Navistar Laying Off, Closing plants !!

OK they are closing plants but no mention of which area in Mexico they are moving to! We know that's why they are closing these plants. I won't go into why the unioon was mentioned the way it was except that they still think they deserve 20 something an hour! Plus, demands on how they should be worked for that amount!

 

<rant>
Unions were a very needed entity when they first started and in some cases they are still needed(walmart). But they got greedy and priced our labor market beyond reasonable so companies found other alternatives now all of the union towns are crying because the companies left.

I hate that companies can't be trusted to be fair to their employees so I am definitely not pro-company, but for the most part I am anti-union. Union's aren't much different then government they have a tendency to abuse their power to do things like vote themselves pay raises. For years entry level unskilled labor positions were getting 2-3 times minimum wage when in a union setting. And corruption was pretty rampant to get one of the jobs you had to know someone.
</rant>

 

Having worked both sides (hourly and management) in union and non-union companies in recent years I have to agree some companies need them. However some hourly employees would be better off with out them.

I worked in a UAW union shop for a few years that we would have definitely been screwed without the union presence. There were a few (not all) floor level supervisors that would have had employees doing jobs they were not adequately trained to do. I saw supervisors threaten employees jobs for questioning the training they were provided and the union helped save more than a few of those peoples jobs. On the other hand i will admit we were overpaid for what was asked of us in that facility in that region of the US.

The last union shop I worked in was just the opposite. It was a privately owned company and the owner showed more loyalty than he probably should have. Due to the attitude of a lot (not all) of his employees. This company employees nearly 600 people a lot of which had been there 30+ years. A lot of the higher seniority employees used work for a social gathering instead of what they were getting paid to do. Even then the owner would not allow the supervisors to discipline the employees partaking in this.

When the recession started and we lost business the owner did not have a layoff until 9 months later and then it started out with 50 employees at a time a month or two apart. Ending at about 150 employees laid off. All of which were called back to work less than a year later.

The union raised the dues every year as the employees got their raises. The average pay for an hourly employee was somewhere in the neighborhood of $18 they were paying right at $50 dollars a month in dues. Mean while their local president was making upwards of $125,000 a year and getting raises every year. I know this because the last increase in dues nearly sparked an uprising and one of the guys on the floor came up with the info from somewhere on line and printed it out to show his union brothers and sisters.

Also the union in that shop would not stand up and argue any discipline handed out. the owner would fight us in management harder than the shop stewards ever dreamed about.

NAVISTAR was our biggest customer in the last facility as well hope that doesn't effect the guys still there.

 

I don't get it,,, the jobs go south, but the Mexicans keep comming north?