Union decline lowers wages of nonunion workers

[Sonikku]

Gov't sector hasn't and won't have to deal with outsourcing of their jobsto foreign countries. Carrier for example is/was a union shop, having their jobs moved to Mexico.

So yeah, they are kinda pissed that the minions (i.e. the Gov't worker) of the politicians that allowed that to happen to the private sector blue collar worker now have better pay and benefits than they do.

But it's questionable how long some of those Gov't workers will have before they are affected. Teachers, for example, are already being outsourced using technology. Unless your physical presence is required, you're not really safe from those same globalist economic forces pushing your job to lower pay workers.

You really think low level government employees are what allowed private sector wages to fall into decline? Stop drinking the kool aid.

 

[shady28]

You really think low level government employees are what allowed private sector wages to fall into decline? Stop drinking the kool aid.

Did I say that? No, I didn't say that.

But their salary is paid for by taxes on those whose wages have been allowed to fall into decline.

 

[Ackmed]

I like my union as a federal government worker. Not everyone joins, it's each individuals choice to or not. Costs 1 overtime hour a month to join. Most do join, I did. We have another contract to bargain over coming up very soon and I expect it to go well like usual.

 

[MongGrel]

Unions definitely do not have the pull they once did. I was the Shop Steward in the IAM at a major aerospace company when they kicked the 15 people that remained in it to the curb at the time in 2010.

There were great benefits from the 50's that had eventually been washed away in bargaining over time, were hundreds of people in at one time in the 70's.

They switched to outsourcing the mechanical manufacturing and kept the Engineering Design inhouse, over the protests of the engineers. Half the time I ended up making their mock ups look fantastic or they would just red line a print on a suggested improvement.

I had one engineer mailed a MIMU from about 1000 miles away that was pretty much half wood and wood screws holding it together, they pretty much handed it to me and I made it look like a work of art for him. He was freaking thrilled. Working hand in hand with engineers from Draper Labs/DARPA, various places was what I used to do, upper management in a far off land killed that for a lot of things in R&D, over the engineers protests.

A lot of engineers were even worried at the time, about security to a degree. There was a lot of outsourcing overseas going on and coordination with Chinese engineers while the company was globalizing on defense things that probably could easily be leaked.

Time marches, on I suppose.

 

[JSt0rm]

blue collar people are stupid and they deserve everything they get. Soon we wont need them driving shit around and they will be even poorer. Why should intelligent people pay more for goods that have no benefit from being built in this country by people who couldn't even have the sense to protect their positions because freedumb. Look at texashiker. That dude is straight blue collar poor and he hates unions.

I love buying usa made products that are high quality. I love buying things made all over the world that are high quality. But these dumb people arent becoming master leather workers. Thats the realm of intelligent people. They want to mindlessly injection mold plastic dildos for $35 a hour with bennies so they can buy a shit 1200sq ft track home in some shitty suburb of some shitty blue collar city and pop out 2 retard kids with a ugly dumb bitch who came from the same place. Fuck them. Build walls around the wealth and let them be freedumb.

 

[bshole]

I like my union as a federal government worker. Not everyone joins, it's each individuals choice to or not. Costs 1 overtime hour a month to join. Most do join, I did. We have another contract to bargain over coming up very soon and I expect it to go well like usual.

Don't worry, they are coming after the public sector unions now. Scott Walker gutted the teachers union here in Wisconsin and significantly lowered compensation. I guess the ultimate objective here is to remove all middle class jobs, even for those with a college education.

 

[JSt0rm]

because college edu doesnt mean u are smart. STEM jobs are next up. All of you railing on arts edu are gonna get laughed at when those are the jobs left in this economy.

 

[JSt0rm]

oh and lol at ackmed being a .gov union worker. lmao. Dude is for sure voting against his interests.

 

[MongGrel]

blue collar people are stupid and they deserve everything they get. Soon we wont need them driving shit around and they will be even poorer. Why should intelligent people pay more for goods that have no benefit from being built in this country by people who couldn't even have the sense to protect their positions because freedumb. Look at texashiker. That dude is straight blue collar poor and he hates unions.

I love buying usa made products that are high quality. I love buying things made all over the world that are high quality. But these dumb people arent becoming master leather workers. Thats the realm of intelligent people. They want to mindlessly injection mold plastic dildos for $35 a hour with bennies so they can buy a shit 1200sq ft track home in some shitty suburb of some shitty blue collar city and pop out 2 retard kids with a ugly dumb bitch who came from the same place. Fuck them. Build walls around the wealth and let them be freedumb.

My opinion of your opinions has suddenly dropped like a rock for some reason.

Toolmakers and Mold Makers are considered Blue Collar, and actually produce the complex tooling to manufacture/mantain that equipment.

You seems to have that confused with Machine Operators.

I doubt anyone pushing a button on a mold making dildos ever has made $35 an hour.

 

[JSt0rm]

i used to care but then i see trump rallies full of these blue collar biker retards and mouth breathers and its like why the fuck should i care about the lives of these people? They dumb.

 

[MongGrel]

i used to care but then i see trump rallies full of these blue collar biker retards and mouth breathers and its like why the fuck should i care about the lives of these people? They dumb.

I tend to feel the same way, but I suppose there are different levels of blue collar workers like anything else.

*shrug*

I used to despise a few morons at the last shop I worked in that sounded about the same. I had a buddy that was a tool maker also years ago, when we used to hang out and hit the bars a lot he joked about how a lot of the people he met said "Oh yeah I used to be a Tool Maker" when they had barely a clue about it and clearly couldn't hit their ass with both hands as far as that went.

 

[theeedude]

Wait until AI and robotics really kicks in and all these guys get canned. These morons will then really be raging and vote to deny themselves Medicaid, so they will be unemployed and uninsured. Gonna be hilarious.

 

[trenchfoot]

Per the OP title: And likewise, as union wages go up so does non-union wages so as to keep those non-union workers from migrating over to higher paying union protected jobs.

And so it was that a strong vibrant middle class developed in the post-war 40's and 50's.

Having been both management and a union business agent at different times in my work history, I can honestly say there are advantages and disadvantages with having and not having unions representing their workers.

I'll not go any further than to reiterate what has been said time and again in this forum: If there were no need for unions then they would not exist. Meaning, if employers hire wisely and treat their workers well and compensate them fairly, there wouldn't be a need for unions to have to negotiate for fair compensation.

As it is, we still have business owners who wish to the heavens that they could own slaves like the good 'ol years, or at the least have the revolving door of dirt cheap illegal immigrant labor remain wide open as it is at the present. Ergo........

 

[Jhhnn]

i used to care but then i see trump rallies full of these blue collar biker retards and mouth breathers and its like why the fuck should i care about the lives of these people? They dumb.

They're not dumb. Trumpists aren't truly representative of blue collar America at all other than being beat down & confused by ongoing job creator efforts to disown them completely. Blue collar people are happy to do honest work & take pride in having a job, being productive, not being dependent on handouts. Those things have been progressively denied to them. When welfare recipients do nearly as well as they do, they resent them & the govt, not the ownership class & the bosses.

A poignant article-

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/trump-white-blue-collar-supporters

 

[MongGrel]

They're not dumb. Trumpists aren't truly representative of blue collar America at all other than being beat down & confused by ongoing job creator efforts to disown them completely. Blue collar people are happy to do honest work & take pride in having a job, being productive, not being dependent on handouts. Those things have been progressively denied to them. When welfare recipients do nearly as well as they do, they resent them & the govt, not the ownership class & the bosses.

A poignant article-

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/trump-white-blue-collar-supporters

I'm not even sure if that is entirely true.

I spent 30 years working my way to the top of the Blue Collar ladder pretty much, and loved my job and worked hand and hand doing R&D work with Engineers.

Then was randomly dumped on the street from a Corporate desicion from some a Post Hole Digger efficiency expert, who did not even know what type of machining equipment he was evaluating when he did a walk through at the time. I just love people who are experts at their job, that have to ask you what they are even looking at Just filling out a spreadsheet I guess.

I resent the hell out of the Ownership class myself, I hate Trump. He's the Anti-Christ in my eyes as far as anything manufacturing related goes.

But I digress, sorry. I've ranted enough along those lines for the day.

 

[Jhhnn]

I'm not even sure if that is entirely true.

I spent 30 years working my way to the top of the Blue Collar ladder pretty much, and loved my job and worked hand and hand doing R&D work with Engineers. I resent the hell out of the Ownership class myself, I hate Trump. He's the Anti-Christ in my eyes as far as anything manufacturing related goes.

But I digress, sorry. I've ranted enough along those lines for the day.

You just think about things before you believe in them. I'm sure you realize that's not universal. My background is similar. I'm sure we can both recall some of the potential Trumpsters we worked with over the years. It doesn't mean they weren't good hands. It just means they're more susceptible to emotional bullshit.

 

[theeedude]

I hate how people bash on welfare recipients, but then GOP writes a blank check to big pharma, and they can rip the government more on one prescription than a whole family lives on for several years. Or they pay for deficient or unnecessary military programs more than welfare for millions of people, and it gets no attention.

 

[shady28]

Don't worry, they are coming after the public sector unions now. Scott Walker gutted the teachers union here in Wisconsin and significantly lowered compensation. I guess the ultimate objective here is to remove all middle class jobs, even for those with a college education.

I lived in WI when that happened. I remember the recall, which failed miserably. Walker was trying to balance the budget in a declining economy (from the 2008 bubble bust), the union didn't cooperate, so yes he eviscerated them.

You can blame the GOP if you want, but these things are all linked. You can't expect that the people affected by the destruction of private sector unions via globalization / associated trade agreements (and Milwaukee was very affected) are going to vote for big benefits and protection of government unions at their own expense, in the middle of a huge recession, where full time jobs are being replaced by part-time lower paying jobs. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Milwaukee is an interesting case. Milwaukee did everything right AFAIK, the manufacturing moved offshore so they went high-tech. Milwaukee is the home of Rockwell's Allen-Bradley and Johnson Controls, among many others within the automation / industrial engineering arena. These are powerhouses of industrial automation tech in North America.

Yet, the city still lost ground. Without their move to being an automation stronghold, they would have doubtless become another Detroit.

 

[Jhhnn]

You can blame the GOP if you want, but these things are all linked. You can't expect that the people affected by the destruction of private sector unions via globalization / associated trade agreements (and Milwaukee was very affected) are going to vote for big benefits and protection of government unions at their own expense, in the middle of a huge recession, where full time jobs are being replaced by part-time lower paying jobs. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Race to the bottom, huh?

 

[Ackmed]

oh and lol at ackmed being a .gov union worker. lmao. Dude is for sure voting against his interests.

Who am I voting for again?

You claim all blue collar people are stupid? That's pretty pathetic of you. But not really surprising. Also very hypocritical of you.

 

[nickqt]

What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

It wasn't good for the goose, but when you're a goose and can vote, fuck over those ganders just because you can.

That is voting against your own self interest to a T. Lowering what management will pay other workers will almost always lower what you get now, or at some point in the future.

 

[shady28]

It wasn't good for the goose, but when you're a goose and can vote, fuck over those ganders just because you can.

That is voting against your own self interest to a T. Lowering what management will pay other workers will almost always lower what you get now, or at some point in the future.

I agree with you. The problem is that people who voted for D's and R's in the past already supported "Lowering what management will pay other workers...".

And you can't say that is a GOP thing.

Here's a quote from one of you lefties in this very thread :

"blue collar people are stupid and they deserve everything they get."

I see this repeatedly from the so-called left.

For the "record", I am not blue collar. But I've seen what outsourcing does, and I see the stupid arrogant people who think they are immune who are then shocked when they are replaced. And I'm not talking about engineers, I'm talking about their bosses, their HR departments, their controllers ( accountants ). You name it, it's up for grabs to the cheapest worker.

 

[Jhhnn]

I agree with you. The problem is that people who voted for D's and R's in the past already supported "Lowering what management will pay other workers...".

And you can't say that is a GOP thing.

Here's a quote from one of you lefties in this very thread :

"blue collar people are stupid and they deserve everything they get."

I see this repeatedly from the so-called left.

For the "record", I am not blue collar. But I've seen what outsourcing does, and I see the stupid arrogant people who think they are immune who are then shocked when they are replaced. And I'm not talking about engineers, I'm talking about their bosses, their HR departments, their controllers ( accountants ). You name it, it's up for grabs to the cheapest worker.

Please. JStorm's opinion is an outlier. You know it. Stop pretending.

 

[Jhhnn]

Please. JStorm's opinion is an outlier. You know it. Stop pretending.

Oh, and Walker's policies are a mess-

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-b...er-look-at-wisconsins-economy-under-gov-scott

Just one of many similar results from googling " wisconsin economy".

 

[Texashiker]

And what about the issues you expressed concerns about- vacation, maternity leave & the rest? Didn't you get a raise & then bumped off the payroll?

The union refused to address deckhands working 20 hours a day, one of the many reasons why I voted them out.

I got a nice raise, but the only thing that changed after the union was voted out was the pay. Sometimes working 24 hours a day,,,, so I quit.