Squisher
Lifer
- Aug 17, 2000
- 21,204
- 66
- 91
The problem is that these reputations are seldom justified.
I believe 40x is an very old figure. The average now in the US is more like 500x. Given incestuous relationships between board members and the CEO of a company it is no wonder. I'm on the board of your company and I'll vote you a raise and you're on the board of my company and you do me likewise. What I can't figure out is the shareholder apathy that allows this. It is not that the company is returning even close to what foreign counterparts are given their ratio of worker vs. CEO pay is much smaller.
My company
Isn't he a piece of work?
I believe part of a free market is the right of a worker to demand a safe and fair working environment by organizing and using their power in numbers to sway those with money power.
I would like to know how everyone who doesn't like unions feels about their employee healthcare, their safe work environments, their fair wages?
My union has done me well.
They're a business that protected my concerns and I gladly paid for it.
As with any business there's good and bad.
They're a business that protected my concerns and I gladly paid for it.
As with any business there's good and bad.
Well, I can tell you that my father is very happy with his benefits package (pay rate, health, dental, 401(k), profit sharing, shop safety, vacation time, etc...). He was working in the melt shop of a steel mill on the caster (casts the billets that become seamless pipe) and is now working in melt shop maintenance as an electrician. His is a non-union shop. USW is not happy with the place b/c the workers won't unionize. He hasn't been a union member since taking a white hat at a Midland, PA steel mill before they shut down(don't remember the name b/c I was a little young).
EMPshockwave82
Diamond Member
- Jul 7, 2003
- 3,012
- 2
- 0
Unions were created because working conditions were poor and dangerous. They also helped establish fair wages for workers in those dangers situations.
Currently unions are nearly worthless. If a company treats their employees correctly, looks out for their well being and pay them a fair wage then we would no longer need unions. From my experience with unions, they just pressure people into doing things that typically are only best for about 10% of those they should be trying to protect. Unions also have a tendency to protect the weakest workers and give them the most attention and protection while leaving the best workers with nothing.
A hard working person would be better off without having a union in most cases. A weak worker will love unions. I've known several people that would have been fired if it wasn't for a union because they were shite workers.
Currently unions are nearly worthless. If a company treats their employees correctly, looks out for their well being and pay them a fair wage then we would no longer need unions. From my experience with unions, they just pressure people into doing things that typically are only best for about 10% of those they should be trying to protect. Unions also have a tendency to protect the weakest workers and give them the most attention and protection while leaving the best workers with nothing.
A hard working person would be better off without having a union in most cases. A weak worker will love unions. I've known several people that would have been fired if it wasn't for a union because they were shite workers.
and right there is validation for unions. The company knows they could either voluntarily give benefits that are good or have to deal the workers uniting and demanding these rights. This is why they are important.
Believe me, most real unions (skilled laborers and craftsmen's) have ways to deal with the bottom feeders. I doubt many of you understand how unions other than teacher unions work.
Every real Union employee hates the stigma that teacher unions give them.
If you are lazy and a fuck up, they don't call you about jobs. They send you to shit jobs that no one else wants where the employer sucks or the foreman is a dumbass, or the equipment is not there. When you are starting out you deal with a few of these jobs, but if they see that you are good hard worker, they have a lot of room for employment.
no, but it's the unions that have the US automakers handcuffed because they refuse to lower wages commensurate with their job level and skill set, reduce healthcare costs by refusing to have employees pay a portion of the premium, continue to pay idle employees at idle plants, outlandish pensions etc.
with all these legacy costs, they are unable to pump money into R&D to produce competitive products.
then they have the audacity to go on strike to demand higher pay, as if they weren't overpaid already?
well, guess what. now US automakers are now suffering and if they crumble, all the union members will be out of jobs.
which would you rather have? less pay or no pay?
i'm not saying the blame is all on the unions, management shares the blame by relying too much on trucks.
but unions aren't exactly helping the situation. they're making it far worse.
I've worked on skyscrapers, both commercial and home construction, worked landscaping, worked as a dishwasher, a line cook in a 120 degree ktichen, a night watchman at my college, and humped a 100+ pounds of body armor and ammo in Fallujah.
All of those were a PLEASURE compared to a stressful office job. Working on projects that take 18+ months and trying to plan out using ever changing technologies, using a spec the client wants to constantly change, while still hitting deadlines will take years off your life. Working manual labor or anything physical made me feel great. Only problem is I couldnt find a labor job that pays half of what I make being an engineer.
DrPizza
Administrator Elite Member Goat Whisperer
BoomerD's right. Too many people think unions are bad for the economy, bad for "free enterprise and the American way" - they don't understand that without unions, you can pretty much forget about benefits such as health care. Of course some idiot will say "don't like it? Work elsewhere." If there were no unions, the question is "where?" We'd simply roll back wages to the turn of the century (adjusted for inflation.) The only thing different would be improved safety in the workplace - and companies are constantly pressuring for changes in rules. I recently attended a nursing professionals dinner (my wife won some prestigious award) where the guest speaker was very involved in union activities related to legislation. I don't know a lot about nursing, but as she was naming things that the nurse's union had to actually fight to prevent from happening, I was thinking "wtf??!" It was clear that there's a lot of lobbying going on which is motivated solely on increasing profits at the expense of having professionals who know what their doing taking care of patients. Seriously, there was one piece of legislation that would essentially have allowed high school graduates to work in home health care in the capacity of a nurse, giving all sorts of medications - I'm not talking about tylenol either; I'm talking about serious drugs that if you screw up the dosage could have serious life or death consequences. Our local hospital has maybe a half dozen nurses who are certified to run "pick" lines (I haven't a clue how to spell the abbreviation) which means they insert a catheter into a vein and thread it through to the heart to administer drugs directly into the heart. It's hard to find nurses who are certified to do this. Do you really think the solution is to train some high school graduates to replace the nurses??
<snip> I was going to go on a huge rant about bad perceptions of teacher's unions; that's probably left for a separate thread. Suffice to say, one of the biggest problems in education, and one that's apparent in the video located in the signature of someone in this thread, is discipline. When I went to school (70's), if you misbehaved badly in class, you were sent to the principal's office. Most kids feared this - there was a decent chance you'd get paddled. (I'm not advocating that we paddle kids.) AND THEN, when you got home and your dad found out, you were in trouble again!! Heck, if I was the kid with his feet up on the desk, or the kid who walked across the desks and my parents saw that on TV, I wouldn't be able to sit down for a week after I got home; probably a month since it was on television. Today: (and this is from my perspective, teaching in a "good" public school; not only do we offer a ton of electives in agriculture, welding, animal science, one of the top ranked science teachers in the nation, etc., but we're also in the top 5 in Western NY for SAT scores) a severely misbehaving students who is disrupting class is sent to the office for 10 minutes. They write a little note explaining why they are there. They return to class. Get detention. Don't show up for detention. Get double detention. Don't show up for that either. Get in-school suspension where they hang out all day, barely working, and catching up on homework (and generally a poor job at that) that they didn't do the last 3 nights. They go home, and again, there are no repercussions, no punishments. The playstation, XBox 3, etc., that the parent said they were going to ground the student from if the student misbehaves are still being played. A lot of those parents just don't care enough to put forth the effort to help correct these behaviors; a lot of them play lip service, but never carry out on their threats. I cannot count the number of times I've put on report cards and progress reports to please call the school and schedule a time for a parent-teacher meeting concerning their kid's grades. But, I *CAN* count on my fingers the number of times the parents have called after receiving this comment. I had a student who failed the state exam with a 63. For 5 months I was trying to arrange with the parents to have their kid stay after school with me once a week for an hour - at no extra pay for me. Think maybe their kid would have passed with that little bit of extra effort?? "Meet the teachers night" - It's August now. I don't even know which students I have. I can make a list of the parents/families who are going to show up in September with about 90% accuracy. I might miss a couple of the freshmen.
And, people compare public schools to private schools?? Private schools: parents care (else they wouldn't be forking out the money for tuition.), repercussion: Johnny is thrown out of school if his bad behavior continues. I taught at a private school for one year. EVERY one of my students was worried about their grades - it wasn't a matter of if they'd pass or not; they had to do GOOD or their parents would be pissed. I received phone calls for grades below a 90. So, now parents want vouchers to go to private schools, and fools think the teacher's union is fighting this to protect their jobs. Wrong.
Let's say tuition to the private school is 10k. And, to be nice, lets say you can get a voucher for 10k. Do you seriously think for a moment that the private school is going to open their doors and say "give us ALL of your students!" Nope, they're going to pick and choose the students they want. Trouble maker? Bad grades? Sorry. Oh, hey, look! Our demand just went way up, and the parents who were paying before now have 10k vouchers. Lets raise tuition, now we can build better facilities and attract better teachers by offering a higher salary! And guess what - most of the people who couldn't afford it before will still be unable to afford the private school tuition. They don't have unlimited room, but of course, a few students will make it there, and for them, that's wonderful. But, what happens to the public school now: You've just drained a small fortune from the public school. All those kids with IEP's who cost a heck of a lot more to meet state mandates for are still there. All the trouble makers are still there. All the kids from affluent families are gone. Oh, and your best teachers just left. All vouchers will do is drain the public schools of the best students and best teachers. I don't see people getting in line to replace those teachers. Teacher's union is against vouchers on this principle, and their detractors believe "it's just so you can keep bad teachers." Wrong. It's so they can keep GOOD teachers in the public schools. Unfortunately, the public schools have to take the bad students with the good students.
<snip> I was going to go on a huge rant about bad perceptions of teacher's unions; that's probably left for a separate thread. Suffice to say, one of the biggest problems in education, and one that's apparent in the video located in the signature of someone in this thread, is discipline. When I went to school (70's), if you misbehaved badly in class, you were sent to the principal's office. Most kids feared this - there was a decent chance you'd get paddled. (I'm not advocating that we paddle kids.) AND THEN, when you got home and your dad found out, you were in trouble again!! Heck, if I was the kid with his feet up on the desk, or the kid who walked across the desks and my parents saw that on TV, I wouldn't be able to sit down for a week after I got home; probably a month since it was on television. Today: (and this is from my perspective, teaching in a "good" public school; not only do we offer a ton of electives in agriculture, welding, animal science, one of the top ranked science teachers in the nation, etc., but we're also in the top 5 in Western NY for SAT scores) a severely misbehaving students who is disrupting class is sent to the office for 10 minutes. They write a little note explaining why they are there. They return to class. Get detention. Don't show up for detention. Get double detention. Don't show up for that either. Get in-school suspension where they hang out all day, barely working, and catching up on homework (and generally a poor job at that) that they didn't do the last 3 nights. They go home, and again, there are no repercussions, no punishments. The playstation, XBox 3, etc., that the parent said they were going to ground the student from if the student misbehaves are still being played. A lot of those parents just don't care enough to put forth the effort to help correct these behaviors; a lot of them play lip service, but never carry out on their threats. I cannot count the number of times I've put on report cards and progress reports to please call the school and schedule a time for a parent-teacher meeting concerning their kid's grades. But, I *CAN* count on my fingers the number of times the parents have called after receiving this comment. I had a student who failed the state exam with a 63. For 5 months I was trying to arrange with the parents to have their kid stay after school with me once a week for an hour - at no extra pay for me. Think maybe their kid would have passed with that little bit of extra effort?? "Meet the teachers night" - It's August now. I don't even know which students I have. I can make a list of the parents/families who are going to show up in September with about 90% accuracy. I might miss a couple of the freshmen.
And, people compare public schools to private schools?? Private schools: parents care (else they wouldn't be forking out the money for tuition.), repercussion: Johnny is thrown out of school if his bad behavior continues. I taught at a private school for one year. EVERY one of my students was worried about their grades - it wasn't a matter of if they'd pass or not; they had to do GOOD or their parents would be pissed. I received phone calls for grades below a 90. So, now parents want vouchers to go to private schools, and fools think the teacher's union is fighting this to protect their jobs. Wrong.
Let's say tuition to the private school is 10k. And, to be nice, lets say you can get a voucher for 10k. Do you seriously think for a moment that the private school is going to open their doors and say "give us ALL of your students!" Nope, they're going to pick and choose the students they want. Trouble maker? Bad grades? Sorry. Oh, hey, look! Our demand just went way up, and the parents who were paying before now have 10k vouchers. Lets raise tuition, now we can build better facilities and attract better teachers by offering a higher salary! And guess what - most of the people who couldn't afford it before will still be unable to afford the private school tuition. They don't have unlimited room, but of course, a few students will make it there, and for them, that's wonderful. But, what happens to the public school now: You've just drained a small fortune from the public school. All those kids with IEP's who cost a heck of a lot more to meet state mandates for are still there. All the trouble makers are still there. All the kids from affluent families are gone. Oh, and your best teachers just left. All vouchers will do is drain the public schools of the best students and best teachers. I don't see people getting in line to replace those teachers. Teacher's union is against vouchers on this principle, and their detractors believe "it's just so you can keep bad teachers." Wrong. It's so they can keep GOOD teachers in the public schools. Unfortunately, the public schools have to take the bad students with the good students.
If without Unions we would go back to slave wages and zero benefits. Then why does about 85% of the workforce not work under a Union and recieve far better wages and benefits that your prediction?
Red Dawn
Elite Member
- Jun 4, 2001
- 57,529
- 3
- 0
I hear ya, continuous stress sucks but the problem with hard physical labor is that after years of doing it your body starts to break down. You can take Meds for your high blood pressure and Viagra to combat the effect of those meds but when your back goes there's not much you can do. Just be glad you're not in Japan, they'll literally work you to death.
Ever heard of of "lift with the knees"? I've had lots of family members who were lifelong laborers, some have bad backs some dont. You dont have to be old either, I know plenty of 24 year old turret gunners who had a full 1 inch spinal compression in less than a year, and who came home to years of physical therapy and chiropractor visits. People in offices can get bad backs too, not sure where you were going with that as I dont really see how its relevant to the thread topic.
EMPshockwave82
Diamond Member
- Jul 7, 2003
- 3,012
- 2
- 0
I helped my father build the house he is living in. Not sure where you were going with your little bold and quote there but maybe you shouldn't assume that everyone on this forum works in an office.
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