Alright, enough of this holiday good cheer, let’s fire up the invective…
I have to admit first off, I know relatively little about organized labor. I can fully appreciate that they would be necessary in a world where the worker individually had little or no power to bargain with the “man”. But in a world where we have laws protecting workers, minimum wages, etc… are they still relevant?
I feel that I’m biased against unions based on hearing a handful of news accounts of various strikes. The most memorable for me being the longshoremen in California a few years back - a strike which a fairly significant (though transient I suppose) impact on US and Asian trade. This strike didn’t seem like it happened because the longshoremen were being denied a fair wage - these guys make six figures! It happened because (if I remember correctly) the unions were against the automation/computerization of certain aspects of the job, and wanted job guarantees. There have been similar accounts (nurses in California, teachers in Illinois) where we had strikes or threatened strikes not because the employees were getting the short end of the deal but rather they were simply putting forward unreasonable demands because they had the power to.
So my current take - unions aren’t really guarantors of social justice these days, but mechanisms by which union employees will try to take as much as they possibly can. I may be totally wrong - feel free to set me straight.
I’m guessing this thread is going to get heated up a little so I’ll dive in first. Nothing to set you straight on, couldn’t /wouldn’t have said it any different myself.
I am sure many people will have different opinions but I think unions have worn out their usefulness. Historically unions have protected workers from abusive management but that is no longer needed. Unions add undue costs to products and services. “In general” union workers earn better salaries than other workers. I am not in a union nor do I know anyone in a union but I have heard stories of 6 figure salaries for some union members. Salaries like that are what have driven jobs overseas for cheaper labor. I think everyone is entitled to a fair wage but excess wages are harmful. I live in NYC and from what I am told most conventions avoid the Javits center here because unions control the place and MUST be used to set up and dismantle. All for enormous salaries. Just my thoughts.
On a funny note. I live near Madison Square Garden (site of republican convention). There was a huge protest during the convention by union workers carrying signs protesting the loss of jobs. Ithought it was pretty ironic.
So my current take - unions aren’t really guarantors of social justice these days, but mechanisms by which union employees will try to take as much as they possibly can. I may be totally wrong - feel free to set me straight.
Like most complex social issues there is good and bad. As for my situation, it’s illegal for us to strike so we don’t have a lot of juice. Employeers are not so easy to do/give what’s required unless they’re pressed. What individual has those kinds of resources? Belonging to the union evens up the playing field in the legal arena. The employeer has unlimited financial/legal resources. Through the union, I have equal resources if needed. I look at my union dues as insurance in case I’m ever charged with wrong doing.
Bad, bad, very, very bad. Illegal restraint of trade if done by a capitalist bourgeois but legal if a member of the proletariat. Collective bargaining should be banned and pay for performance instituted everywhere. Also, Right to Work Laws should be passed in every state.
Very limited exposure to unions. When I worked as an intern at Harley Davidson, if I needed to start the motorcycle I was testing (on a dynomometer), I had to go get the union guy who’s job it was to start motorcycles to start it for me. Frickin ridiculous waste of time and money, and little wonder the bikes were 3 times as expensive and had 6 times the problems of the Japanese bikes.
The airlines are demonstrating that union labor is not to the benifit of the corporations, or the workers in the long run.
Back in the day when the town had one major employer, I can see the need. Now, people can easily pack up and move if they are treated unfair.
The airlines are demonstrating that union labor is not to the benifit of the corporations, or the workers in the long run.
I don’t blame labor. I blame corporate takeovers, where the rich folk buy out an airline, sell all of the assets, lease back the planes and property, take all of the money, get richer, force the loyal working man/woman to make costly concessions.
Or it’s when corporate managers go crying to the goverment post 9/11 for bailout money, collecting millions of tax dollars, then two years later complain about being in the red and blaming it on high labor costs.
That is what’s not to the ben E fit to the airlines…in the long run.
(Bring it on Kahuna, I’m all in a mood now. haha)
And if ya’ll are concerned about expensive union labor costs. Check the statistics on how many US Airlines are doing major overhauls overseas, in places like singapore. Fly the friendly skies.
In my experiece…terrible. Unions have turned into businesses with their own agendas that often have little to do with protecting rights of employees or members. Plus they just give slackers a shield to hide behind and leave management/organizational leadership no effective tools to counter with. Supervisors and managers end up spending more time dealing with petty grievances and personality issues than real operational issues that impact the customers. Seems to me there are plenty of employment laws in place to accomoplish the things unions were origianlly created for. There was an HBO special a couple of years back covering the Teamsters and one of their strikes. Pretty good show.
If I had it my way, I’d never let a union into a business of mine.
Unions are still important in today’s very litigious world. I’m a teacher and union member. If some kids falls on his or her head and his parents sue me, who will protect me? The union.
You see, here is one of the favorite tactics of the NEA union goons. Scare the poor teacher into being a union member and having your hard-earned money confiscated to support Democrat politicians.
If you are acting within the scope of your duties, you cannot be personally sued if some kid “falls on his head.” The school board is liable, not you. It is called the “Law of Agency,” and there have been Supreme Court rulings that have upheld that. If you are still uncomfortable, call your insurance agent and check into a professional liability policy. I can guarantee it will be cheaper than what you are paying in union dues.
The longshoremen in California didn’t go on strike they were lockout by management. I think the other facts are correct though.
I was in a relatively weak union when I worked at a paper mill, some of the guys knew how to play the system and made a good bonus off of grievances. My own feelings are that most unions did wonderful things in the past (40 hour week, 5 day work week, child labor) but have outlived their usefulness by becoming political machines. The president of my union didn’t work at any of the mills anymore he just was the union president and he made good money. The days of the workers representing workers are over.
“You see, here is one of the favorite tactics of the NEA union goons. Scare the poor teacher into being a union member and having your hard-earned money confiscated to support Democrat politician.”
Union goons? Never met one of those. No one intimidated me into joining the union. I am not terribly comfortable with the NEA (the national union: you know, the so-called ‘terrorist organization’), but I am very thankful for the state and local unions, which have fought for fairness for years. My salary is low for someone with a masters but my benefits are fair, and I have the union to thank for this. Ask most teachers who started in the '60s or '70s (when teachers unions were few and weak): Unions have helped more than hurt in most districts in most states.
“If you are still uncomfortable, call your insurance agent and check into a professional liability policy. I can guarantee it will be cheaper than what you are paying in union dues.”
That is very interesting and I will look into that.
So my current take - unions aren’t really guarantors of social justice these days, but mechanisms by which union employees will try to take as much as they possibly can. I may be totally wrong - feel free to set me straight.
I think this is right, but it’s also capitalism. Workers want as much as they can get while employers want to pay as little as possible. Union members have every right to push for whatever they want but they must watch out for:
The airlines are demonstrating that union labor is not to the benifit of the corporations, or the workers in the long run.
I don’t blame labor. I blame corporate takeovers, where the rich folk buy out an airline, sell all of the assets, lease back the planes and property, take all of the money, get richer, force the loyal working man/woman to make costly concessions.
All airlines aren’t hurting. Southwest, AirTran, Jet Blue and other non-unionized airlines are doing quite well, and are driving the high-cost airlines out of business. Granted, there are other aspects to their business model besides union labor but this illustrates that in some cases unions have enough power to drive their employers out of business. To their credit, the airline employees’ unions have agreed to make concessions to help their employers remain alive, if not competitive.
As for the “rich folk” taking all the money out, I think you would find that dividends and other payments to owners are a miniscule fraction of labor costs.
So my current take - unions aren’t really guarantors of social justice these days, but mechanisms by which union employees will try to take as much as they possibly can. I may be totally wrong - feel free to set me straight.
I think this is right, but it’s also capitalism. Workers want as much as they can get while employers want to pay as little as possible. Union members have every right to push for whatever they want but they must watch out for:
The airlines are demonstrating that union labor is not to the benifit of the corporations, or the workers in the long run.
I don’t blame labor. I blame corporate takeovers, where the rich folk buy out an airline, sell all of the assets, lease back the planes and property, take all of the money, get richer, force the loyal working man/woman to make costly concessions.
All airlines aren’t hurting. Southwest, AirTran, Jet Blue and other non-unionized airlines are doing quite well, and are driving the high-cost airlines out of business. Granted, there are other aspects to their business model besides union labor but this illustrates that in some cases unions have enough power to drive their employers out of business. To their credit, the airline employees’ unions have agreed to make concessions to help their employers remain alive, if not competitive.
As for the “rich folk” taking all the money out, I think you would find that dividends and other payments to owners are a miniscule fraction of labor costs.
The strike at Northwest is the culmination of a protracted struggle that goes back to the late 1980’s when a leveraged buyout of the airline saddled it with debt. In 1993, workers gave up $900 million, along with money from the state of Minnesota to bail out Northwest.
I think that you have to divide labor unions into three categories in the US. The first unions, i.e. the cigar rollers organized by Samuel Gompers, were of skilled workers. They make a fair bit of sense as a method of equalizing bargaining power and are either good or bad depending upon the individuals that are involved.
The second wave of unions were those that are commonly thought of as unions, that is unions like the UAW and the UMW, for workers that were not skilled like those in the old (pre-1940) AFL. They made a lot of sense at the time they were first organized. The UMW did do a lot to improve coal mine safety and to improve the conditions of its workers. The same can generally be said of the UAW in the 1930s and 1940s. You can make a good argument that these unions have outlived their usefulness. You can also make a good argument that they still help equalize bargaining power between management and labor.
But, the second type of unions has been declining for a long time, both as a percentage of the labor force and as a percentage of the unionized work force. The most significant labor unions today are those of government workers. John Sweeny, the current or recent head of the AFL-CIO, was a government employee. I think that these types of unions, especially when representing paper pushers as opposed to government employees that face significant physical risks in their jobs to protect the rest of us like police and firemen, are a real problem. You can never get the clerk that ignores you or messses up for records fired because of the job security that they have. It’s also almost impossible to get them to do their jobs more efficiently. And, of course, you are paying them with your taxes not to do whatever it is they are supposed to be doing. At least it’s not yet as bad as the countries in Europe where more than half the work force works for the government. Do you think that they will ever shrink their domestic budgets regardless of the merits of work being done by these bureaucrats?
Say what you will about the NEA, but the local unions still play a valuable role. When my dad was assaulted by a student, they were the ones who pushed to actually get the kid expelled from that school. Administration wanted to give him less than a week suspension and then let him back in the school until his criminal trial. (Dad was pressing charges) The union rep pressed the administration and got the kid placed into an appropriate (ie juvie for thugs) alternative education program and out of the general high school population.
The union was also a buffer between the teachers and some amazingly awful racial politics from the administration, who would have loved nothing more than to be able to fire all the white teachers and replace them with teachers of a more appropriate skin color.
When I was 12, my father got laid off from his job and took another job that paid less than half as much. My mother went back to work as a substitute teacher so we wouldn’t have to go on welfare. When the teacher’s union in Denver went on strike, my mother crossed the picket line and taught the kids. She had NEA goons spit in her hair, call her names, and kick in the doors on our only car. So I don’t care what your experience was, mine is negative. Have you ever, as a 12-year old, have to watch your mother cry over trying to feed her family? Our, watch your father cry because your mother is crying?
I think this is right, but it’s also capitalism. Workers want as much as they can get while employers want to pay as little as possible.
Then why would I, as a (theoritical) owner, ever want union employees?
I, as an actual employer, wouldn’t. If I had a choice of hiring union and non-union employees (I only have two) I would choose the non-union employees. I can’t really pay them less in this market but I can let them go much easier if I need to. Being unionized means a more secure job to those who have them but less opportunity for those who don’t. I’ve heard employers make the same argument, by the way, for not hiring minorities. They want to hire a person but are afraid of a lawsuit if they have to fire them later.