Right to Work Vs. Forced Union

[nobodyknows]

Unions = scum, and nobody should ever be forced or coerced to join an organization of any kind.

Nobody should ever be forced to work 50+ hours/week either.

 

[Phokus]

In other words, union members get paid twice the rate to do half the work.

At least they do work, unlike thieves like you.

 

[Red Dawn]

Nobody should ever be forced to work 50+ hours/week either.

And not be paid extra for it.

 

[PokerGuy]

Nobody should ever be forced to work 50+ hours/week either.

You are not tied to one single employer. In a free market you can choose to work for another employer if you don't like your job duties/conditions/compensation. That's between you and your employer.

 

[PokerGuy]

So what you are saying is that they are no different than any other organization.

Except that I'm not forced to join any other organizations.

 

[Red Dawn]

Except that I'm not forced to join any other organizations.

You're not forced to join a Union either.

 

[Red Dawn]

You are not tied to one single employer. In a free market you can choose to work for another employer if you don't like your job duties/conditions/compensation. That's between you and your employer.

Same goes for a Job that's a Union Shop, you aren't forced to work there.

 

[nobodyknows]

You are not tied to one single employer. In a free market you can choose to work for another employer if you don't like your job duties/conditions/compensation. That's between you and your employer.

And in that supoosedly "free market" the employer can move his job to China or some other location where the employees are desperate enough to take whatever crap he feels like handing out.

That's the real reason managment hates unions. They want to dictate to their employees as if they were slave labor and unions get in their way. It's much easier to have your way with your employees if you can deal with them one at a time instead of as a group. Unions make managements job harder.

 

[Moonbeam]

The other reason unions are evil scum is because they are heavily involved in politics. It's bad enough that you could be forced to have to pay dues to a productivity-destroying union, but in forced union states you can be forced to (indirectly) provide funding for scummy politicians and their campaigns since the unions spend a lot of their money on politics.

You are consistent in your blindness. Business owners never engage in politics. Pull your head out of your ass.

 

[CitizenKain]

I voted for right to work.

The whole concept of unions is a bit bullshit. If workers are abused and the working conditions are terrible, shouldn't that be something police and scary government agents deal with rather than unions? Example: my local laws state that work over 8 hours in one day or more than 40 hours per week must be paid a minimum of 1.5x regular pay. There's also a law saying that a guy called in to work must be paid a minimum of 3 hours. These are minimum labor standards and they apply to everyone, not just some exclusive club of lazy italians who suck at driving snow plows.

Wow, you managed to outstupid everyone else in a union thread, way to go.

Here is something that will surprise you, but those laws about getting overtime are from unions! It is very cute that you somehow think that the police or government agents would stand with the workers. Despite all evidence to the contrary, some people still hold onto that belief.
It is always nice that some people trust everything a corporation tells them to believe, it must save them so much money on their lobbying. Good for you.

 

[Darwin333]

The 'unions were once good, but are no longer necessary' argument is bullshit. Its made by people who probably haven't worked an hour of blue collar work in their lives.

5 years flat roofing, 2 years roughnecking, and 1 year tripping derricks before I got an office job as a project manager/estimator for a commercial roofing company. Pretty much the nastiest, hardest, most backbreaking trades that exist, does that count? I have never been in a union and at no time did I ever feel the need or desire to be in one. In the oil field I went from $12/hour to $28/hour in 2 years and we worked 88 hours a week when on the rig so we had more OT hours than straight time every week. Besides making insanely great money considering my experience and age I had half the year off (I either worked 7 on 7 off or 14 on 14 off) unless I stayed over because someone missed the boat. It sucked being away from the family for longer but everyday that I woke up out there I could just feel the money going into my pocket and an extra tour meant an extra paycheck and back then that was a serious chunk of dough. I am sure a Union would have a shit fit about 12 hour workdays, and everyday was a workday regardless of the weather unless a hurricane was about to hit, 7 days a week while you were on the rig just as I am sure we would have thrown those bastards overboard if they tried to get a 3rd shift on board.

When it comes to trades, non-union shops still work because the union option exists for tradesman. Contractors can't get away with treating their tradesmen like shit because they know they have the option of going to a union shop.

Bullshit. The few employers, at least in the construction industry, that would treat their workers like shit (especially in the good times a few years ago) wouldn't have any skilled workers because they would go work for the other mostly non-union companies that didn't treat their workers like shit. I am not sure of what your definition of "treating like shit" is but if its pay, the above happens extremely quickly. If it is stuff like jobsite safety, OSHA will put your ass out of business via increasingly huge (all the way to the absurd) fines. I would bet a weeks pay that even union shops are much more concerned with OSHA than they are the union when it comes to workplace safety. OSHA don't play and the fines are insanely high for repeat infractions and the bastards ALWAYS have to find something when they visit a jobsite.

I had one OSHA asshole write me up because a guy was eating lunch sitting sideways on the lull (extended reach forklift), it was one of the few spots to sit out of the sun and out of the mud, and he didn't have his seatbelt on. The keys were not in it and it had a flat tire but he was sitting in the drivers seat (only seat on the thing) and he was not wearing the seatbelt. He didn't write up that infraction until he went over my site for 2 hours and couldn't find anything else to write up.

The states themselves fill the role of a union in some ways, forcing non-union shops to pay prevailing wage to their workers on public works projects (which for many contractors is all they're getting these days).

I laugh at prevailing wages in our trade and state. They are a friggen joke. If I paid that low I wouldn't have a single "tradesman" working for me. Every once in a while a new laborer gets a slight bump on PW projects because he "uses the tools of the trade" which is sort of required for even the greenest workers but that is rare. If you have been here for more than a 6mos/year and actually give a shit then you are already paid above prevailing wages. I find it rather ironic that the union was the ONLY influence in setting the prevailing wages, as an employer I don't give a shit because I build the cost into the bid. To be honest, I calculate my profit as a percentage of overall costs so I love it when they make me spend more to get the job done because I make more money. OTOH, I know contractors in states that have huge union presence like NY and their cost for roofers on prevailing wage projects is well over $150/hour. That is insanely absurd but the contractors I know don't mind because he figures his profit the same as I do and everyone else has to play by the same rules.

So currently, a tradesmen has it both ways when he works for a non-union shop, by not having to deal with the bureaucracy of a union while still enjoying the benefits that collective bargaining as provided.

Actually, no.

See, pre-Katrina the tradesmen in this area were paid very well due to employers wanting to retain their good/skilled employees. There aren't very many union shops for them to go work for but their was a ton of competition that would hire a skilled man in a heartbeat. Jobsite safety, as I explained above, is handled by OSHA and they are much scarier to an employer than any union.

Post-Katrina we had a fuckload of cheap imported labor (read: illegal Latino workers) move into town because of all the work. That and that alone has severely driven down the wages in the construction industry here. I know owners who have basically been forced by the market to hire a ton of imported labor simply to compete. It was literally hire them to reduce labor costs (which is by far the highest cost for most construction companies) or shut the doors. The few union shops we had have either gone under or are barely holding on at this point. They couldn't compete without special rules before (such as certain projects requiring X% union work or not being even considered for a bid/project if you weren't union) and they really can't compete now.

In other jobs, where its just a straight employer-employee relationship, people are treated as animals. What laws there are, offering absolute minimum protections, are not relevant. They may as well not exist.

I have never even heard of a union in the oil field, doesn't mean they don't exist but I don't know of any, and it was one of the safest and by far the quickest advancing (pay wise) job I have ever had. BTW, I used "safest" as a relative term. The job is dangerous as hell by nature but every company I worked for or with went above and beyond in terms of safety. So far in fact that ALL of the workers would get pissed off at it because it was a pain in the damned ass. I remember working on a platform that was 3 1/2 feet off the deck with 4 other guys. Company rules stated that since there was no guard rail we must be tied off 100% of the time if the fall was 3' or more. We would trip over each others ropes and get tangled up in each others yo-yos all day long, the "safety rules and equipment" actually made us less safe and more likely to get injured but rules are rules and if the safety man says cut progress in half that is what he gets.

None of this really matters though, at least in the construction industry. Our cheap imported labor is here to stay and they don't give half a shit about unions, work hours, or even workplace safety. They bust ass, learn quick, show up on time, and NEVER bitch about working late or on weekends and they are happy as hell to do it for considerably less than the existing workforce. Trust me, they will be coming to a town near you real soon and you will see it with your own eyes. At least around here they all get passable fake IDs somehow so the employers are reasonably protected too. I doubt making them legal would change anything either because there are a fuckload more people where they came from willing to do the exact same thing and we don't seem willing to prevent them from getting here.

I am not saying that unions are completely useless or that some industries couldn't or don't benefit from them but by and large they are no longer necessary, at least from my experience. I see unions gaining too much power in certain businesses/sectors as a larger problem, at least for those specific sectors.

 

[Darwin333]

Wow, you managed to outstupid everyone else in a union thread, way to go.

Here is something that will surprise you, but those laws about getting overtime are from unions! It is very cute that you somehow think that the police or government agents would stand with the workers. Despite all evidence to the contrary, some people still hold onto that belief.
It is always nice that some people trust everything a corporation tells them to believe, it must save them so much money on their lobbying. Good for you.

One word for you

OSHA

Please tell me what lobbying organization fights against some of OSHAs absurdity so that I can send them a check. They haven't been very effective so far as it is getting more absurd by the day. The new rigging rules are fucking retarded and while I am teaching my guys this retarded bullshit that won't work on my jobsites the OSHA guy is whispering in my ear "just do what works on the job". Dollars to doughnuts I get cited for someone using hand signals the crane operator can actually see and understand versus the new ones that he can't.

Again, its rather irrelevant at this point though. Cheap imported labor doesn't care about any of that shit.

 

[Brainonska511]

Out of curiosity, why do you think you should be paid time and a half to work on Sunday in a grocery store? Aren't they usually open on Sundays?

I didn't care, and yes. It was a part time job throughout high school and I did it for the money. Paying me extra money per week to be in a union? It's a no-brainer for when I was under 18. I didn't negotiate the union contract, I simply joined and was paid accordingly. There might have been other reasons - longer Sunday shifts, Sunday was the busiest day....

 

[Londo_Jowo]

In the states where the company I work for is forced to use union tradesmen it costs 40% more than our non-union tradesmen. The union tradesmen take far longer (2-3 weeks) to complete the job than their non-union counterparts.

 

[Red Dawn]

Our cheap imported labor is here to stay and they don't give half a shit about unions, work hours, or even workplace safety. They bust ass, learn quick, show up on time, and NEVER bitch about working late or on weekends and they are happy as hell to do it for considerably less than the existing workforce. Trust me, they will be coming to a town near you real soon and you will see it with your own eyes. At least around here they all get passable fake IDs somehow so the employers are reasonably protected too. I doubt making them legal would change anything either because there are a fuckload more people where they came from willing to do the exact same thing and we don't seem willing to prevent them from getting here.

Plus they are easier for companies like yours to exploit.

 

[Red Dawn]

In the states where the company I work for is forced to use union tradesmen it costs 40% more than our non-union tradesmen. The union tradesmen take far longer (2-3 weeks) to complete the job than their non-union counterparts.

And what is it that your company does?

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Manufactures, install/commissions, and overhauls large industrial compressors and steam turbines.

 

[Red Dawn]

Manufactures, install/commissions, and overhauls large industrial compressors and steam turbines.

Don't know much about that, does it take skilled people to do it (sounds like it would) and do you pay the non Union Workers the same as Union Workers including bennies?

 

[dawp]

I'd quit my union if I could. They let the company bend them over and fuck them in the ass during the last contract negotiations.

 

[Red Dawn]

I'd quit my union if I could. They let the company bend them over and fuck them in the ass during the last contract negotiations.

Well in times of economic hardship it's in the Unions best interest to give in some.

My wifes Union has been conceding bennies left and right due to the economy but it keeps the Hospital she works for afloat.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Don't know much about that, does it take skilled people to do it (sounds like it would) and do you pay the non Union Workers the same as Union Workers including bennies?

The pay scales are within 10% but the union local hall adders/bennies are what drives the costs through the roof.

 

[dawp]

And you didn't get anything out of it?

we gave more than we got. I work for at&t. The district wanted to strike but the national would not let us.

 

[Red Dawn]

The pay scales are within 10% but the union local hall adders/bennies are what drives the costs through the roof.

40%?? I assume you just pass the cost on to your customers.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Yes, it passed on to most customers. The big problem comes when it's a customer that has a Preferred Service Agreement with the company as their prices are fixed.

 

[Phokus]

You are not tied to one single employer. In a free market you can choose to work for another employer if you don't like your job duties/conditions/compensation. That's between you and your employer.

This only works if the supply of jobs and demand for jobs is not out of whack.