how can we rid society of unions?

[Red Dawn]

TODAY, the problems with the Unions and their workers are that they many sit on their lazy ass doing something comfortable, easy, and they get paid far more than the more contributing members of society.

Sounds like your typical P&N poster who rails against unions.

 

[MJinZ]

So what big important job is that you do? Or pretend to do at least, with the amount of posting you do on here.

Its funny seeing the people who bend over for corporations complain about lazy union workers while they read the internet all day and sit at computer. I bet you pretend you do a vital, difficult job too.

Corporations are no different than Unions in their inherent evil.

They shrug off and spread out major liability. Their size and power and influence allow them to change the world as we know it, yet their structure and purpose fails to offer the same responsible accountability.

Unions are one evil in order to combat another. An Nuclear Warhead against North Korea.

When the Machinations are unable to keep each other in balance and humility, that it becomes too late for the World.

When we suffer a Fallout, no one can escape.

 

[MJinZ]

Sounds like your typical P&N poster who rails against unions.

Oh please, for every cop sitting out there taxing citizens (with tickets) while anticipating a collection of $100K Pension while retiring at 55 years old, there needs to be 1000 of us to shut that shit down.

But there isn't. Who gives a shit about crimes when City Governments need more taxes in order to pay the cops their pensions?

 

[Craig234]

it's quite clear that labor unions are antiquated and unnecessary in today's world.

It's quite clear you are quite wrong.

How can we rid society of the misguided, harmful anti-union ideology?

 

[Red Dawn]

Oh please, for every cop sitting out there taxing citizens (with tickets) while anticipating a collection of $100K Pension while retiring at 55 years old, there needs to be 1000 of us to shut that shit down.

But there isn't. Who gives a shit about crimes when City Governments need more taxes in order to pay the cops their pensions?

You when you need them to save your ass.

 

[MJinZ]

You when you need them to save your ass.

Perhaps we need a different class of cops then.

The REAL FUCKING COPS I would gladly pay for that don't line their pockets by TAXING US to pay for THEIR PENSIONS.

Let's call it, the Crime Fighters division.

Now that the old cops are just tax collectors, they can be Traffic Enforcers and Meter Maids. I'm sure we can now agree to cut their salary by 75% and get rid of their pensions.

PS. You have horribly illogical viewpoints on many things. In this case and to use an analogy, you're attempting to justify abusive child-raping parents with the fact that they provide you with food and clothes. You forget that there exists, and rightly so, parents who do the same and do not rape their children.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

yup, red dawn subscribes to the entitlement mentality that many in this country do.
they feel they deserve their job at an inflated wage, regardless of their limited skill set and regardless of the fact that thousands of others that can do their job for less.

they are unable to leave their union job because they cannot stand on their own two feet.
they are weak. their value is severely decreased unless they band together and threaten to cripple the company unless their compensation demands are met.

what's even dumber is why corporations continue to give in to their demands.

What's dumber still is that you want the US to become the Mexico the illegals are trying to flee from.

When those in power control both their income and that of others money flows upwards to them. Those wonderful company stores are an example of what can happen.

I'm not for handing out things for free, but your attitude seems to say that we shouldn't be slaves to government. We should be slaves to the wealthy instead.

I'll have none of it.

 

[sandorski]

What's dumber still is that you want the US to become the Mexico the illegals are trying to flee from.

When those in power control both their income and that of others money flows upwards to them. Those wonderful company stores are an example of what can happen.

I'm not for handing out things for free, but your attitude seems to say that we shouldn't be slaves to government. We should be slaves to the wealthy instead.

I'll have none of it.

hehe. It would likely work though, given the record of them fleeing such conditions.

 

[MJinZ]

What's dumber still is that you want the US to become the Mexico the illegals are trying to flee from.

When those in power control both their income and that of others money flows upwards to them. Those wonderful company stores are an example of what can happen.

I'm not for handing out things for free, but your attitude seems to say that we shouldn't be slaves to government. We should be slaves to the wealthy instead.

I'll have none of it.

We'd be going back to Royalty, Serfdom and Feudalism.

I'd rather we have ultra rich bastards today, wasteful governments and over-valued underproductive donut chutes... than that.

 

[werepossum]

How can you possibly say unions grow the middle class? The fact of the matter is unions cover a very small % of the workforce. There are a lot of middle class people out there who are not a part of unions.

It's a given fact that unions has bent companies to their will giving workers a wage that is far outside their value. Not the least of which unions make it near impossible to fire an employee who deserves it.

Given that that happens and that it's a fact people do just fine without unions. What is the point of them anymore? I don't see hwo you can make the argument that the small % of people under unions somehow make it so that all people get equality?

The world is different these days. People would leave extremly quick from a company who forced workers into unsafe/unfair working conditions.

I'm not a fan of unions except for trade unions and for inherently dangerous work, but I'll explain why I think even unions I don't like can possibly be a force for growing or at least stabilizing the middle class.

We start with a reasonably stable and prosperous society after World War II. Labor supply and demand are reasonably in line, and tend to reinforce each other. Two things tend to tip the balance toward the employers' side - improved productivity, and improved manufacturing equipment. The former means you need fewer employees to produce the same amount of goods OR can produce more goods with the same amount of employees; both mean more profit for resource owners directly (by cutting wage costs) and indirectly by lowering demand for (and therefore cost of) labor. As long as these displaced workers find productive and useful employment at similar wages the equation remains balanced and the society's wealth increases. The second thing, improved manufacturing equipment, forms a big part of the first, but also allows the resource owners (employers) to employ less skilled (and therefore cheaper) labor. The whole point of manufacturing equipment is to allow more product to be produced by fewer and less skilled workers, after all. But all in all, the system is pretty stable as the job losses are fairly slow and the increased wealth of the resource owners (and thus society) allows the displaced workers to expand into new endeavors. Also, the increased productivity benefits employees too, because since their output is now more valuable the resource owners can afford to increase their compensation with less (or no) economic pain to themselves. In fact, with a tight labor market the employees may receive more of the benefit than do the resource owners. Since the employees greatly outnumber the resource owner, even giving the employees the lion's share of the increased productivity gives each employer a proportionally much larger share than each employee gets, so everybody's happy.

Now two additional things tend to tip the balance toward employers' side much more quickly - outsourcing and increased immigration. Outsourcing allows the employers to cut costs drastically. Prices fall too, of course, but prices are set principally by what the market will bear so costs drop more quickly than do prices. On the employees' side, outsourcing reduces demand without reducing supply, thus lowering wages. It is like increased productivity in that respect, but fundamentally different in that part of the benefit flows to that country now doing the work. Thus while the resource owners have increased wealth, the society as a whole has decreased wealth (although this is partially offset by the lower cost of goods.)

The second thing radically tipping the sale toward the employers' side is increased immigration. These new immigrants are used to having less (else they would not immigrate) so they are willing and even happy to work for lower wages and benefits. This lowers wages across the board, which is good for society's wealth and for employers but not so good the middle class because if their competition is willing to work for less, then they too have to work for less. There is no long term alternative. The effect is much, much worse for illegal immigrants, partly because they have much worse alternatives (and thus work more cheaply) but mainly because they are coming in such numbers. Immigrants (especially illegals) also send money out of the country, thus removing that wealth from our society rather than circulating it and stimulating more wealth production. Legal immigration enriches a society because it brings a new group of workers willing to work for less (which illegal immigration also does) and thus increases productivity but also because it brings new ways of looking at things and thus drives innovation. Legal immigration is also regulated to the number of new workers our society needs, or more properly, the number of new workers it can handle without unacceptably depressing wages. Illegal immigration on the other hand is inherently limited only by opportunity to get here and can easily reach the level of unacceptably depressing wages. And where legal immigrants quickly become roughly equal to citizens in expectations, illegals must always remain less ambitious because due to their illegal status they are less able to compete openly and because if there is not a substantial benefit in hiring illegals, no one would take the risk. Thus illegal immigration always tends to depress wages even if the society can absorb their numbers.

Some will argue that immigrants (or just illegal immigrants) only do the "jobs Americans won't do" but this is demonstrably false. Very few jobs performed by illegals were created only when the illegals showed up. Take a local chair factory. Up through the 90's it employed legal workers and paid them mostly based on quantity of product (of satisfactory quality) produced. Those working production worked damned hard but made good money, especially for someone with little education but with some sense and a good work ethic. Most production workers made over $20/hour and had decent benefits. Then the company began to hire illegals for a flat $8 to $10 per hour with no or few benefits. Quality and output (no longer tied to compensation) plummeted, but the company still made more profit. Those laid off or fired workers who previously made over $20/hour had to find other jobs, and most had to take jobs where they made much less. Thus the new employees were not really in the middle class, and often the displaced employees were not in the really middle class. Everyone got pushed down into the upper lower class, or at least onto a lower rung of the middle class.

Now comes the part where a union might help preserve the middle class. Had the plant unionized during the seventies (and it did not because the employees knew they had a good thing going and because the union used thuggish tactics of intimidation, not realizing that these are people not easily intimidated by waving a handgun or throwing rocks through windows) then the company could not have used its flimsy excuses to fire workers, not without the whole plant walking out. Replacing a whole workforce at once is much harder than replacing it a bit at a time, and the publicity would have been very, very bad. Firing a few workers at a time brings little adverse publicity and allows the new, cheap workers to learn their new trade by watching and working wither those who know it.

The only real caveat to this is that the company might well have moved the whole plant to Mexico or China, thus removing even more wealth from our society, had it been unionized. It's quite hard to know at what point that will happen unless it is actually happening.

 

[Craig234]

Oh please, for every cop sitting out there taxing citizens (with tickets) while anticipating a collection of $100K Pension while retiring at 55 years old, there needs to be 1000 of us to shut that shit down.

But there isn't. Who gives a shit about crimes when City Governments need more taxes in order to pay the cops their pensions?

We need law enforcement for road safety and to reduce casualties.

You have some problem to oppose that. Don't break the laws, no ticket.

 

[Red Dawn]

Perhaps we need a different class of cops then.

The REAL FUCKING COPS I would gladly pay for that don't line their pockets by TAXING US to pay for THEIR PENSIONS.

Let's call it, the Crime Fighters division.

Now that the old cops are just tax collectors, they can be Traffic Enforcers and Meter Maids. I'm sure we can now agree to cut their salary by 75% and get rid of their pensions.

PS. You have horribly illogical viewpoints on many things. In this case and to use an analogy, you're attempting to justify abusive child-raping parents with the fact that they provide you with food and clothes. You forget that there exists, and rightly so, parents who do the same and do not rape their children.

I was thinking the same thing about you and your analogy just verified it.

 

[Red Dawn]

Perhaps we need a different class of cops then.

The REAL FUCKING COPS I would gladly pay for that don't line their pockets by TAXING US to pay for THEIR PENSIONS.

Let's call it, the Crime Fighters division.

Now that the old cops are just tax collectors, they can be Traffic Enforcers and Meter Maids. I'm sure we can now agree to cut their salary by 75% and get rid of their pensions.

God damn lazy free loading cops

 

[MJinZ]

We need law enforcement for road safety and to reduce casualties.

You have some problem to oppose that. Don't break the laws, no ticket.

LOL. I'm going to propose a law just to tax YOU. Bow down to the almighty power of the Law!!!

I won't bother to tell you what my profession is or which professional doctorate is being attained.

 

[Linflas]

LOL. I'm going to propose a law just to tax YOU. Bow down to the almighty power of the Law!!!

I won't bother to tell you what my profession is or which professional doctorate is being attained.

If you are implying that you are studying the law then you might want to check into that whole bills of attainder thing. See US Constitution Article 1, Section 9, paragraph 3.

 

[Naeeldar]

I'm not a fan of unions except for trade unions and for inherently dangerous work, but I'll explain why I think even unions I don't like can possibly be a force for growing or at least stabilizing the middle class.

Again your taking one situation out there. Sure it may of kept some people in their jobs but outside of the illegals (I find it unliekly a plant in the US is hiring illegals that blatantly) why should they get to keep it? Society progresses and people need to adapt.

People act like without unions there is no way for there to be a middle class and that's false. Majority of the US is not covered under a unions.

Union had their purpose years ago when there were not laws to protect workers but the fact of the matter is a company like GM or Ford could not have there workers in unsafe working conditions. Is it possible that people there would have to take pay cuts? Sure. But people need to accept the fact that blue collar factory worker jobs just do not pay what they used to anymore nor should they with the advances in technology.

That assembly line worker is just not worth 50-75k a year. The value is not there in the work they do. you can't change that.

 

[sandorski]

Again your taking one situation out there. Sure it may of kept some people in their jobs but outside of the illegals (I find it unliekly a plant in the US is hiring illegals that blatantly) why should they get to keep it? Society progresses and people need to adapt.

People act like without unions there is no way for there to be a middle class and that's false. Majority of the US is not covered under a unions.

Union had their purpose years ago when there were not laws to protect workers but the fact of the matter is a company like GM or Ford could not have there workers in unsafe working conditions. Is it possible that people there would have to take pay cuts? Sure. But people need to accept the fact that blue collar factory worker jobs just do not pay what they used to anymore nor should they with the advances in technology.

That assembly line worker is just not worth 50-75k a year. The value is not there in the work they do. you can't change that.

Says you.

 

[Naeeldar]

Says you.

It's a simpel fact. It comes down to supply and demand. Skilled labor is a different matter and that's actually one area that is growing - carpentry, electricians, plumbers are still blue collar areas that do well.

But the simple fact is the assembly line worker is dead. It's not a 75k producing job and that's just talking salary if we get into the benfits that GM was force into giving it's an even bigger gap. There's a reason why GM and Ford almost went under. GM had to spent somewhere along the lines of 700-800 more per car just for employee benefits.

Before you say it I know Ford is recovering and doing well. They also moved to dump benefits quicker then the other companies. And forced the unions to bend.That was the only thing that saved them but they still get to walk a tight-rope because somebody popping bumpers into a car is making 75k.

And I have an uncle that works for Ford. I know how hard those workers work and I sure as hell would not want their job. But just because it's tough doesn't mean the job is worth a big salary. A job has to brign in more money then it costs a company.

 

[sandorski]

It's a simpel fact. It comes down to supply and demand. Skilled labor is a different matter and that's actually one area that is growing - carpentry, electricians, plumbers are still blue collar areas that do well.

But the simple fact is the assembly line worker is dead. It's not a 75k producing job and that's just talking salary if we get into the benfits that GM was force into giving it's an even bigger gap. There's a reason why GM and Ford almost went under. GM had to spent somewhere along the lines of 700-800 more per car just for employee benefits.

Before you say it I know Ford is recovering and doing well. They also moved to dump benefits quicker then the other companies. And forced the unions to bend.That was the only thing that saved them but they still get to walk a tight-rope because somebody popping bumpers into a car is making 75k.

And I have an uncle that works for Ford. I know how hard those workers work and I sure as hell would not want their job. But just because it's tough doesn't mean the job is worth a big salary. A job has to brign in more money then it costs a company.

It's not a simple Fact.

 

[Naeeldar]

It's not a simple Fact.

Lets put it another way then. Plenty of non union jobs out there where people make good money.

Factory worker jobs are dissapearing without unions and pay is dropping.

Is it a conspiracy theory then? The job isn't worth what they want in pay any more. And I'd love for you to show me otherwise.

 

[CitizenKain]

Let's be clear: I have no problems with paying Coal Miners a very good livable wage and making sure they are in safe working environments. But by NO FUCKING MEANS should they be entering the UPPER CLASS INCOME bracket of America. Not when there people who are unemployed, hard working educated people looking to innovate and make progress, or people who take more risks and have more ambition than just chipping away at a rock for their entire life - not when these people earn less and don't get a free retirement fund handed to them.

You're stupid, I hope you are ok with being told that. I'm sure a lazy office drone like yourself believes you are taking risks and innovating, you aren't, but you can believe that.
I'm not sure how paying someone who is digging rocks thousands of feet below the earth's surface in dangerous conditions a decent wage means that lazy people like you are prevented from having a job.

Union had their purpose years ago when there were not laws to protect workers but the fact of the matter is a company like GM or Ford could not have there workers in unsafe working conditions.

Hahahahahahaahah. Oh my, people believe that. "This large company wouldn't possibly cut safety regulations to save money, despite that it happens all the time, I also like to sniff farts."

 

[Naeeldar]

You're stupid, I hope you are ok with being told that. I'm sure a lazy office drone like yourself believes you are taking risks and innovating, you aren't, but you can believe that.
I'm not sure how paying someone who is digging rocks thousands of feet below the earth's surface in dangerous conditions a decent wage means that lazy people like you are prevented from having a job.



Hahahahahahaahah. Oh my, people believe that. "This large company wouldn't possibly cut safety regulations to save money, despite that it happens all the time, I also like to sniff farts."

Show me a union that truly impacts safety regulations. They don't. The govt does. Unions impact salary, benefits, vacation time, and keeping people from being fired.

And again everybody in this thread talking about unions ignroes the fact that 90% of workers out there are NOT covered by a union. The sky is not falling..

 

[Adrenaline]

Show me a union that truly impacts safety regulations. They don't. The govt does. Unions impact salary, benefits, vacation time, and keeping people from being fired.

The union I am in has impacted the safety regulations at our plant as well as management has impacted safety regulations. They both have worked together to make our place a safer working environment. Thank you, try again.

I enjoy my union and I enjoy the company where I work.

 

[ayabe]

MJinz we know you hate cops already from the Garage, now you're spouting more BS here. We get it that you don't like being harassed by cops in the Camry your mom bought for you.

 

[Naeeldar]

The union I am in has impacted the safety regulations at our plant as well as management has impacted safety regulations. They both have worked together to make our place a safer working environment. Thank you, try again.

I enjoy my union and I enjoy the company where I work.

SO the workers and management found away to make some changes? That's impressive. Sort of how it works in non-unionized plants and jobs.