Do you Ride the B.A.R.T?

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: Craig234

Originally posted by: dammitgibs
This is why I hate unions, I recognize their importance and necessity in our country's history but in this day and age I don't see how you can justify their existence.

Go look at the record concentration in wealth in the US, the plummeting wages of workers relative to the economy, the fact that all the wealth added to the economy after inflation since Reagan has gone to the top most wealthy

Who needs workers anyway?

 

[rudder]

Originally posted by: Craig234

Originally posted by: rudder

Originally posted by: Red Dawn

Originally posted by: dammitgibs
This is why I hate unions, I recognize their importance and necessity in our country's history but in this day and age I don't see how you can justify their existence.

Because workers have a right to organize, that's all the justification you need. To do away with that would be tyranny

They do not have a right to organize when the BART is taxpayer funded. Now if BART was a corporation that paid its own way.. sure. Sorry but everyone else is making concessions and when your budget has a $300 million shortfall... well something has to give and it is not taxpayer money.

Follow the comment flow, rudder. dammitgibs posted an attack on *all* unions existing today. Red Dawn posted a general defense of unions existing.

Since you say you agree that you agree to unions for private workers, you are more disagreeing with dammmitgibs than with Red Dawn.

Your point distinguishing public and private is fine, and more related to the BART topic than the broadside against all unions, but you say it as if Red Dawn had only discussed public unions, which is not the case. IMO, Red Dawn made the important point well that the basic idea of labor organizing, so that individual workers are not greatly outgunned by big organizations, is somewhat timeless, in contrast to dammitgibbs' stated view.

As to your point about public unions, I don't really have a clear position at this time, I'm open to how to best balance the needs of workers and the public.

But unlike most union opponents, I view workers' well-being as one of the priorities in the equation, whether by union or another system not yet suggested.

I do agree with RedDawn that workers have a right to organize if they do desire... That is probably where our similar thinking ends. But that is all out of the scope of this thread so we can save that for another time.

 

[zylander]

Originally posted by: BoomerD
heh-heh...some of the most "abusive" companies I ever worked for were "small companies.," yet the BEST company I ever worked for was once one of the largest construction contractors in the world.

My girlfriend works for a small 50-100 person computer company that supplies hospitals and schools. She hates it and is in constant fear of being fired for reasons out of her control. The CEO is cheap and constantly looks over everyone shoulder. It's so easy for small businesses to abuse their employees.



This Bart strike is coming at a horrible time; CCSF starts classes on Monday. There are going to be a lot of students with no way to school.

 

[RichieZ]

luckily i don't take the bart to work

but yea i would fire them

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: BoomerD
heh-heh...some of the most "abusive" companies I ever worked for were "small companies.," yet the BEST company I ever worked for was once one of the largest construction contractors in the world.

As long as you're not talking about the terrible company Bechtel.

 

[BoomerD]

Originally posted by: Craig234

Originally posted by: BoomerD
heh-heh...some of the most "abusive" companies I ever worked for were "small companies.," yet the BEST company I ever worked for was once one of the largest construction contractors in the world.

As long as you're not talking about the terrible company Bechtel.

Heh-heh...no. I've worked for Bechtel...AND their non-union side as well.

Nope, Morrison Knudsen (now gone under) was the best company I ever worked for. Granted, most of that was due to the management on the job, (Marine Superintendent and General Superintendent were the best bosses I've ever had) but also, the quality of the equipment on the job, the way the hands were treated,etc., all combine to put the company at #1 for me. The last job I worked for them was also their last big job. (Hayward-San Mateo Bridge retrofit in 98/99)

I worked on the new trestle for that bridge (hayward to the high rise, widening the east side to 3 lanes each direction) for a few months, but didn't like the contractor so I bailed. Nice cranes, lots of overtime, but they treated their people like shit.

 

[monovillage]

Unions are big business.

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: BoomerD

Originally posted by: Craig234

Originally posted by: BoomerD
heh-heh...some of the most "abusive" companies I ever worked for were "small companies.," yet the BEST company I ever worked for was once one of the largest construction contractors in the world.

As long as you're not talking about the terrible company Bechtel.

Heh-heh...no. I've worked for Bechtel...AND their non-union side as well.

Nope, Morrison Knudsen (now gone under) was the best company I ever worked for. Granted, most of that was due to the management on the job, (Marine Superintendent and General Superintendent were the best bosses I've ever had) but also, the quality of the equipment on the job, the way the hands were treated,etc., all combine to put the company at #1 for me. The last job I worked for them was also their last big job. (Hayward-San Mateo Bridge retrofit in 98/99)

I worked on the new trestle for that bridge (hayward to the high rise, widening the east side to 3 lanes each direction) for a few months, but didn't like the contractor so I bailed. Nice cranes, lots of overtime, but they treated their people like shit.

That bridge is one of the most beautiful bridges to drive in the US.

 

[Michael]

I happen to be moving from the East Bay to Portland in a week and it looks like my last week will be in the middle of a BART strike.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that has seen my postings over the year to know that I am anti-union. However, I draw the line at removing the right to organize. Although basic labour laws today offer vastly more protection than historical norms, many of these laws came about because of unions. It takes a particular blindness to ignore the real abuses that employers used to do to their employees.

There sort of is a catch-22 for government works. On one hand there is a good argument that they provide essential public safety services and thus should not be able to strike. On the other hand, taxpayers are very cheap. Without a union they may never get raises.

That said, the government can impose a "cooling off period" and prevent the strike. This is not a time for the economic disruption a BART strike will cause and it should be stopped. A pity, the threatened strike is causing more people to hate unions which is a good thing.

To be clear - unions today tend to cost employees more than they gain and I find many of they to be riddled through with corruption and a greater bane to the average worker today than employers are.

Michael

 

[BoomerD]

It LOOKS like the strike has been averted. (still subject to ratification by the rank & file members)

http://www.news10.net/news/loc...ory.aspx?storyid=65254


OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- BART officials Sunday announced a tentative agreement was reached in the labor dispute that threatened to cripple public transit in the Bay Area during Monday's commute.

Officials from Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 and Bay Area Rapid Transit negotiated through the weekend to avoid a strike that would have affected 330,000 riders who use the rail system on weekdays.

Local 1555 threatened to strike Monday after BART's board of directors imposed work rules that the union says amount to a 7 percent pay cut.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said the tentative agreement still needed to be ratified by members of the union.

Newsom said "I couldn't be more proud" that there is a tentative agreement and thanked both the BART board and labor.

 

[herkulease]

question is who blinked first?

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

Originally posted by: marincounty

Originally posted by: TheRedUnderURBed

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Bullshit about the level of responsibility. Nurses literally have lives in their hands.

Funny that you should bring them up also.

Engineers are welcome to unionize also if getting screwed.

Exactly, engineers should have unionized a long time ago. You'll notice who's still making bank these days, doctors, lawyers and skilled construction tradesmen, all people with effective unions.

so in other words, everyone should be in a union and threaten to go on strike when they think their pay isn't high enough.
this way, everyone will be making 6 figures, and drive prices of everything through the roof.
inflation is just imaginary anyway right?

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: BlahBlahYouToo

Originally posted by: marincounty

Originally posted by: TheRedUnderURBed

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Bullshit about the level of responsibility. Nurses literally have lives in their hands.

Funny that you should bring them up also.

Engineers are welcome to unionize also if getting screwed.

Exactly, engineers should have unionized a long time ago. You'll notice who's still making bank these days, doctors, lawyers and skilled construction tradesmen, all people with effective unions.

so in other words, everyone should be in a union and threaten to go on strike when they think their pay isn't high enough.
this way, everyone will be making 6 figures, and drive prices of everything through the roof.
inflation is just imaginary anyway right?

You are that clueless that the best you can do in arguing about unions is to use some extreme exaggerations having nothing to do with the issue to 'prove' your point?

Your position rests on the impossibility of everyone getting a six figure income and still having it valuable?

That's idiocy. No one but you is suggesting that's the effect or the goal of unions, who have far more modest and effective goals for helping workers.

But while you are off in bizarro land explaining to all zero of us who need to hear why not everyone can get a sex figure salary, you are not dealing with the real but opposite side of the issue, the gutting of the middle class - where the bottom 80% for the first time in history, apparently, have gotten about zero of the economy's growth after inflation, while the tiny sliver at the top has gotten the bulk of it - some adjustments to restore some balance to where everyone gets a fair share, you have no interest in.

You are too busy off in bizarro land.

I don't know how you can get the point.

Would a statistic help? That from 1993 to 2007, the top 1% got haff the gains in the nation, abnormally high - and from 2002 to 2007, they got two thirds?

Would a nice picture help? Here is one on the all-time record inequality

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

Originally posted by: Craig234
You are that clueless that the best you can do in arguing about unions is to use some extreme exaggerations having nothing to do with the issue to 'prove' your point?

Your position rests on the impossibility of everyone getting a six figure income and still having it valuable?

That's idiocy. No one but you is suggesting that's the effect or the goal of unions, who have far more modest and effective goals for helping workers.

But while you are off in bizarro land explaining to all zero of us who need to hear why not everyone can get a sex figure salary, you are not dealing with the real but opposite side of the issue, the gutting of the middle class - where the bottom 80% for the first time in history, apparently, have gotten about zero of the economy's growth after inflation, while the tiny sliver at the top has gotten the bulk of it - some adjustments to restore some balance to where everyone gets a fair share, you have no interest in.

You are too busy off in bizarro land.

I don't know how you can get the point.

Would a statistic help? That from 1993 to 2007, the top 1% got haff the gains in the nation, abnormally high - and from 2002 to 2007, they got two thirds?

Would a nice picture help? Here is one on the all-time record inequality

let me make it easy for you to understand.
BART is running a deficit (managements fault, whatever). their proposal to fix the issue is a wage freeze. in a time where everyone, both public and private sectors, are getting furloughed or laid off, that's not too unreasonable. instead, the union chooses to cripple the corp further by threatening a strike if their demands aren't met.
so BART has no choice but to concede to their demands. to cover the deficit, they'll have to raise fares instead. riders have to get to work somehow, so they have to pay the increased fares. now they tell their bosses that they it's costing them more to get to work, we need a raise.

union workers seeing how others are getting paid more become envious and to keep the union members happy, union leaders demand more pay now too.
rinse and repeat. it's not going to happen overnight, but over time everyone's wages get inflated.

the worst part is that everyone in the union gets a raise, regardless of performance or importance. and even the worst of workers are hard to fire because of all the protection they get from unions.
all of them know this so they have no incentive to work harder, and as a result, lazy workers become the norm.

and what does haff mean in your context? i'm confused.

 

[alphatarget1]

Originally posted by: Craig234

Originally posted by: RedChief
[
I used to do HR about 10-12 years ago for AMR ambulance which was represented by SEIU. It was then when I learned just how militant SEIU was. There was a paramedic in the Sacramento area who on a call gave 10x the recommended dosage of morphine to a 8 year old boy. He lied on the PCR (Patient Care Report), he lied to the ER, and he lied to his supervisors. Each lie was different. The company fired this paramedic. The union filed a grievance over the firing and took the case to arbitration.

blah

Yet another idiotic liberal who wants to protect incompetent workers under the guise of union power. :roll:

I have no reason to doubt RedChief's story. Unions have been known to protect their members, however negligent their actions may have been. Hard working Americans have to subsidize lazy union workers. Unions in their current form is part of the problem which undermines our competitiveness globally.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Originally posted by: Craig234
That bridge is one of the most beautiful bridges to drive in the US.

The San Mateo bridge? Are you kidding me? I drive past that when I avoid the Bay Bridge, but honestly I like the view on the Bay Bridge a lot more. Hell I drove on the GG Bridge this weekend and it's 10x better than the San Mateo Bridge. I don't know what you're smoking.

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: BlahBlahYouToo

let me make it easy for you to understand.

Worry about yourself.

BART is running a deficit (managements fault, whatever). their proposal to fix the issue is a wage freeze. in a time where everyone, both public and private sectors, are getting furloughed or laid off, that's not too unreasonable. instead, the union chooses to cripple the corp further by threatening a strike if their demands aren't met.
so BART has no choice but to concede to their demands. to cover the deficit, they'll have to raise fares instead. riders have to get to work somehow, so they have to pay the increased fares. now they tell their bosses that they it's costing them more to get to work, we need a raise.

union workers seeing how others are getting paid more become envious and to keep the union members happy, union leaders demand more pay now too.
rinse and repeat. it's not going to happen overnight, but over time everyone's wages get inflated.

First, we're talking about unions in general, not a specific situation like the BART union, but I understand you 'made up facts' using BART as an example for your general point.

The fact is, I can't educate you in a simple post about the balance of power that has been developed over many decades (it's sad to say unions haven't really existed for a century).

You are only looking at part of the balance. You clearly are not familiar with the 'other sides' of the issue and the power that the employers hold so much.

You concoct a simple (I could say simplistic) scenario of how wages are going to spiral out of control - and yet in all the decades of unions, the best unions have done is to strengthen the middle class, not create some extreme spiral of inflation with the wage increases you say happen. In fact, the *fact* is as I said, how the workers are getting less and less a share of the nation's growth, with *zero* after inflation the last 25 years while the top has skyrocketed.

You did not even post one word of response to the facts I gave you contradicting your simple prediction - not the statistic, not the picture I gave you that show you wrong.

It's not a discussion when you keep repeating a simplistice, discredited ideology and ignore the facts showing you wrong.

You ignore the pressures on the other side that limit the wage increases. If you were right, why wouldn't BART workers get double wages every year? Ten times the wages?

You don't have a good answer it seems, because you have a simple, one-sided view.

So you just ignore the inconvenient contraditions with the actual situation.

the worst part is that everyone in the union gets a raise, regardless of performance or importance. and even the worst of workers are hard to fire because of all the protection they get from unions.

Again, a simple, one-sided view. Sometimes there's some truth to your position IMO, but on the other hand, it's again one side of the issue, where there are problems when the power shifts towards the employer (when the power of the employer is too strong, this is where the theory of 'sustinence wages' comes in, where they can keep cutting wages down to the point people 'have to eat', and so-called competition for workers has limited benefit to workers.

Another statistic for you to ignore: in 1900, without unions, the average American wage adjusted for inflation, I've read, was $10,000 - a fraction of what it was after unions.

That takes people out of poverty into middle class, not into the absurd high end you say).

all of them know this so they have no incentive to work harder, and as a result, lazy workers become the norm.

and what does haff mean in your context? i'm confused.[/quote]

Well I guess that's why the BART trains rarely ever run, why the big 3 automakers don't actually make many cars. Oh wait, they do, and you are parroting uninformed nonsense.

Haff was obviously a mistyping of half (was that your whole argument, to point out a typo, or are you actually asking about the info?)

The top 1% got 2/3 of all the income growth in the nation during the Bush administration (half in the period beginning when Clinton took office, that was the statistic I mentioned).

In the 1970's, the top 10% received one-third of the nation's income. By 2007 they got half of all income.

I've said many times, though, that the income is concentrated much further at the very top, not equally among the top 10%. The top 0.01% - one ten-thousandth of Americans - took 1% of the nation's income when Reagan took office. Now, they take 6% of the nation's income. That's not an increase based on inflation, it's *share* of the nation's income. Up six times. If you looked at the picture I gave you, you would see that that's higher than the previous spike at 5% just before the Great Depression.

*Before* inflation, even looking at Clinton and Bush, under Clinton the bottom 99% of incomes grew at 2.7% - but under Bush, at only 1.3%.

Are these facts - which are basic facts abut our economy any informed citizen should have, but doesn't because you pretty much never see the corporat media report them - just water off the back of you as a duck? Or do you actually read them and use them to get better informed? Or can I just expect more silly anti-union rhetoric out of context of the larger issues? You should learn a bit more about the history of the unions' effects on the national wages, the share of wealth going to different classes, the way the unions pulled up non-union wages as well. Warren Buffet really handed you the answer when he said there is a class war being fought, and his side is winning (I forget whether he said this too, but really only his class is waging it).

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: DLeRium

Originally posted by: Craig234
That bridge is one of the most beautiful bridges to drive in the US.

The San Mateo bridge? Are you kidding me? I drive past that when I avoid the Bay Bridge, but honestly I like the view on the Bay Bridge a lot more. Hell I drove on the GG Bridge this weekend and it's 10x better than the San Mateo Bridge. I don't know what you're smoking.

I understand your view - no pun intended, in a post debating the view from bridges - but few bridges offer the waterline view the San-Mateo bridge does.

I'm referring to that long waterline drive, not the actual elevated bridge area view. Here's a photo.

 

[cubby1223]

Originally posted by: Craig234
First, we're talking about unions in general, not a specific situation like the BART union, but I understand you 'made up facts' using BART as an example for your general point.

The fact is, I can't educate you in a simple post about the balance of power that has been developed over many decades (it's sad to say unions haven't really existed for a century).

You are only looking at part of the balance. You clearly are not familiar with the 'other sides' of the issue and the power that the employers hold so much.

Yeah, we can stop right there. The rest of us, or as I like to call us "rational people", do not reduce all of life's problems back to this notion that "the rich" hoard wealth and actively oppress the poor. During the next Presidential election in 2012, start up your own write-in campaign, and if enough people care about your views, then Hugo CChavez will be our next President. Untill then, please come back down to reality, just a tad bit closer that's all I'm asking

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: cubby1223

Originally posted by: Craig234
First, we're talking about unions in general, not a specific situation like the BART union, but I understand you 'made up facts' using BART as an example for your general point.

The fact is, I can't educate you in a simple post about the balance of power that has been developed over many decades (it's sad to say unions haven't really existed for a century).

You are only looking at part of the balance. You clearly are not familiar with the 'other sides' of the issue and the power that the employers hold so much.

Yeah, we can stop right there. The rest of us, or as I like to call us "rational people", do not reduce all of life's problems back to this notion that "the rich" hoard wealth and actively oppress the poor. During the next Presidential election in 2012, start up your own write-in campaign, and if enough people care about your views, then Hugo CChavez will be our next President. Untill then, please come back down to reality, just a tad bit closer that's all I'm asking

Too bad you can't make your point without an idiocy-filled argument. You misrepresent my position, unsurprisingly, and I would not want Chavez as our president - though he can't run, of course, as a non-native born American, despite your 'reality- oriented comment that he could.

Sorry, but the extremely wealthy do accumulate, and it has conssequences you don't understand when it reaches excessive levels. I note you fail to address any of the facts.