A Different Topic - We need UNIONS!

[flacaltenn]

Do you really know what it costs to go to even an inexpensive university? I do. I am currently taking two classes per quarter. Now I own my own home, and have a good job. Even so, 2K+ for just 9 credits makes a hole in my budget. And I make double the average blue collar income. Science classes are especially expensive. Notebooks and lab supplies.

Another point is that it is not just outsourcing that is affecting the labor market, but equally serious for those without a craft or higher education, is robosourcing. If your job is simple, a machine can do it. In fact, the last sawmill I helped construct used more maintenance people than production people. And that was many years ago.

When you pay our best scientists and engineers on the par with what second string linebackers make in the NFL, you will see a lot more engineers and scientists. Right now, even little South Korea graduates more engineers than the US does.

I've got a daughter in college right now --- so I'm familiar with the costs. I told her if she did her undergrad at a state school, I'd treat her like a princess and get her through mostly debt free and then we could discuss grad school. OR -- she could go to an elite school, get neglected for 4 yrs and live like a pauper and have a debt.

My point was --- technology drives us OUT of danger of losing standard of living.. OUR KIDS need to be filling those STEM (science, tech, eng, math) slots --- not foreigners. Not everyone is gonna be a chemist or engineer, but new ventures will create jobs at all levels.. While you're at it -- bring back secondary vocational training and apprenticeships.. Because THOSE service jobs can be good careers as well.. Craftsmen and journeymen are STILL required.

(I actually think that most inner city kids in poor academic situations CAN prepare for tech related jobs and innovation.. If they can put together a MIDI audio system to be a D.J. --- they can do robotic scripting.. )

Robosourcing is not all doom and gloom. With flexible robotics and 3D printing small lines can reconfigure products in days or hours. And people can make a living building NICHE goods that couldn't be customized or done efficiently before. Nothing wrong with moving from lever puller to robotic trainer.

If you look at examples of labor evolution like "self-checkout" lanes at the market, you see that the labor hasn't vanished.. It's be re-purposed to an in-store bakery or actual meat market or floral section or even a prescription counter. Same at Home Depot where labor is re-purposed to holding customer "How to" seminars or doing installations.

But EVERY laborer needs to be willing to flex and learn.. And the unions are NOT MODELED for this kind of accomodation.. They NEED to evolve or die...

I'm ex union and can't disagree, lots of make work and deadbeats. Schools too, some kids better off being apprenticed out at a certain age, maybe age 14 working under a contractor learning to wire a machine shop or whatever. By then he should know how to read, write and do math at least up to pre algebra level if schools are doing their job.

There BETTER BE vocational training.. I've looked at how complicated an HVAC tech life has gotten.. Good Gawd --- those guys now face a gauntlet of network controlled thermostats, IR cameras for thermal imaging, and electronics for updating firmware on microprocessors.

And the school districts tell us they can't afford to keep those programs. We can't afford to NOT keep them. And Science and math expectations need to go UP --- not down..

Sacrifice some politically correct bullshit, tell the unions to allow "virtual schooling" so the teachers are NOT the lecturers, but the trainers.

 

[MikeK]

After WWII, most of the World's Industrial capacity had been bombed to rubble.

Literally. Germany, Belgium, Holland, France (mostly by us) Japan, Italy....

Except us. We were just fine. In fact, we had made so much money selling War Supplies to England that it almost covered up the incompetence of the 3rd Worst president in History -- FDR.

At one time during 1941, the US had 14.6% Unemployment. Hard to believe? Not at all. FDR really was that bad and that incompetent.

I digress..... After the War, Britain had some Industrial Capacity but they immediately kicked Winston Churchill to the curb and elected a socialist.

Which totally fucked Britain for the next 40 years.

Germany was a big pile of debris. So was Japan. China had no industrial capacity.....

The only people that could make anything was -- The good ol' US of A.

And we did. We made ANYTHING. And a lot of was just simply JUNK.

Take it however you want, I don't care. I was in the heart of Industry in Cleveland Ohio at the time. Trust me, it was a lot of JUNK.

Manufacturers saw the Germans and Japanese re-tooling and said, "Boys, thems some smart people over there. We need to modernize or we're going to get left behind."

The Unions SLAMMED the door on them. Told them that if they even THOUGHT about modernizing, they'd strike and shut 'em down.

And they would.

I was there. I physically, personally witnessed it.... First hand. I even talked to an Executive VP of Republic Steel about it.

Unions killed American Industry.

Unions and the EPA. Like there's a difference. dimocrap scum. Same thing.

I could see the EPA being hard-asses. I was there when the Cuyahoga River caught fire. Kinda embarrassing.

But they were so incredibly heavy-handed. Guys, I swear to God, they were worse than Nazis.

I was also there when a Federal Judge ruled that Companies inside the City Limits of Cleveland had to have a work force representative of the population of Cleveland.

Which at the time was about 70%.

No time was allowed. I was there.

I watched them hire people that, honest to God, should have been in Prison. Lice-infested, disease-carrying, thieving, drugged-up, dirty street scum.

I was there people.

Don't quote some ass-wipe's bullshit history to me. I WATCHED it unfold. day by day, week by week, month by month until I finally left in 1977.

I knew it was going to go to hell in a hand basket.

It did.

So you know what? Anybody wanna talk to me about Unions?

As far as I'm concerned, they should take them all out and horse whip them. Then smear them with tar and drag them out of town behind a smoking, oil-burning 1985 LTD.

I live in a "Right To Work'' State now and love it. We are so much more modern, so much more prosperous, so much happier, so much better off than ANY Union State.... It isn't even funny.

Union States are dying.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

I could say that I believe in Unions, but I just don't believe in stupid Unions.

But once you have Unions, dimocraps infest them and they bring the stupid.

hoo boy, do they ever bring the stupid.

If you haven't been paid by the Koch Brothers or some equivalent coterie to compose this rather obvious propaganda piece I can only assume you inhabit the category of those who despise unions because you were not accepted into one of the better ones and have thus been relegated to wage slavery.

The fact is the union movement is the best thing that ever happened to the U.S. (along with the FDR Presidency) and it is directly responsible for development of the Great American Middle Class.

It must be said that all unions are not good, but most of them are. The cause of any bad or poorly functioning union is ignorant, uninformed, complacent membership, which also happens to be the cause of America's current political troubles.


The union movement was successful because the quality of life of the American working class had become so intolerably miserable that its members were motivated by empty bellies, abusive treatment, and squalid living conditions to engage in the often dangerous, painful, and sometimes deadly conflicts which finally brought them victory. In simple terms they were moved to action by the pains of abject misery.

Then came the good times; living wages, immunity from abusive bosses, good and healthy working conditions, the 40 hour, five day work week, pensions, sick leave, and a host of other benefits they would not have were it not for their unions. The fact is things got so good for union members they got fat and lazy, and what we are seeing today is the consequence of that. They forgot what it was like before -- and the price of forgetting will be a return to the same conditions.

Those who might be swayed by the content of Edgetho's carefully composed denigration of unions are urged to find and watch as many of the the following movies as possible:

How Green Was My Valley
The Grapes Of Wrath
Native Land
On The Waterfront
The Pajama Game
Harlan County USA
The Organizer
Norma Rae
Matewan
The Molly Maguires
Hoffa

and to read as many of the the following books as possible:

Rebuilding Labor
Why Unions Matter
Unions At The Crossroads
The Transformation of U.S. Unions
Look For The Union Label
What Do We Need A Union For
The CIO
Infighting In The UAW


Above all, don't allow the kind of anti-union propaganda which has become so commonplace today to sway your thinking, because it is propagated by the One Percent whose objective is to return the American working class to the same conditions that existed prior to the union movement -- virtual slavery.

And keep one thing in mind, no matter how bad a union might become -- it is far better than no union!

 

[Missouri_Mike]

After WWII, most of the World's Industrial capacity had been bombed to rubble.

Literally. Germany, Belgium, Holland, France (mostly by us) Japan, Italy....

Except us. We were just fine. In fact, we had made so much money selling War Supplies to England that it almost covered up the incompetence of the 3rd Worst president in History -- FDR.

At one time during 1941, the US had 14.6% Unemployment. Hard to believe? Not at all. FDR really was that bad and that incompetent.

I digress..... After the War, Britain had some Industrial Capacity but they immediately kicked Winston Churchill to the curb and elected a socialist.

Which totally fucked Britain for the next 40 years.

Germany was a big pile of debris. So was Japan. China had no industrial capacity.....

The only people that could make anything was -- The good ol' US of A.

And we did. We made ANYTHING. And a lot of was just simply JUNK.

Take it however you want, I don't care. I was in the heart of Industry in Cleveland Ohio at the time. Trust me, it was a lot of JUNK.

Manufacturers saw the Germans and Japanese re-tooling and said, "Boys, thems some smart people over there. We need to modernize or we're going to get left behind."

The Unions SLAMMED the door on them. Told them that if they even THOUGHT about modernizing, they'd strike and shut 'em down.

And they would.

I was there. I physically, personally witnessed it.... First hand. I even talked to an Executive VP of Republic Steel about it.

Unions killed American Industry.

Unions and the EPA. Like there's a difference. dimocrap scum. Same thing.

I could see the EPA being hard-asses. I was there when the Cuyahoga River caught fire. Kinda embarrassing.

But they were so incredibly heavy-handed. Guys, I swear to God, they were worse than Nazis.

I was also there when a Federal Judge ruled that Companies inside the City Limits of Cleveland had to have a work force representative of the population of Cleveland.

Which at the time was about 70%.

No time was allowed. I was there.

I watched them hire people that, honest to God, should have been in Prison. Lice-infested, disease-carrying, thieving, drugged-up, dirty street scum.

I was there people.

Don't quote some ass-wipe's bullshit history to me. I WATCHED it unfold. day by day, week by week, month by month until I finally left in 1977.

I knew it was going to go to hell in a hand basket.

It did.

So you know what? Anybody wanna talk to me about Unions?

As far as I'm concerned, they should take them all out and horse whip them. Then smear them with tar and drag them out of town behind a smoking, oil-burning 1985 LTD.

I live in a "Right To Work'' State now and love it. We are so much more modern, so much more prosperous, so much happier, so much better off than ANY Union State.... It isn't even funny.

Union States are dying.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

I could say that I believe in Unions, but I just don't believe in stupid Unions.

But once you have Unions, dimocraps infest them and they bring the stupid.

hoo boy, do they ever bring the stupid.

My first union experience was unreal. We were a non-union shop on a union job so of course the first thing we saw was porta-toilet's fenced off and labeled union one side and scab the other, with a guard to make sure non-union people didn't use the union pisser. OK then. Whatever.

So we go in to start the job. We are electricians so our job is to set the switch gear and get the conduit racks to the store locations in a mall. I needed a piece of wood to beat on to get some fitting to slide in so went to a big pile of cut off lumber, used my own saw to cut it to length and holy f*ck you would have thought I raped the union guys daughter. That apparently wasn't my job to cut a 2x4 s they took it away and made me wait for the union wood cutter guy to cut me a new one.

We got past that but then built about 2400 feet of pipe rack in a day. Holy sh*t! The world dropped on us. Two people can't run more than 100' of conduit per day, union rules. That's like 15 minutes of work. But no, we were shut down until our conduit was accounted for over the next few weeks. Not allowed to run more but had to be on the job site for 8 hours to get credit for the 200'.

Unions are a f*cking joke.

 

[flacaltenn]

After WWII, most of the World's Industrial capacity had been bombed to rubble.

Literally. Germany, Belgium, Holland, France (mostly by us) Japan, Italy....

Except us. We were just fine. In fact, we had made so much money selling War Supplies to England that it almost covered up the incompetence of the 3rd Worst president in History -- FDR.

At one time during 1941, the US had 14.6% Unemployment. Hard to believe? Not at all. FDR really was that bad and that incompetent.

I digress..... After the War, Britain had some Industrial Capacity but they immediately kicked Winston Churchill to the curb and elected a socialist.

Which totally fucked Britain for the next 40 years.

Germany was a big pile of debris. So was Japan. China had no industrial capacity.....

The only people that could make anything was -- The good ol' US of A.

And we did. We made ANYTHING. And a lot of was just simply JUNK.

Take it however you want, I don't care. I was in the heart of Industry in Cleveland Ohio at the time. Trust me, it was a lot of JUNK.

Manufacturers saw the Germans and Japanese re-tooling and said, "Boys, thems some smart people over there. We need to modernize or we're going to get left behind."

The Unions SLAMMED the door on them. Told them that if they even THOUGHT about modernizing, they'd strike and shut 'em down.

And they would.

I was there. I physically, personally witnessed it.... First hand. I even talked to an Executive VP of Republic Steel about it.

Unions killed American Industry.

Unions and the EPA. Like there's a difference. dimocrap scum. Same thing.

I could see the EPA being hard-asses. I was there when the Cuyahoga River caught fire. Kinda embarrassing.

But they were so incredibly heavy-handed. Guys, I swear to God, they were worse than Nazis.

I was also there when a Federal Judge ruled that Companies inside the City Limits of Cleveland had to have a work force representative of the population of Cleveland.

Which at the time was about 70%.

No time was allowed. I was there.

I watched them hire people that, honest to God, should have been in Prison. Lice-infested, disease-carrying, thieving, drugged-up, dirty street scum.

I was there people.

Don't quote some ass-wipe's bullshit history to me. I WATCHED it unfold. day by day, week by week, month by month until I finally left in 1977.

I knew it was going to go to hell in a hand basket.

It did.

So you know what? Anybody wanna talk to me about Unions?

As far as I'm concerned, they should take them all out and horse whip them. Then smear them with tar and drag them out of town behind a smoking, oil-burning 1985 LTD.

I live in a "Right To Work'' State now and love it. We are so much more modern, so much more prosperous, so much happier, so much better off than ANY Union State.... It isn't even funny.

Union States are dying.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

I could say that I believe in Unions, but I just don't believe in stupid Unions.

But once you have Unions, dimocraps infest them and they bring the stupid.

hoo boy, do they ever bring the stupid.

If you haven't been paid by the Koch Brothers or some equivalent coterie to compose this rather obvious propaganda piece I can only assume you inhabit the category of those who despise unions because you were not accepted into one of the better ones and have thus been relegated to wage slavery.

The fact is the union movement is the best thing that ever happened to the U.S. (along with the FDR Presidency) and it is directly responsible for development of the Great American Middle Class.

It must be said that all unions are not good, but most of them are. The cause of any bad or poorly functioning union is ignorant, uninformed, complacent membership, which also happens to be the cause of America's current political troubles.


The union movement was successful because the quality of life of the American working class had become so intolerably miserable that its members were motivated by empty bellies, abusive treatment, and squalid living conditions to engage in the often dangerous, painful, and sometimes deadly conflicts which finally brought them victory. In simple terms they were moved to action by the pains of abject misery.

Then came the good times; living wages, immunity from abusive bosses, good and healthy working conditions, the 40 hour, five day work week, pensions, sick leave, and a host of other benefits they would not have were it not for their unions. The fact is things got so good for union members they got fat and lazy, and what we are seeing today is the consequence of that. They forgot what it was like before -- and the price of forgetting will be a return to the same conditions.

Those who might be swayed by the content of Edgetho's carefully composed denigration of unions are urged to find and watch as many of the the following movies as possible:

How Green Was My Valley
The Grapes Of Wrath
Native Land
On The Waterfront
The Pajama Game
Harlan County USA
The Organizer
Norma Rae
Matewan
The Molly Maguires
Hoffa

and to read as many of the the following books as possible:

Rebuilding Labor
Why Unions Matter
Unions At The Crossroads
The Transformation of U.S. Unions
Look For The Union Label
What Do We Need A Union For
The CIO
Infighting In The UAW


Above all, don't allow the kind of anti-union propaganda which has become so commonplace today to sway your thinking, because it is propagated by the One Percent whose objective is to return the American working class to the same conditions that existed prior to the union movement -- virtual slavery.

And keep one thing in mind, no matter how bad a union might become -- it is far better than no union!

MikeK -- don't care how many books the unions write.. They don't actually see the train wreck that they are part of.. They never really cared about CAREERS or INDIVIDUALS, they only cared to maintain the luddite integrity of what THEY DEFINED as a job..

They need to become FACILITATORS not dictators for individual promotion. Not just promoting THE job..

It's the 21st century --- not Grapes of Wrath.. You need to wake up and smell the coffee.. We're not going back to Hoffa or folks who are only allowed to screw on bumpers for most of their life.. ..

 

[Unkotare]

We're not going back to Hoffa or folks who are only allowed to screw on bumpers for most of their life.. ..

You'd think a bed would be more comfortable.

 

[PrometheusBound]

The "primary" reason for Unions failing is money.

They cannot keep up with the spending that their corporate adversaries engage in.

Hence the stagnant wages and jobs going over seas.

Unions need to realize we don't need folks to pull the same lever everyday.. We need folks who write scripts for robotics. We don't need as many store checkout clerks, we need point of sale technicians. We dont need screwdriver turners, we need industrial and mechanical designers driving CAD automation. The schools need to realize we need FLEXIBLE workers. Folks who know HOW TO LEARN.

.

Um..labor and management are adversaries. That's not going to change any time soon. What the UNION's primary function should be is to advocate for labor. They shouldn't be in the business of 'training' anyone.

That's what schools are for..

Schools are work without pay. That is unAmerican. It is an "unfunded mandate," which is more proof that business is just like government. How dare you expect to benefit from the educated and not pay them a salary to become educated? You want us to live like little boys until we graduate, doing permanent damage to our personalities. Again, that means businesses are just like government's welfare moochers.

It is undeniable that paying students for their grades will get the most talented and get them to study. No one else has a right to get those skills, just as only the talented elite have the right to be on the college football team, no matter how hard they practice. But of course, you mind-slaves only listen to reforms proposed by ignorant and conceited trash who control policy proposals.

Some day brains will get some balls. Manning up, with fists clenched, they will unionize and demand, "Pay us or we will make you pay. We will use our minds to focus on hacking into your wealth, all of which was stolen from people with brains but without balls
enough to stand up to you."

In an isolated and disorganized way, this is already being done. Instead of learning something useful to the economy and not getting appropriately rewarded for it, High IQs are using their brains to manipulate the stock market or to become trial lawyers. As in the movie 21, they even devote themselves to genius gambling. Why shouldn't an 18-year-old make $200,000 a year? He owes nothing to society if an ungrateful and insulting society treats him like a Cash Cow.

 

[Jarlaxle]

Dude, are you on DRUGS? Are you trolling for kicks, or are you truly batshit insane?

 

[PrometheusBound]

Um..labor and management are adversaries. That's not going to change any time soon. What the UNION's primary function should be is to advocate for labor. They shouldn't be in the business of 'training' anyone.

That's what schools are for..

and expectations of a job is changing rapidly...

A High IQ is baseline. It is the responsibility of the company to pay those with the most raw talent a salary to develop the skills needed by the company. Even in Vietnam, that was relevant to why we lost the war. I scored 152 on the intelligence test and should have been put into analyzing enemy troop movements. Because they put Diploma Dumbos in that work, so stupid that they thought the enemy would blindly repeat the tactics used to defeat the French, an easily discoverable Tet offensive pushed back a completely unprepared American force. The same no-talent college conformists have been incapable of meeting our economic competition and changing conditions ever since.

 

[PrometheusBound]

Fuck the unions; they will inevitably conspire with the politicians to fuck the people.

Right, Rightie. You want us to be towelboys for the dumb jock bullies in management. You Boss's Brown-noses are merely jockstrap sniffers. Hope you enjoy being you, a worm studying to be a snake.

 

[PrometheusBound]

Unions actually don't really even EXIST anymore. When the government became authoritarian and anti-labor under the Reagan regime, labor unions essentially were outlawed. There is no appreciable labor movement allowed in the U.S. today.

This was done to suppress wages, and national health care has been resisted to reduce worker mobility.

The U.S. is a nation of wage slaves.

This is mere deflection of blame for the unwinding of Union memberships.. Had the Unions been SUPPORTED BY POLITICAL favoritism --- we would have lost our manufacturing advantage sooner.. NO interest should be in collusion with the Govt..

We are becoming a nation of wage slaves because OUR KIDS are not filling the Science and Engineering classes at Univ. level.. Foreign kids are.. And we did not hear the advice that America needs to leads in TECHNOLOGY and INNOVATION.. Instead -- we're stewing in a class war and a stagnant economy with little or no capital going to risk ventures..

When you pay our best scientists and engineers on the par with what second string linebackers make in the NFL, you will see a lot more engineers and scientists. Right now, even little South Korea graduates more engineers than the US does.

That won't do any good unless they get paid high salaries to go to college. Listen to common sense instead of what the ruling class tells you education means. It is not a choice; it is only for the chosen, who must be recruited at 16 and offered whatever they
need as a normal human being, which is whatever the All-State athletes get offered.

In order to think rather than mindlessly repeat what the self-appointed authorities tell you to think, you have to make analogies. What if the NFL paid the same, but the college athletes got no perks and had to live like 15-year-olds on part-time jobs to eke out a miserable college existence? The NFL wouldn't get much of the high-school talent to develop itself in college, so the quality of the NFL would disappear even with the present million-dollar salaries. College puts inferior people in superior positions.

 

[PrometheusBound]

This is mere deflection of blame for the unwinding of Union memberships.. Had the Unions been SUPPORTED BY POLITICAL favoritism --- we would have lost our manufacturing advantage sooner.. NO interest should be in collusion with the Govt..

We are becoming a nation of wage slaves because OUR KIDS are not filling the Science and Engineering classes at Univ. level.. Foreign kids are.. And we did not hear the advice that America needs to leads in TECHNOLOGY and INNOVATION.. Instead -- we're stewing in a class war and a stagnant economy with little or no capital going to risk ventures..

When you pay our best scientists and engineers on the par with what second string linebackers make in the NFL, you will see a lot more engineers and scientists. Right now, even little South Korea graduates more engineers than the US does.

I've got a daughter in college right now --- so I'm familiar with the costs. I told her if she did her undergrad at a state school, I'd treat her like a princess and get her through mostly debt free and then we could discuss grad school. OR -- she could go to an elite school, get neglected for 4 yrs and live like a pauper and have a debt.

My point was --- technology drives us OUT of danger of losing standard of living.. OUR KIDS need to be filling those STEM (science, tech, eng, math) slots --- not foreigners. Not everyone is gonna be a chemist or engineer, but new ventures will create jobs at all levels.. While you're at it -- bring back secondary vocational training and apprenticeships.. Because THOSE service jobs can be good careers as well.. Craftsmen and journeymen are STILL required.

(I actually think that most inner city kids in poor academic situations CAN prepare for tech related jobs and innovation.. If they can put together a MIDI audio system to be a D.J. --- they can do robotic scripting.. )

Robosourcing is not all doom and gloom. With flexible robotics and 3D printing small lines can reconfigure products in days or hours. And people can make a living building NICHE goods that couldn't be customized or done efficiently before. Nothing wrong with moving from lever puller to robotic trainer.

If you look at examples of labor evolution like "self-checkout" lanes at the market, you see that the labor hasn't vanished.. It's be re-purposed to an in-store bakery or actual meat market or floral section or even a prescription counter. Same at Home Depot where labor is re-purposed to holding customer "How to" seminars or doing installations.

But EVERY laborer needs to be willing to flex and learn.. And the unions are NOT MODELED for this kind of accomodation.. They NEED to evolve or die...

You people deserve your fate if you continue listening only to the proposals of the professional opinionators. What if your daughter were a son with football talent? Would you say, "If he went to a major college team, he'd have to 'live like a pauper,' but if he went to a minor college in Division II, I could finance his lifestyle so he'd live like a prince"?

Apologists for college slavery will say that the football team makes money for the university, but they forget that grateful alumni endow the university with far more money than it makes from sports. Also, making money from dumb jock bullies is as inappropriate as the college giving "scholarships" to bimbos who will work at a college-owned titty bar.

If I had somehow put up with the childish, depressing, and insulting college lifestyle and become a billionaire, I wouldn't give one penny to the university because of bitterness over the permanent psychological damage that experience would have caused.

An oncologist is just a childish escapist freak who didn't earn a living until he was 30 years old. Losers like that will never cure cancer, and you all deserve to die from it because of your insulting attitude towards non-athletic talent.

 

[PrometheusBound]

Do you really know what it costs to go to even an inexpensive university? I do. I am currently taking two classes per quarter. Now I own my own home, and have a good job. Even so, 2K+ for just 9 credits makes a hole in my budget. And I make double the average blue collar income. Science classes are especially expensive. Notebooks and lab supplies.

Another point is that it is not just outsourcing that is affecting the labor market, but equally serious for those without a craft or higher education, is robosourcing. If your job is simple, a machine can do it. In fact, the last sawmill I helped construct used more maintenance people than production people. And that was many years ago.

When you pay our best scientists and engineers on the par with what second string linebackers make in the NFL, you will see a lot more engineers and scientists. Right now, even little South Korea graduates more engineers than the US does.

I've got a daughter in college right now --- so I'm familiar with the costs. I told her if she did her undergrad at a state school, I'd treat her like a princess and get her through mostly debt free and then we could discuss grad school. OR -- she could go to an elite school, get neglected for 4 yrs and live like a pauper and have a debt.

My point was --- technology drives us OUT of danger of losing standard of living.. OUR KIDS need to be filling those STEM (science, tech, eng, math) slots --- not foreigners. Not everyone is gonna be a chemist or engineer, but new ventures will create jobs at all levels.. While you're at it -- bring back secondary vocational training and apprenticeships.. Because THOSE service jobs can be good careers as well.. Craftsmen and journeymen are STILL required.

(I actually think that most inner city kids in poor academic situations CAN prepare for tech related jobs and innovation.. If they can put together a MIDI audio system to be a D.J. --- they can do robotic scripting.. )

Robosourcing is not all doom and gloom. With flexible robotics and 3D printing small lines can reconfigure products in days or hours. And people can make a living building NICHE goods that couldn't be customized or done efficiently before. Nothing wrong with moving from lever puller to robotic trainer.

If you look at examples of labor evolution like "self-checkout" lanes at the market, you see that the labor hasn't vanished.. It's be re-purposed to an in-store bakery or actual meat market or floral section or even a prescription counter. Same at Home Depot where labor is re-purposed to holding customer "How to" seminars or doing installations.

But EVERY laborer needs to be willing to flex and learn.. And the unions are NOT MODELED for this kind of accomodation.. They NEED to evolve or die...

I'm ex union and can't disagree, lots of make work and deadbeats. Schools too, some kids better off being apprenticed out at a certain age, maybe age 14 working under a contractor learning to wire a machine shop or whatever. By then he should know how to read, write and do math at least up to pre algebra level if schools are doing their job.

Jim Bouton (Ball Four was a 20-game winner with the Yankees before baseball unionized. He got "rewarded" with a salary of $18,000 dollars! That's maybe $200,000 in today's money, which is one-third of the minimum unionized salary. He'd make about $10 million today.

The lying owners made the same claims back then that the corporate pigs make today about unions, that they would bankrupt baseball and force it to go out of business. Even more relevant, they had a snobbish conceited attitude towards players as people who would be in minimum-wage jobs if the fatcats had not "created" their jobs and paid them more than they could have made outside of baseball. Unlike wimpy Americans, the players didn't listen to the lying and insulting Greedhead looters. It turned out that management had it so easy in pre-union days that they weren't doing any really productive work, just like our paper-shuffling Bizz Skule morons. The no-talent careerist yes-men, like our Dilbert clones, were just sitting back and collecting the revenues entirely produced by the players. Today, our guillotine-fodder economic elite follow that business model when they get enriched by Third World sweatshop labor. All these "union rules" anecdotes didn't apply to baseball unions, did it? Maybe our unions were against innovation because it was just a way to cut jobs rather than make better products that could compete with foreigners. Germany has far stronger unions than ours but has been rolling ahead for 50 years because their management knows how to create profits in other ways than extracting them from workers' wages. Putting these inferior people in management is what makes our workers resent being productive and seeing all the increase go to the clowns on top.

It's always the same old story. Are we man enough to stand up to the pampered parasites who make all their wealth off us? We far outnumber them and can crush them like grapes. It's time to stop whining and start making wine.

 

[PrometheusBound]

After WWII, most of the World's Industrial capacity had been bombed to rubble.

Literally. Germany, Belgium, Holland, France (mostly by us) Japan, Italy....

Except us. We were just fine. In fact, we had made so much money selling War Supplies to England that it almost covered up the incompetence of the 3rd Worst president in History -- FDR.

At one time during 1941, the US had 14.6% Unemployment. Hard to believe? Not at all. FDR really was that bad and that incompetent.

I digress..... After the War, Britain had some Industrial Capacity but they immediately kicked Winston Churchill to the curb and elected a socialist.

Which totally fucked Britain for the next 40 years.

Germany was a big pile of debris. So was Japan. China had no industrial capacity.....

The only people that could make anything was -- The good ol' US of A.

And we did. We made ANYTHING. And a lot of was just simply JUNK.

Take it however you want, I don't care. I was in the heart of Industry in Cleveland Ohio at the time. Trust me, it was a lot of JUNK.

Manufacturers saw the Germans and Japanese re-tooling and said, "Boys, thems some smart people over there. We need to modernize or we're going to get left behind."

The Unions SLAMMED the door on them. Told them that if they even THOUGHT about modernizing, they'd strike and shut 'em down.

And they would.

I was there. I physically, personally witnessed it.... First hand. I even talked to an Executive VP of Republic Steel about it.

Unions killed American Industry.

Unions and the EPA. Like there's a difference. dimocrap scum. Same thing.

I could see the EPA being hard-asses. I was there when the Cuyahoga River caught fire. Kinda embarrassing.

But they were so incredibly heavy-handed. Guys, I swear to God, they were worse than Nazis.

I was also there when a Federal Judge ruled that Companies inside the City Limits of Cleveland had to have a work force representative of the population of Cleveland.

Which at the time was about 70%.

No time was allowed. I was there.

I watched them hire people that, honest to God, should have been in Prison. Lice-infested, disease-carrying, thieving, drugged-up, dirty street scum.

I was there people.

Don't quote some ass-wipe's bullshit history to me. I WATCHED it unfold. day by day, week by week, month by month until I finally left in 1977.

I knew it was going to go to hell in a hand basket.

It did.

So you know what? Anybody wanna talk to me about Unions?

As far as I'm concerned, they should take them all out and horse whip them. Then smear them with tar and drag them out of town behind a smoking, oil-burning 1985 LTD.

I live in a "Right To Work'' State now and love it. We are so much more modern, so much more prosperous, so much happier, so much better off than ANY Union State.... It isn't even funny.

Union States are dying.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

I could say that I believe in Unions, but I just don't believe in stupid Unions.

But once you have Unions, dimocraps infest them and they bring the stupid.

hoo boy, do they ever bring the stupid.

My first union experience was unreal. We were a non-union shop on a union job so of course the first thing we saw was porta-toilet's fenced off and labeled union one side and scab the other, with a guard to make sure non-union people didn't use the union pisser. OK then. Whatever.

So we go in to start the job. We are electricians so our job is to set the switch gear and get the conduit racks to the store locations in a mall. I needed a piece of wood to beat on to get some fitting to slide in so went to a big pile of cut off lumber, used my own saw to cut it to length and holy f*ck you would have thought I raped the union guys daughter. That apparently wasn't my job to cut a 2x4 s they took it away and made me wait for the union wood cutter guy to cut me a new one.

We got past that but then built about 2400 feet of pipe rack in a day. Holy sh*t! The world dropped on us. Two people can't run more than 100' of conduit per day, union rules. That's like 15 minutes of work. But no, we were shut down until our conduit was accounted for over the next few weeks. Not allowed to run more but had to be on the job site for 8 hours to get credit for the 200'.

Unions are a f*cking joke.

Even if that is typical, our glorified management is just as bad. Dilbert is more like reality than the idea that the morons in business are "makers." Best to let only employees own stock.

 

[Jarlaxle]

When you pay our best scientists and engineers on the par with what second string linebackers make in the NFL, you will see a lot more engineers and scientists. Right now, even little South Korea graduates more engineers than the US does.

I've got a daughter in college right now --- so I'm familiar with the costs. I told her if she did her undergrad at a state school, I'd treat her like a princess and get her through mostly debt free and then we could discuss grad school. OR -- she could go to an elite school, get neglected for 4 yrs and live like a pauper and have a debt.

My point was --- technology drives us OUT of danger of losing standard of living.. OUR KIDS need to be filling those STEM (science, tech, eng, math) slots --- not foreigners. Not everyone is gonna be a chemist or engineer, but new ventures will create jobs at all levels.. While you're at it -- bring back secondary vocational training and apprenticeships.. Because THOSE service jobs can be good careers as well.. Craftsmen and journeymen are STILL required.

(I actually think that most inner city kids in poor academic situations CAN prepare for tech related jobs and innovation.. If they can put together a MIDI audio system to be a D.J. --- they can do robotic scripting.. )

Robosourcing is not all doom and gloom. With flexible robotics and 3D printing small lines can reconfigure products in days or hours. And people can make a living building NICHE goods that couldn't be customized or done efficiently before. Nothing wrong with moving from lever puller to robotic trainer.

If you look at examples of labor evolution like "self-checkout" lanes at the market, you see that the labor hasn't vanished.. It's be re-purposed to an in-store bakery or actual meat market or floral section or even a prescription counter. Same at Home Depot where labor is re-purposed to holding customer "How to" seminars or doing installations.

But EVERY laborer needs to be willing to flex and learn.. And the unions are NOT MODELED for this kind of accomodation.. They NEED to evolve or die...

You people deserve your fate if you continue listening only to the proposals of the professional opinionators. What if your daughter were a son with football talent? Would you say, "If he went to a major college team, he'd have to 'live like a pauper,' but if he went to a minor college in Division II, I could finance his lifestyle so he'd live like a prince"?

Apologists for college slavery will say that the football team makes money for the university, but they forget that grateful alumni endow the university with far more money than it makes from sports. Also, making money from dumb jock bullies is as inappropriate as the college giving "scholarships" to bimbos who will work at a college-owned titty bar.

If I had somehow put up with the childish, depressing, and insulting college lifestyle and become a billionaire, I wouldn't give one penny to the university because of bitterness over the permanent psychological damage that experience would have caused.

An oncologist is just a childish escapist freak who didn't earn a living until he was 30 years old. Losers like that will never cure cancer, and you all deserve to die from it because of your insulting attitude towards non-athletic talent.

Are you on DRUGS, bitchboy?!?! An oncologist does more for the human race in one day that you have ever done or will ever do in your entire life.

 

[PrometheusBound]

After WWII, most of the World's Industrial capacity had been bombed to rubble.

Literally. Germany, Belgium, Holland, France (mostly by us) Japan, Italy....

Except us. We were just fine. In fact, we had made so much money selling War Supplies to England that it almost covered up the incompetence of the 3rd Worst president in History -- FDR.

At one time during 1941, the US had 14.6% Unemployment. Hard to believe? Not at all. FDR really was that bad and that incompetent.

I digress..... After the War, Britain had some Industrial Capacity but they immediately kicked Winston Churchill to the curb and elected a socialist.

Which totally fucked Britain for the next 40 years.

Germany was a big pile of debris. So was Japan. China had no industrial capacity.....

The only people that could make anything was -- The good ol' US of A.

And we did. We made ANYTHING. And a lot of was just simply JUNK.

Take it however you want, I don't care. I was in the heart of Industry in Cleveland Ohio at the time. Trust me, it was a lot of JUNK.

Manufacturers saw the Germans and Japanese re-tooling and said, "Boys, thems some smart people over there. We need to modernize or we're going to get left behind."

The Unions SLAMMED the door on them. Told them that if they even THOUGHT about modernizing, they'd strike and shut 'em down.

And they would.

I was there. I physically, personally witnessed it.... First hand. I even talked to an Executive VP of Republic Steel about it.

Unions killed American Industry.

Unions and the EPA. Like there's a difference. dimocrap scum. Same thing.

I could see the EPA being hard-asses. I was there when the Cuyahoga River caught fire. Kinda embarrassing.

But they were so incredibly heavy-handed. Guys, I swear to God, they were worse than Nazis.

I was also there when a Federal Judge ruled that Companies inside the City Limits of Cleveland had to have a work force representative of the population of Cleveland.

Which at the time was about 70%.

No time was allowed. I was there.

I watched them hire people that, honest to God, should have been in Prison. Lice-infested, disease-carrying, thieving, drugged-up, dirty street scum.

I was there people.

Don't quote some ass-wipe's bullshit history to me. I WATCHED it unfold. day by day, week by week, month by month until I finally left in 1977.

I knew it was going to go to hell in a hand basket.

It did.

So you know what? Anybody wanna talk to me about Unions?

As far as I'm concerned, they should take them all out and horse whip them. Then smear them with tar and drag them out of town behind a smoking, oil-burning 1985 LTD.

I live in a "Right To Work'' State now and love it. We are so much more modern, so much more prosperous, so much happier, so much better off than ANY Union State.... It isn't even funny.

Union States are dying.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

I could say that I believe in Unions, but I just don't believe in stupid Unions.

But once you have Unions, dimocraps infest them and they bring the stupid.

hoo boy, do they ever bring the stupid.

My first union experience was unreal. We were a non-union shop on a union job so of course the first thing we saw was porta-toilet's fenced off and labeled union one side and scab the other, with a guard to make sure non-union people didn't use the union pisser. OK then. Whatever.

So we go in to start the job. We are electricians so our job is to set the switch gear and get the conduit racks to the store locations in a mall. I needed a piece of wood to beat on to get some fitting to slide in so went to a big pile of cut off lumber, used my own saw to cut it to length and holy f*ck you would have thought I raped the union guys daughter. That apparently wasn't my job to cut a 2x4 s they took it away and made me wait for the union wood cutter guy to cut me a new one.

We got past that but then built about 2400 feet of pipe rack in a day. Holy sh*t! The world dropped on us. Two people can't run more than 100' of conduit per day, union rules. That's like 15 minutes of work. But no, we were shut down until our conduit was accounted for over the next few weeks. Not allowed to run more but had to be on the job site for 8 hours to get credit for the 200'.

Unions are a f*cking joke.

The point that a bootlicking scab like you conveniently failed to mention is that you wouldn't get paid 24 times the union wage for producing 24 times the length of their conduit. So your beef is with your own bosses. If the people actually doing the work can't determine what pay the work is worth, then they are just little slaveboys. Owners aren't earners, and they must be put in their place.

This is typical of the doubletalk we hear from scabs and corporate parasites. For example, "productivity clauses." That leaves management with the same share of revenue. Where do they get the idea that their share is appointed by God? Another of these no-talent Greedheads' lies is that, "If wages go up, prices automatically have to go up. Sorry, there's nothing we can do about it." Consumers are so brainwashed that they never ask, "Can't profits go down instead?"

We have to get rid of these feudal lords. As long as they show such conceit about their worthless selves and contempt for the workers' far more important contribution, capitalism is just slavery of the best by the worst. The only solution is that from the very beginning of the business, all workers have equal share of the profits, with different salaries. No unions and no stockholders.

 

[MikeK]

My first union experience was unreal. We were a non-union shop on a union job so of course the first thing we saw was porta-toilet's fenced off and labeled union one side and scab the other, with a guard to make sure non-union people didn't use the union pisser. OK then. Whatever.

You were being shown how the union feels about scabs. Fortunately you were dealing with a comparatively passive shop. Because if you were scabbing a Teamsters shop you would have a lot more than segregated porta-johns to be concerned with. What there is to be said about this issue is you need to give some thought to the hourly wage you received, along with the associated benefits and protections, because you have the union to thank for all of it.

So we go in to start the job. We are electricians so our job is to set the switch gear and get the conduit racks to the store locations in a mall. I needed a piece of wood to beat on to get some fitting to slide in so went to a big pile of cut off lumber, used my own saw to cut it to length and holy f*ck you would have thought I raped the union guys daughter. That apparently wasn't my job to cut a 2x4 s they took it away and made me wait for the union wood cutter guy to cut me a new one.

We got past that but then built about 2400 feet of pipe rack in a day. Holy sh*t! The world dropped on us. Two people can't run more than 100' of conduit per day, union rules. That's like 15 minutes of work. But no, we were shut down until our conduit was accounted for over the next few weeks. Not allowed to run more but had to be on the job site for 8 hours to get credit for the 200'.

Unions are a f*cking joke.

Those rules and restrictions exist for a reason. Nobody likes them, so you're not alone. But in the specific example of the wood you were cutting, what the union shop steward who criticized you was doing was acting in cooperation with the carpenters union, which in turn would protect your interests by forbidding a carpenter from pulling a 6' length of wire in a wall. These are petty considerations but it could be there was an ongoing conflict between union and management that you were not aware of.

Whatever the reason, I'm not suggesting that unions have no warts. Indeed they do. But give some thought to where American tradesmen, and American workers in general, would be without them. The IBEW is one of the best unions in America and whether or not you wish to admit it you owe your exceptional hourly wage to the union movement.

Something you and many other anti-union tradesmen are not considering is the fact that all Mexican illegals are not unskilled laborers. There are electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc., in Mexico, and they all work for less than $10 an hour in that country. So keep that in mind when you are annoyed by union rules. Your boss would like to replace you with a Mexican illegal who would be happy to work for half your hourly wage.

 

[FA_Q2]

Unions by their very nature are political. They try to affect policy.

If they don't they are largely useless, unless they are violent.

Horse manure. Union's primary (and really ONLY) purpose is to represent the workers' interests against that of the company they work for in order to find the right balance of compensation vs. productivity. Claiming that they are primarily political units is completely asinine and EXACTLY why they have failed to fulfill their purpose. Unions diverging from their real purpose and essentially coercing people pay them have utterly destroyed the positive aspects of unions.

To the OP and the concept that they are attempting to pursue - I personally believe that simply removing the special protections that law gives them is all that is necessary. Essentially, right to work goes a LONG way in achieving this. When you no longer can be coerced into paying your local thugs, they start to realize that they have to actually serve you to get their payment.

 

[FA_Q2]

My first union experience was unreal. We were a non-union shop on a union job so of course the first thing we saw was porta-toilet's fenced off and labeled union one side and scab the other, with a guard to make sure non-union people didn't use the union pisser. OK then. Whatever.

You were being shown how the union feels about scabs. Fortunately you were dealing with a comparatively passive shop. Because if you were scabbing a Teamsters shop you would have a lot more than segregated porta-johns to be concerned with. What there is to be said about this issue is you need to give some thought to the hourly wage you received, along with the associated benefits and protections, because you have the union to thank for all of it.

So we go in to start the job. We are electricians so our job is to set the switch gear and get the conduit racks to the store locations in a mall. I needed a piece of wood to beat on to get some fitting to slide in so went to a big pile of cut off lumber, used my own saw to cut it to length and holy f*ck you would have thought I raped the union guys daughter. That apparently wasn't my job to cut a 2x4 s they took it away and made me wait for the union wood cutter guy to cut me a new one.

We got past that but then built about 2400 feet of pipe rack in a day. Holy sh*t! The world dropped on us. Two people can't run more than 100' of conduit per day, union rules. That's like 15 minutes of work. But no, we were shut down until our conduit was accounted for over the next few weeks. Not allowed to run more but had to be on the job site for 8 hours to get credit for the 200'.

Unions are a f*cking joke.

Those rules and restrictions exist for a reason. Nobody likes them, so you're not alone. But in the specific example of the wood you were cutting, what the union shop steward who criticized you was doing was acting in cooperation with the carpenters union, which in turn would protect your interests by forbidding a carpenter from pulling a 6' length of wire in a wall. These are petty considerations but it could be there was an ongoing conflict between union and management that you were not aware of.

Whatever the reason, I'm not suggesting that unions have no warts. Indeed they do. But give some thought to where American tradesmen, and American workers in general, would be without them. The IBEW is one of the best unions in America and whether or not you wish to admit it you owe your exceptional hourly wage to the union movement.

Something you and many other anti-union tradesmen are not considering is the fact that all Mexican illegals are not unskilled laborers. There are electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc., in Mexico, and they all work for less than $10 an hour in that country. So keep that in mind when you are annoyed by union rules. Your boss would like to replace you with a Mexican illegal who would be happy to work for half your hourly wage.

And none of that has squat to do with the topic or posts in this thread at all. Unions had a core and very valuable place years ago. That is generally not disputed. They have raised working conditions and wages for years. That is generally not in contention. The problem is not what they have done. You do NOT keep broken processes around because of what they accomplished decades ago. That would simply be dumb. The problem is what unions have BECOME. With their current size and scope they have forgotten the worker and the company. They have moved into political realms and most only exist to collect their dues from a workforce that has no other option but to pay them even if they think that the unions no longer represent their interests. This has become the norm (but not the case at all union shops) across most unions because many of the legal protections that they receive. Essentially (just like many of the captivated workers) they do not actually have to produce in order to continue to get paid. That is completely wrong.

Unions still have a valuable and important role to play but as Flat has been pointing out they are going to HAVE to change with the times and come up with a better process in order to survive. If they do not, all the bloviating about what might have been the circumstances in the post you responded to or the points about what we have to ‘thank’ the unions for will mean nothing. They will still cease to exist. Unfortunately, that means that they will do so by obliterating the American worker.

 

[Unkotare]

How dare you expect to benefit from the educated and not pay them a salary to become educated? .

You want someone to come wipe your ass for you too, you spineless loser?

 

[Unkotare]

If I had somehow put up with the childish, depressing, and insulting college lifestyle and become a billionaire, I wouldn't give one penny to the university because of bitterness over the permanent psychological damage that experience would have caused.

Well, thank goodness you managed to remain an ignorant, penniless loser. Really dodged a bullet there!