Will Wage and Hour Rumbles... Affect You?

The safety issues were well documented, it was not the case that they had no choice but rather they chose to strike.

You sure about that, this was a critical job and union or no union, leaving their job wasn't all that legal. I had to sign an agreement stating that I won't strike or my job is terminated in 1990, my job wasn't all that critical, and I wasn't represented by a union but nevertheless I was told the reason that clause was in there for that job was the same reason, I had channels to go through to deal with issues. The ATC had channels to go through, like congress.

Public servants, those in government sector jobs should not be represented by a union. Sorry but that includes ATCs.

Not quite. The money for the guys at the top doesn't matter. The problem we have now is a reluctance to invest in the system first to ensure the system can be upgraded but more importantly that the change conforms with other changes made. It has less to do what happened in the 80's than it does with a problem within congress to push modernization.

If you want to see it happen, then talk to congress - they control it.

The unions screwed themselves in the 60's by making more demands on the companies and when 69/70 rolled around and the economy slowed, those high paying, anything goes jobs were on the line. Companies had to trim back and layoffs were happening around '72 or so, with a lot of them in union shops. Labor didn't get cheaper, by the way, labor costs have been stagnated until the 90's when there was other pushes for wage increases by unions.

The middle class and working class was booming because of the tax changes made in 1964 and those changes triggered a great amount of growth in our economy. So much so that GM (an example) put on two more shifts and also three or four new models to sell.

The government in 68 decided to slow the economy down and this was the start of the mess we had in the 70's.

Now the extensive deregulation didn't come until the 80s and didn't really effect much outside of trucking because of the balance of new regulations coming in but by then the economy was in the dumpster, and it didn't hurt the unions, they hurt themselves. Membership was going down, their fight against management intensified to the levels it was in the 30's and we started to see the problems which were hidden come to light by the mid-90's.

BUT your point of abolition of most of the antitrust acts isn't true either. Tell me ... Name the major acts that were abolished and then explain to me how the court rulings were vacated in order to make those decisions base on those acts not apply?

This is something important because even in the last year, all the majors are standing laws, not one repeals and they have been used in something like 100 cases for over 100 years.

OK I understand the propaganda thing, it happens more in the pro-union camp than in the pro-corporation camp. I like the one where the union created the middle class, not true but it sounds great to garner support for the union.

I can tell a true one, Medical research and medical care in Michigan can thank the the UAW for the medical benefits that it got for its members, the amount of money that flowed from these insurance companies that the auto companies paid for built places like U of M health systems, Beaumont and St Johns hospital system not to mention places that researched and developed drugs, like Parke-Davis and other medical research companies - of which was sacrificed for the benefit of Ford, Chrysler and GM in the last decade or two.


so let's take a couple of your claims that seems to be pro-union propaganda.

Honestly, this sounds like a UAW statement, no matter is it utter BS. I said (and you can call the teamsters and ask for the group that handles their stats)

the US labor force, excluding public servants (who should never ever been allowed to be in unions) at the peak in 1954, was .... a little over 34%. No way in the 70's did union membership exceed the 34%, I think the number mentioned are around 28% of the US labor force excluding public servants.

Let's look at another one of your claims.

My BS meter went off the scale with that one. The truth according to the Teamsters people in DC is now as of this year 7.8% of the private sector employees are represented by unions. Again I ignore public sector union members because the union serves no purpose in the public sector.

I added this >>>> We have never ever seen more than that 34% of the US labor force in unions, even when we had peak employment in 1965/66.

the other thing that you said which really doesn't make sense is this

How can that be when we truckers are the middle class, we are professionals in our own right and have to prove ourselves as professionals every time we are behind the wheel. The middle class are those professionals who can move around jobs (being mobile).

Not really, because if this was the case, we would have everyone on welfare or below the poverty rate and no one providing taxes to feed the system.

The union's demise is of their own faults, it is a two fold thing, one is that like a lot of the anti-trust laws, it has outlived its usefulness for the masses, we have too many laws and watchdog organizations that have come about to replace unions. The difference is that the anti-trust laws that have been in place for over 100 years are selectivily used, Comcast/Time-Warner is one such example where there is a violation of some of those laws but no one wants to use the laws so they have outlived their purpose, unions pretty much the same thing union membership isn't rising so the solution for the union is to demand that the unionising process is changed to make it more unfair and undemocratic.

The second reason is that people don't need unions as they did say in the 30's. We evolved to a different economy, where manufacturing is pretty much lower on the industrial food chain and too many people prefer to work outside of manufacturing where unions could NOT be useful. Unions tried to evolve, attacked the public sector where they have made a mess of cities and counties, and where people would prefer not to have them there.

Actually it does. More people with an education set up small businesses and take advantage of being a one or two man manufacturing operation. I have a client's customer who I go to every month with dies the customer makes for them, they are two guys who in a garage run a sheet metal business for antique cars. The amazing thing is these two guys design the dies, create the pattern files and the machining files, send them via email to my customer and they cast, machine and barber the die then test it to make sure it works. Then it goes to these two guys who produce parts for a car. This is what is happening all over the place, but just one example. By the way, these guys are educated and in the 20's. If they tried to do this as a business outside of their garage, they would have to deal with the union most likely, pay outrageous wages for the skilled trades and then make a small profit. Now I know ou can't see the correlation and to explain it is futile so I will just say that not all manufacturing jobs went to China but are here competing for work and making lots of money.

Actually a lot of union people never wanted to see public servants be unionised - this includes Hoffa, Ruether, Lewis and Toban (many many more and even Truman and FDR were completely against the idea), they made the claim that it removed the accountability factor in the public sector to the people and they are right.

Let's take one example, I may got the details wrong but it happened in more than one city. It was over a park in a town in New York. The town is broke, it has laid off cops and fired some of the people who work in the city buildings, those non-union jobs. BUT amazingly the people who work for AFSME are working but not working. So a group of scouts got this idea that they would clean up a park to help out, the grass needed cutting, the garbage hasn't been picked up and they got paint to paint the things for kids to play on. The union and the workers got wind of it and it got nasty. They told the scouts that they would be sued if they attempted to do the work that these union people were supposed to do (and weren't doing) and scared the crap out of the parents with the union threating them. Now like I said I may have gotten the details wrong but it happened in more than one city.

The point of those union people I mentioned above about accountability has to do with the way the public job system is supposed to work. Cities and towns have a responsibility to their citizens to ensure safety of the citizens first, so laying off cops instead of park people serves what purpose to the citizens. Anyone can cut the lawn and help fix up a park but can anyone be a cop?

It is a great thing that people believe that public servants should be unionised but reality is that isn't part of a democracy or a republic, the people have no control over who works for them or the level of service that they should be able to get.

 

I am a business. I explained how I look at California, that is quite favorably, in my post.