Come into this quite late, but I see that there was a lot of talk about pensions earlier. BA, along with a lot of major UK companies, took a holiday on paying the employer contributions into their company pension plans when times were good back in the late 90s, early naughties - nothing to do with union interference, in fact the unions were urging them to keep up their contributions. The result? Amongst BA's other problems is a £3.7 BILLION shortfall in their pension scheme. Nice decision by the board at the time, all of which will (of course) have their own pension pots protected....
On the subject of non-union labour, we at least have a law in this country that prevents direct hiring to do the work of striking workers. There has been a recent dispute that's gone to court (not sure of the outcome yet) where our postal workers struck and the Post Office hired a load of temporary workers. The PO said that the higher than normal number of temps was to deal with the run up to Xmas (hired 6 weeks earlier than normal) and would only work on clearing the backlog from the strike. Lots of grey areas in these laws, if you take a close look....
Edited, Dec 19th 2009 6:25am by Kelanthor
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TirithRR wrote:
But the Union is the one that puts the workers on the street to strike for a year, fighting a losing battle, just to end up having the company hire all new employees which vote out the Union, leaving the original workers without a job.
False. The Union members voted for the strike, most likely due to a dispute with management. Hiring "scab" workers to take their place is unethical & many, many people will usually refuse to do business with said company effectively hurting the company even more. Also, strikes are the last resort to resolve a dispute as no one benefits during the strike itself.
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You can't put all the blame on the management for not wanting to pay more.
I don't, but they certainly share some of it too.
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Right now the company I work for (non-Unionized) is getting rid of all overtime and instead paying for temporary employees to work the weekend, on straight time. This is because by working the regular employees at time and a half or double time, all the profits for the previous 3-4 weeks are lost. But a Union would fight this decision to the very end (many employees are very angry about the decision). That end likely being the end of the company because they can't even break even.
In a Union shop, the workers with seniority get 1st crack at overtime. You're right though, a Union would fight against hiring scabs to do a Union member's jobs. However, depending on how "skilled" a particular job is, management may find that the quality of the work the temps are doing isn't satisfactory.
Then who screwed the pooch?
Here in Boston, Hyatt Corp. is taking a lot of flack for firing all of their housekeepers at their Cambridge property & hiring temps to do their job. Temps they themselves trained before getting canned under the guise that they would be "covering vacations".
These workers weren't union. If they were, it would not have happened.
Hyatt's all ready losing money this year because of the economy. Now, they're losing money nation wide & pissing of Rabbis.
"The Rich are there to take all of the money & pay none of the taxes, the middle class is there to do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class." -George Carlin
Omegavegeta wrote:
It's not the Union's fault that instead of getting a raise now, they agreed to the managements terms of increased benefits at a future date. You can't *just* blame the Union, the management is at fault as well.
Donate. One day it could be your family.
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
Timelordwho wrote:
What do you work in?
Automotive.
Omegavegeta wrote:
False. The Union members voted for the strike, most likely due to a dispute with management. Hiring "scab" workers to take their place is unethical & many, many people will usually refuse to do business with said company effectively hurting the company even more.
But the members are misled by the leaders. This example was just what happened locally this past year with a Union. Sure, it doesn't happen all the time, but the members were convinced by the leaders that it was a good idea, and those that didn't agree had no choice. Crossing the picket line drew anger from the strikers, including attacks on these people. This Union didn't have the employees best interests in mind. They cared more about looking tough during the whole ordeal so they could have examples to show the bigger companies for later fights.
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Also, strikes are the last resort to resolve a dispute as no one benefits during the strike itself.
Except union leaders. Striking makes the union appear stronger. Sticking it out even during the hardships of their employees will make other companies more weary of the union striking against them. It makes other companies more likely to fold under threat of a strike by the union that just spent a year not caring about the employees well being just to stick it to the company.
Can't sleep, clown will eat me.
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But the members are misled by the leaders.
Your opinion.
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This Union didn't have the employees best interests in mind. They cared more about looking tough during the whole ordeal so they could have examples to show the bigger companies for later fights.
Also opinion.
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Except union leaders. Striking makes the union appear stronger. Sticking it out even during the hardships of their employees will make other companies more weary of the union striking against them. It makes other companies more likely to fold under threat of a strike by the union that just spent a year not caring about the employees well being just to stick it to the company.
Mostly opinion. Union leaders are payed by the Union, which in turn is paid by Union dues. You don't get paid while striking, so dues aren't getting collected, so the Union isn't getting paid.
You don't strike just to stick it to the company, you do so because of a break down in contract negotiations and/or what are considered by the employees as unfair management practices. Both sides have a say in the strike, as it were.
You can place blame solely on the Union if you like, but the reality is really in the middle. And I say this as a Union member for 6 years & a manager for the last 3, so i've got a bit of experience with both sides.
"The Rich are there to take all of the money & pay none of the taxes, the middle class is there to do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class." -George Carlin
My first job was unionized. The company fucked over the union and the union fucked over anyone who worked hard. Every union, company and environment is different. I don't how you can act like you know what happened with Tirrith's union, somehow equating your experience in unions to being the be all, end all.
Donate. One day it could be your family.
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
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Mostly opinion. Union leaders are payed by the Union, which in turn is paid by Union dues. You don't get paid while striking, so dues aren't getting collected, so the Union isn't getting paid.
You don't strike just to stick it to the company, you do so because of a break down in contract negotiations and/or what are considered by the employees as unfair management practices. Both sides have a say in the strike, as it were.
You can place blame solely on the Union if you like, but the reality is really in the middle. And I say this as a Union member for 6 years & a manager for the last 3, so i've got a bit of experience with both sides.
You don't strike just to stick it to the company, you do so because of a break down in contract negotiations and/or what are considered by the employees as unfair management practices. Both sides have a say in the strike, as it were.
You can place blame solely on the Union if you like, but the reality is really in the middle. And I say this as a Union member for 6 years & a manager for the last 3, so i've got a bit of experience with both sides.
Sorry, but I fail to see how striking in a fashion that will ultimately cause your company to go bankrupt achieves anything other than a future unemployment check.
Contract negotiations are fine. What I saw from the Automotive industry strikes was that the Union side wanted things that were just unacceptable.
If the company is having a hard time to stay out of the red, and their employees suddenly demand MORE coverage and benefits, how is the company supposed to cope with that? You are essentially stating that the Union is only trying to come to a middle ground with their employers, which hardly seems true when the Union causes their faithful and loyal members to lose their jobs and pensions.
So basically we have a couple of state-run government owned automakers on life support because their Union workers needed more money to feed into their Blue collar lifestyles and believe they deserve an inordinate amount of money to do what is essentially manual labor.
Do these people deserve healthcare/pensions/etc for working 30 years? Yes. Do they deserve to make $40+ an hour working on an assembly line? No. I don't believe we should have to cause a strain on our economy in order to afford an (for all purposes) inferior product just because it's made in the USA by Americans.
So you can go ahead and defend the Union in which you are biased towards, some of us on the outside are paying taxes to cover the bailouts that the Government decided to involve us all in. While we are at it, lets send some more of our money to the banks so they can make money off our money while they take our money.
I don't understand how I wasn't clear.
You can place blame solely on the Union if you like, but the reality is really in the middle.
Which, in my experience BOTH working for management, which I do currently, & being a Union member, that the blame cannot be placed solely on one side or the other.
You can try and place blame if you like, if you like, but it's rare that it's just one sides fault.
I wrote:
You can place blame solely on the Union if you like, but the reality is really in the middle.
Which, in my experience BOTH working for management, which I do currently, & being a Union member, that the blame cannot be placed solely on one side or the other.
You can try and place blame if you like, if you like, but it's rare that it's just one sides fault.
"The Rich are there to take all of the money & pay none of the taxes, the middle class is there to do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class." -George Carlin
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