to find themselves gainfully employed, and able to make what they once did. I'd wonder what their response would be if they were asked if they would repeat what they did. But of course, they blame Reagan.

Scientists taught a monkey to fly an airplane.

I'm sure they could teach one to weld, and weld well. It's simply a matter of having opportunity, the access, and the desire to learn it.

You bring up construction. That's an industry that has been completely upended by replacement workers who couldn't care less about a union, and this has effectively driven out the unions from those ranks of workers. They do a great job, and they appreciate those jobs.

No offense, but I'll bet my left arm that there are a bunch of hispanics down south of the border, that can weld as good as you can. I don't understand how a union card changes anything in regard to how well someone can perform their skills.

Me? I couldn't weld a thing. But, I could learn to, just as you have with the training and time to practice.

Of course they do.

For the record, teamsters do quite often load and unload their own trucks.

That aside, you are illustrating exactly what the problem is. Unions are no longer in the business of assuring that a worker is safe, sound, and not abused. The unions are in the business of creating the need for more union workers. After all, it's not hard to understand why. The more workers they represent, the more money they take in, in the form of those dues that are handed over to the union each week.

One of the best examples of what I am referring to, goes to the Sago Mine accident in West Virginia, where those men died a horrible death. One of the issues that cropped out of the investigation, was the fact that the emergency air supply packs may not have been functional at the time this happened.

Now, those miners were paid to mine. I would imagine that it wasn't part of "their job description" to make a routine check of those air supply packs, and they probably didn't do it either. That was probably the job description of a fellow union worker. But, what if they had checked them on a daily basis? Would some more of them survived?

I can envision a day long negotiation, hammering out just how much each worker should receive for checking them on a daily basis. It's much like an issue I read about, involving workers in an auto plant. It has become routine and customary for workers to be paid to enter a locker room, for the purpose of changing their clothes, if they are required to don coveralls, or any other safety related clothing. It's ludicrous, and a demonstration of just how far that unionism has degenerated.

I'm sorry, but I respectfully disagree. That battle was won in the thirties. Since then it has all went downhill. Enough isn't enough for those with mob mentality.

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't the Big Dig tunnel project in Massachussetts, involve the employment over a twenty three year period, more than 4,300 iron workers at the peak of the project, who were union employed? Yep. The root cause of that disaster, one instance in which a woman was killed earlier this year, was specifically found to be the structural failure of a steel tieback that held a 40 foot concrete panel.

That project alone, cost more than $14.6 BILLION dollars, and it has been reported that 95% of the workers on that project were union employed on a local level, and those wages in the same proportions went into the pockets of those same union workers.

Now, over the past year, there have been several reports issued on that debacle of a tunnel in regard to extreme examples of shoddy workmanship, and motorists avoid it like the plague, because they absolutely do not trust that tunnel enough to risk their lives to go through it. They'd rather sit in traffic above the ground.

Can you cite ANY example of a bridge that has structurally failed, under the circumstances you claim, with non-union workmanship being the main factor in such a failure? I sure can't.

Tell that to the workers of Bethlehem Steel, whose pensions were picked up by the PBGC at a rate of 66% of what they were supposed to be. The same thing happened to the workers of Eastern Airlines. There are more pension funds than ever in failure, or underfunded presently. In just about each and every one of those cases, the workers affected by failed pensions were or ar union employed.

Do a Google search. I did.

And forgive me, but it's only going to last as long as there does not come along an entity that will do the same job, for less. Look around. It's being done every day of the week.

I'm not saying that it is right to do away with unions altogether. I'm sure that we would all love to enjoy the lifestyle that you have, but it's not based in reality any longer. Had they been content to improve the status of the American worker, and concentrated on stability and had shown one shred of concern for the employers they negotiated with, rather than to constantly seek more and more, I might feel differently.

The bottom line is that I do see what I see, because I look at the entire picture in front of me.

You're looking at it from the inside out. If that door is opened, and you are demanded to leave, then you might see things as I do.

I choose to think for myself, and I represent myself in all of my job negotiations. I don't need or desire anyone to do that for me. I think I've done rather well for myself in that regard. I'm not rich, but I'm not destitute either. I'm comfortable, and that's all anyone can ask for in the year 2006.