It's Kind of Sad. - A rantFollow

Sure thing buddy:



This actually is a description of America's standard of living being higher then somewhere else. Furthermore corporate investment in capitol has lessened the need to have intelligent American workers in factories. It's actually the economic reason to have capitol.



When the hell did I say capitolism doesn't work? Do you even know what "free trade" is?

Something like that happened in my area. Pirelli Tires closed down their factory and a bunch of union workers who had really good pay were out of a job. Pirelli threatened to close the factory before and the Union was figuring that it was negotiation tactic. Not that time.

Within a year of the factory closing, divorces, bankruptcies and domestic violence restraining orders sky-rocketed in this area. The only things down were morale and the economy.



It was the same here but since 3 of California's main prisons are within driving distance, a lot of the workers went to go work for the prisons or to some of the other food factories in the area.

Prisons are food factories? What are they making, Soylent Green?

Only in Texas.

Are you positive about this? See. Cause I'd beg to differ. It seems more to me that people pay out the *** for Sasco to do their jobs because they are contractually obligated to do so, and don't have a choice, or the union will go on strike and shut them down.


If someone is willing to "pay out the ***" for your work, they'll do so whether you are a member of a union or not. The *only* purpose for a union is to get people to pay out the *** for work that the would otherwise not pay that much for. Why on earth do you think that unions have to strike and create contacts to force pay and benefits for their workers? If the work was really that valuable, the union would be unecessary.


Unions had a value back in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, back when the issues were demanding worker safety and breaking the "company controlled" markets in some small towns (the old idea of owing your soul to the company store). With todays labor laws, the unions aren't needed for any of that stuff anymore. Worker saftey is managed by OSHA, not union demands. Overtime laws, fair market laws, and anti-trust laws have made the abuses that many companies did back then a thing of the past.

Unions haven't had to strike over any issue other then pay in something like 40 years. That should tell you something about their purpose today. It's not about workers "rights", it's about taking advantage of a monopoly of labor in an area to force pay and benefits at higher levels then the market would naturally provide for the labor. That's why they are a problem. They create an artificially high labor cost in industries saddled with union labor, in turn passing that cost on to everyone else. Additionally, they further reduce the competitiveness of those operations using union labor, increasing the likelyhood that those operations will end up being shut down rather then continue paying wages to their workers that are killing the bottom like of US businesses.


Unions aren't even good to those in the unions. Sure. The Union itself does fine, but the workers who are inevitably laid off when a factory is forced to close due to the high labor costs aren't exactly benefiting. They'd have been better off in the long run if they'd not been in a union, and had just been paid what the market could bear. They might have made a bit less money, but their jobs would be more secure and long term.

Same as there are good employers and bad employers, there are good Unions and crumby ones. Seems that most of your experiences are of self-protection groups that are in denial about basic profit and loss mathematics. We have some like that here.

(National Union of Mineworkers a case in point. In the 70s and 80s they used their brute power to force uneconomic mines to stay open producing coal at 300% of the import cost. Surprise surprise, by 1990, no UK Coal Industry in the UK and tens of thousands laid off)

Without any Union representation workers are just trteated like dirt by employers.


With shi[i][/i]tty irresponsible Union representation workers are just treated like dirt by the Union.

Fu[b][/b]ckin "A" Bro! You can price yourself right out of a job.

Unions were obsolete decades ago.


edit= I forgot I wanted to be a pottymouth

Edited, Sat Dec 17 16:13:08 2005 by Weebs