Union decline lowers wages of nonunion workers

[bshole]

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.

The great thing is that they are making noises about banning tenure for professors. The utterly retarded fuck seems completely oblivious to the fact that UWMadison is an innovative force in academia. By the time he is done it will be more like a junior college.

This past June, American academia went into an uproar over Gov. Scott Walker’s new budget in Wisconsin, which not only cut $250 million from higher education, but also severely weakened shared faculty governance and effectively destroyed professor tenure at state universities. Specifically, any professor in the system—tenured or not—could be dismissed or laid off by the 18-member Board of Regents using maddeningly vague criteria: “when such an action is deemed necessary due to a budget or program decision requiring program discontinuance, curtailment, modification or redirection.”

 

[Puffnstuff]

The face of labor in our country is forever changed and reminiscing about days gone by will not bring back the way that it was. I look back at how GM used to own over half the new car business in this country and then their lack of innovation, poor quality and high prices opened the door to foreign competition that permanently seized their market share. What was once over 50% is today hovering around 15% and it forced them to make drastic changes to remain in business. I was burned multiple times by shoddy quality GM products which drove me to Toyota, however today I drive a UAW built Ford which is a good car. I don't feel sorry for workers who don't care about their workmanship and then lose their jobs over it.

Of the four business schools of thought I subscribe to the human resource one but I don't believe that workers in unskilled jobs should be making an outrageous wage as do some in this country. The days of manufacturing glory are long gone and will never return as more plants open in third world countries starving for any kind of work irrespective of how low the wages are. This has spawned "Social Dumping" by large companies and until international laws are created and enforced to level the playing field this cycle of loss will continue for all countries not just this one. If you pay attention to international business trends the UK is experiencing the same kinds of losses to Asian manufacturing. If you are concerned about losing your blue collar job go back to school and get a degree in an in demand career field.

 

[shady28]

The great thing is that they are making noises about banning tenure for professors. The utterly retarded fuck seems completely oblivious to the fact that UWMadison is an innovative force in academia. By the time he is done it will be more like a junior college.

Tenure is nothing more than a contact for a permanent job for life. It usually says a tenured professor cannot be fired unless the state can prove they are incompetent or unethical, or the department shuts down.

There is nothing like it in the private sector.

Wisconsin would by far not be the first to do away with it.

I don't believe in a guaranteed job for life for gov't employees. I would say most people don't.

What's amazing is how horrible those who hold gov't jobs seem to believe throwing these people into the private sector might be. It's as if some great penalty or punishment were being exacted, a great injustice. That, in and of itself, speaks volumes.

 

[nickqt]

I don't feel sorry for workers who don't care about their workmanship and then lose their jobs over it.

It wasn't the workers who were designing the shitty cars, and cutting corners to increase profits to the shareholders. It was management.

 

[Jhhnn]

The face of labor in our country is forever changed and reminiscing about days gone by will not bring back the way that it was. I look back at how GM used to own over half the new car business in this country and then their lack of innovation, poor quality and high prices opened the door to foreign competition that permanently seized their market share. What was once over 50% is today hovering around 15% and it forced them to make drastic changes to remain in business. I was burned multiple times by shoddy quality GM products which drove me to Toyota, however today I drive a UAW built Ford which is a good car. I don't feel sorry for workers who don't care about their workmanship and then lose their jobs over it.

Of the four business schools of thought I subscribe to the human resource one but I don't believe that workers in unskilled jobs should be making an outrageous wage as do some in this country. The days of manufacturing glory are long gone and will never return as more plants open in third world countries starving for any kind of work irrespective of how low the wages are. This has spawned "Social Dumping" by large companies and until international laws are created and enforced to level the playing field this cycle of loss will continue for all countries not just this one. If you pay attention to international business trends the UK is experiencing the same kinds of losses to Asian manufacturing. If you are concerned about losing your blue collar job go back to school and get a degree in an in demand career field.

As if there are enough such jobs to fill the gap. You offer the usual bootstraps bullshit.

 

[shady28]

It wasn't the workers who were designing the shitty cars, and cutting corners to increase profits to the shareholders. It was management.

^^ This is true.

 

[bshole]

Tenure is nothing more than a contact for a permanent job for life. It usually says a tenured professor cannot be fired unless the state can prove they are incompetent or unethical, or the department shuts down.

Tenure is a measure to attract and keep the brightest professors in the country. Lose that and you will quickly get the scrubs as the best and brightest move to states with tenure or to private industry. Gut the higher education system and the fruits will become readily apparent. One need only look around the world to see this. We shitcanned manufacturing and Asia ate it up. We are shitcanning engineering and Asia is eating it up. Shitcan education and Asia will surpass the West in engineering, manufacturing AND research. I think it actually inevitable. We are committing slow suicide and you apparently approve of it.

Save a buck today, lose the fucking world tomorrow....

I think most students of American higher education would agree that the most serious problem affecting colleges and universities today--and also faculty careers--is the "contingentization" (to coin a word) of academic labor. Less than 30 percent of college and university faculty members have tenure or are eligible for it. The rest hold what we call contingent appointments--either part-time or full-time faculty positions that are ineligible for tenure.

Most faculty members on contingent appointments serve on a term-to-term basis and can be let go with very little notice. Pay and benefits are significantly lower than that of the tenured and tenure-track faculty. Many part timers teach at several institutions, sometimes as many as six or seven courses a term, just to make ends meet. Most of these faculty members have advanced degrees--including the Ph.D.--in their chosen fields. The AAUP has issued a number of policy documents and reports addressing this problem, which, it believes, has created an exploited class of faculty members, diminished academic quality, and significantly reduced the attractiveness of the academic teaching profession.

 

[Jhhnn]

Tenure is a measure to attract and keep the brightest professors in the country. Lose that and you will quickly get the scrubs as the best and brightest move to states with tenure or to private industry. Gut the higher education system and the fruits will become readily apparent. One need only look around the world to see this. We shitcanned manufacturing and Asia ate it up. We are shitcanning engineering and Asia is eating it up. Shitcan education and Asia will surpass the West in engineering, manufacturing AND research. I think it actually inevitable. We are committing slow suicide and you apparently approve of it.

Save a buck today, lose the fucking world tomorrow....

You're not quite getting it.
Our financial elite has gone multinational. We don't matter more to them than anybody else. They have more than enough bright & educated people from all over the world to fill the jobs.

 

[shady28]

Tenure is a measure to attract and keep the brightest professors in the country. Lose that and you will quickly get the scrubs as the best and brightest move to states with tenure or to private industry. Gut the higher education system and the fruits will become readily apparent. One need only look around the world to see this. We shitcanned manufacturing and Asia ate it up. We are shitcanning engineering and Asia is eating it up. Shitcan education and Asia will surpass the West in engineering, manufacturing AND research. I think it actually inevitable. We are committing slow suicide and you apparently approve of it.

Save a buck today, lose the fucking world tomorrow....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...01687974517_story.html?utm_term=.8a20846b1e7c

Every year, measurable injuries are inflicted on tens of thousands of already at-risk children by this state’s teacher tenure system, which is so politically entrenched that only the courts can protect the discrete and insular minority it victimizes.
...
"When incompetent or negligent teachers gain tenure, dismissal procedures are so complex and costly that the process can take up to 10 years and cost up to $450,000. The trial court called the power to dismiss “illusory.” Each year approximately two teachers are dismissed for unsatisfactory performance — 0.0007 percent of California’s 277,000 teachers."

Instead, school districts are forced to adopt what is called the “dance of the lemons,” whereby grossly ineffective teachers are shuffled from school to school.
...
It “shocks the conscience,” the trial court said, that there is “no dispute” that “a significant number of grossly ineffective teachers” — perhaps more than 8,000, each with 28 students — are doing quantifiable damage to children’s life prospects.

Technically, California teachers are granted lifetime tenure after just two years.

The teachers unions in CA have won their appeal.

You should be proud....

 

[Sonikku]

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.

Several more decades in the future when ai is a thing and robots and automation can handle 90% of the jobs there's going to be a serious reckoning. I wonder if the displaced many will be content to die in the gutter, their obsolescence in production rendering their presence useless in the global economy.

 

[theeedude]

Several more decades in the future when ai is a thing and robots and automation can handle 90% of the jobs there's going to be a serious reckoning. I wonder if the displaced many will be content to die in the gutter, their obsolescence in production rendering their presence useless in the global economy.

Of course they won't be content to die in the gutter. They'll vote themselves welfare while pretending that it's all the immigrants fault.

 

[Slew Foot]

Having recently begun interacting with corporate executives, Im all for mandatory unionization for all private sector employees.

 

[JSt0rm]

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.

texashick sees first hand the benefits of unions. still votes against his interest. And I'm expected to care more about his position then he is even willing? lol.

 

[Exterous]

Unions have a severe PR problem right now but some big names out there don't seem interested in fixing it. Take the Chicago Public Teacher's union and their refusal to budge on issues despite the very real wall they are racing to. Their "Screw you and everyone after you, I'm getting mine" mentality is easy marketing material. Its also pretty easy to find stories about union employees in NY or CA who are exploiting the system . The number of NY teacher's receiving a six figure pension has quadrupled from 2009 to 2014 and might cross the 5,000 line this year despite the growing strain on a system that has just 63 percent of the required assets.

Here in SE Michigan its hard to not know someone who works with\in an Auto workers union and then get filled in on all the stories about workers who should be fired but the union forces the company to retain. Just take one of the examples of workers drinking on the job:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/10/chrysler-workers-drinking_n_2272291.html

Or stories like this one where UAW workers sexually harass employees, they are removed from their positions by the company but the UAW files a grievance to get them their job back:

A Ford Motor official said the company has "disciplined and discharged" a number of employees at its Chicago assembly plant after a civil lawsuit was filed against the company in November alleging sexual harassment of female workers.

In a statement this week, Jimmy Settles, United Auto Workers vice president, said plant chairman Allen "Coby" Millender, who is named in the lawsuit, was suspended by the company The UAW filed a grievance challenging Millender's suspension and he returned to work on April 14, Settles said.

Speaking to the Chicago Tribune, Keith Hunt, an attorney representing the female employees in the suit said the union had not represented workers, noting, “for years, they’ve done absolutely nothing.” He went on to remark on the hypocrisy of the union intervening to protect a top local official when it had done nothing to protect its members.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-ford-plant-manager-0508-biz-20150507-story.html

Its a long standing issue with Ford being forced to reinstate many UAW harassers

Not to mention all of their shady business practices:
http://www.wxyz.com/news/uaw-publishes-names-of-ex-members
http://www.kentuckyemploymentlawyerblog.com/2013/01/kentucky-union-workers-to-be-r.html

This isn't an argument against unions as they do serve a necessary role to keep things in balance. Unfortunately there are some big unions with power tilted well in their favor and they are continuing to squeeze as much as they can with no regard for how it plays out or affects every one else. Unfortunately they're big enough with giant issues so I don't see it them or the negative PR they generate going away any time soon. As a result I suspect we'll see a continued reduction in Union membership

 

[Sonikku]

Of course they won't be content to die in the gutter. They'll vote themselves welfare while pretending that it's all the immigrants fault.

Except welfare doesn't work with that magnitude of employees displaced. You need more makers than takers to keep the system viable. But by that point the makers will have so much pull that no vote may make a difference. Especially when both parties are both bought out by said special interests.

 

[Jhhnn]

Except welfare doesn't work with that magnitude of employees displaced. You need more makers than takers to keep the system viable. But by that point the makers will have so much pull that no vote may make a difference. Especially when both parties are both bought out by said special interests.

While that was true in Jamestown it's not true today. Automation, better engineering & better materials render much of human labor obsolete. There's also the legacy, the inheritance of past work that's of an enduring nature. It takes a lot less work to maintain the Eisenhower tunnel than to have created it, for example.

We live in an astoundingly rich country with plenty to go around. We just need to figure out better ways to distribute it. FUGM isn't it, obviously.

 

[glenn1]

Tenure is a measure to attract and keep the brightest professors in the country. Lose that and you will quickly get the scrubs as the best and brightest move to states with tenure or to private industry. Gut the higher education system and the fruits will become readily apparent. One need only look around the world to see this. We shitcanned manufacturing and Asia ate it up. We are shitcanning engineering and Asia is eating it up. Shitcan education and Asia will surpass the West in engineering, manufacturing AND research. I think it actually inevitable. We are committing slow suicide and you apparently approve of it.

Save a buck today, lose the fucking world tomorrow....

Bullcrap. You can protect the intellectual freedom of teachers/professors to hold unpopular viewpoints and not be subject to termination for reasons of political views or other non-performance reasons. Those protections have nothing to do with whether it makes sense from either the labor or management side to maintain the tenure system of effectively lifetime employment with a single institution. Pay for tons of schooling for years to get your PhD and then work as a near slave to the university for more years while hoping to get that golden "tenure" position when you're like 40? Wow, that's really fair to women (who might want to start a family), the poor, and almost everyone else who isn't one of those tenured folks.

 

[Atreus21]

Yeah, if only we could benefit from artificially high prices for labor that unions afford us. Unless of course you're an employer.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Meh, never been in a union and have done very well for the last 26 years since I got out of the Navy.

 

[Jaskalas]

I don't feel sorry for workers who don't care about their workmanship and then lose their jobs over it.

That'd be a companies corporate board forcing profits through cuts. Once you go public the only objective of your owners is looting. I don't think it's right to say "workers" to blame.

 

[fskimospy]

Yeah, if only we could benefit from artificially high prices for labor that unions afford us. Unless of course you're an employer.

Why are they artificially high? Do you think wages that are decreased due to concentrations of capital are artificially low?

 

[theeedude]

Bullcrap. You can protect the intellectual freedom of teachers/professors to hold unpopular viewpoints and not be subject to termination for reasons of political views or other non-performance reasons. Those protections have nothing to do with whether it makes sense from either the labor or management side to maintain the tenure system of effectively lifetime employment with a single institution. Pay for tons of schooling for years to get your PhD and then work as a near slave to the university for more years while hoping to get that golden "tenure" position when you're like 40? Wow, that's really fair to women (who might want to start a family), the poor, and almost everyone else who isn't one of those tenured folks.

Google is offering $1M signing bonuses for top computer science PhD's, Republican run state universities will be offering budget cuts and no tenure.
You want to decimate your own universities, that's fine. But then don't be surprised in a few years when the jobs go where talent is.

 

[emperus]

Meh, never been in a union and have done very well for the last 26 years since I got out of the Navy.

This is a startlingly out of touch comment. Part of the reason you did well is that unions increased standards of living for their union members that became normal for everyone else.

 

[bshole]

Yeah, if only we could benefit from artificially high prices for labor that unions afford us. Unless of course you're an employer.

ROFLMFAO!!!! Like we are benefitting from the OBSCENELY overpriced CEOs? There is a reason that the management/labor pay gap is at its highest in a century and GROWING. The reason is that so many of the lower and middle class buy into the trickle down economics. They cheerlead their own destruction. They will go to the wall to protect the income of the vastly wealthy and fight to eat at the income of other middle class folks. What they fail to realize is that for the rich to inhale all the additional wealth, MILLIONS must sacrifice, including themselves.

Is 25% too little Atreus? Perhaps the wealthy need to have 50% of all income in America or perhaps 75%?

 

[glenn1]

Google is offering $1M signing bonuses for top computer science PhD's, Republican run state universities will be offering budget cuts and no tenure.
You want to decimate your own universities, that's fine. But then don't be surprised in a few years when the jobs go where talent is.

LOL, so we'll "decimate" our universities unless professors have lifetime tenure? That huge line of adjunct professors stretching down the campus would gladly do the teaching for the tenured professors who are too busy publishing anyway to have any time for the low-life students. And this is even before the MOOC model has really achieved liftoff and does to StateU what Amazon did to Borders Books and half the stores in the mall. Muttering ominously about how tenure is invaluable is is just one more example of wishful thinking like the unions where the members of a class think they're a lot more valuable than they actually are.