Happy Labor Day, There is power in the Union!!

[dannyboys]

For all of you who don't like unions, stop getting on a commercial airplane.

There are only 2 major commercial airplane manufacturers left in the world. That would be Boeing and airbus.

Boeing is a private capitalist company in America where the majority of their work force is in a union. In my state, all the employees of Boeing are a member of a union. With the exception of the ceo and executives.

airbus is a socialist company owned and financially supported by the EU. There is nothing capitalistic about the company. It's all government owned. Their employees are members of unions. They are building a plant in Alabama which isn't open yet. The union is going to organize the workers. Airbus doesn't object. It will be the republican politicians who will object and lie through their teeth. Just as they did in Tenn. Which didn't work out well for the republicans because now the workers at that plant are angry with the republicans who lied to them.

So you can either fly on a plane made by European socialists in a union or fly on a plane made by American union workers.

If you don't like unions. Stop flying on commercial flights.

Boeing 'out-sources' the vast majority of their aeroplane components to non-union manufacturers.
To imply that 'Boeing' made aeroplanes are 'union-made' is a misstatement of the facts.

 

[DigitalDrifter]

But what does this have to do with the demise of white Christians ?

 

[LogikAndReazon]

No one gives a shit how well paid union employees are in the private sector. Let them sow their own destruction.

No govt employee or civil servant should enjoy their union rewards at the expense of the taxpayer. F--- them.

 

[jasonnfree]

What's wrong with workers organizing for their rights? The corporations have the supreme court as their unions. Remember citizens united? Unlimited funding to buy off politicians. Enabling a corporate person to claim a residence in Ireland while doing business in this country? No, better to worry that a guy might be making enough to have a decent life and maybe a retirement in his old age.

 

[dannyboys]

What's wrong with workers organizing for their rights? The corporations have the supreme court as their unions. Remember citizens united? Unlimited funding to buy off politicians. Enabling a corporate person to claim a residence in Ireland while doing business in this country? No, better to worry that a guy might be making enough to have a decent life and maybe a retirement in his old age.

Small problem: Union workers were being paid ten times what non-union workers were being paid to do the exact same work in the seventies/eighties.
Coincidentally that was about the time when major US manufacturers pulled out of the US leaving piles of rusting factories and permanent unemployment.
The unions bosses/Mafia bosses were still lining their pockets though.
If you want to know who fucked over the American worker look no further than your local union.
I'll bet anyone a million bucks James Hoffa never worried where his next Cadillac was coming from.

 

[jasonnfree]

What's wrong with workers organizing for their rights? The corporations have the supreme court as their unions. Remember citizens united? Unlimited funding to buy off politicians. Enabling a corporate person to claim a residence in Ireland while doing business in this country? No, better to worry that a guy might be making enough to have a decent life and maybe a retirement in his old age.

Small problem: Union workers were being paid ten times what non-union workers were being paid to do the exact same work in the seventies/eighties.
Coincidentally that was about the time when major US manufacturers pulled out of the US leaving piles of rusting factories and permanent unemployment.
The unions bosses/Mafia bosses were still lining their pockets though.
If you want to know who fucked over the American worker look no further than your local union.

So union workers were making 10x what non union workers were? In 1970 I was making about $4.00 p.h. union. So non union were making $.40 and hour? Really!
Now I always hear this "union thug" thing from the right wing. I never met one, but there are bad ones in every profession. Show me where non union skilled tradesman were making 50 cents an hour back then in California.

 

[jasonnfree]

The companies that offshored did so for higher profits, not because they were going broke.

 

[Jarlaxle]

Boeing 'out-sources' the vast majority of their aeroplane components to non-union manufacturers.
To imply that 'Boeing' made aeroplanes are 'union-made' is a misstatement of the facts.

To say nothing of their plant in South Carolina...

 

[initforme]

Yes unions are on the way out. The corporate heads clearly have the advantage. That being said, why do some of you think that people should make low wages? There is a clear anti working person theme in this country...a clear and definite and glaring awful fault of america

 

[Iceweasel]

Yes unions are on the way out. The corporate heads clearly have the advantage. That being said, why do some of you think that people should make low wages? There is a clear anti working person theme in this country...a clear and definite and glaring awful fault of america

The anti-working theme comes from the left that advocates and supports big government and living off of others. Conservatives are against crony capitalism and prefer the free market. With more people working, the companies will have to pay help more. The worse the job market is the more advantage companies have. Why is that so difficult to understand?

 

[JFK_USA]

Unions were needed back when. No doubt.
But we live in a Capitalist society and like it or not that's the way it's going to stay.
Unions at their heart are socialist leaning. That's not news.
Unions are very fast becoming a thing of the past. Their association with the Mafia has not helped.
At the rate union membership is declining there will be no unions in the US within a decade.
I predict that the bulk of union leaders now in the country will be leaving their sinking ship like rats and will relocate to more socialist leaning countries where unions are still tolerated depending on the political climate.
If the NDP ever take power in Canada for instance, there will be a five mile long line-up of 'union leaders' wanting to move to Canada.

And if there are no unions, the rich will slowly but surely remove all those benefits they worked hard to provide for workers. That's why companies don't like unions, they like having ultimate control over their worker's lives because they don't view them as human beings.

 

[EverCurious]

And if there are no unions, the rich will slowly but surely remove all those benefits they worked hard to provide for workers. That's why companies don't like unions, they like having ultimate control over their worker's lives because they don't view them as human beings.

Paranoid much?

I have worked for MANY corporations as an interim executive and they have always treated me as a human being, in fact, almost every one of them has/had made every reasonable effort to ensure my 'comfort' while I was in their employ. That is on top of (imo) well more than fair compensation for my duties, to include non-negotiated, unexpected and (again imo) unnecessary, bonuses when my consultation worked out better than they had expected.

I am so tired of the envious and ignorant claims that all, or even the majority, of corporations abuse their workers in any way. You just don't hear about the 'good' things because it's not newsworthy. Perhaps if the idiot low wage workers put in an actual effort they might find themselves compensated for the 'real' efforts to be a part of their work. Simply showing up for 40 hours a week and (oft barely) getting through the tasks one is paid to accomplish is not enough to endear an employee to a company, therefore, as a run of the mill employee, those types of employees become the expendable, easily replaced, work force.

The employees of this flavor are paid in full as negotiated by their hire and, in fact, usually still receive semi-regular raises, yet they constantly whine and bitch about being forced to even do the work they were HIRED to do. Small wonder that when financial difficulties hit their employee that they are the first let go - while those who have proven their worth and dedication to the business are enticed to stay with the company through the 'tough' times.

 

[thereisnospoon]

6.7..........................................That is the percentage of private sector workers who are members of labor collectives.
And the trend of public worker union membership is downward. Taxpayers have had it with the high taxes associated with out of control expensive unionized public employees.
Unions....It's OVER

 

[thereisnospoon]

Brought to you by the folks who gave you the weekend!

and the 40 hour work week, overtime , holidays off an sick days paid !!

And now their "help" is no longer needed nor wanted.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Good things unions supported illegal immigration.

Union leadership is in support of the illegals.....

 

[thereisnospoon]

My grandfather was a pipe fitter and in a union. He helped build Hanford Nuclear Facility.

My dad was a design engineer. He was in a union. He designed the interiors of a lot of Boeing and Douglass airplanes.

My husband is an engineer. He was in a union. His most recent promotion took him out of the union. He's now a Senior Technical Fellow at Boeing which is an executive position so it took him out of the union.

Whoever said that unions don't allow people to move up in their jobs is full of garbage.

Unions give the workers a contract with the company they work for. Just like the ceo and executives have. Why do you believe that ceos and executives have the right to have a contract with their employer but the workers can't?

I will post one of many, many experiences I've had with the union. My dad and husband were in the SPEEA union.

I had to have surgery in 2010. The insurance company first denied coverage for the surgery so my doctors resent documentation to the insurance company again. That time it worked. In November 2010 I received a letter from the insurance company saying that the surgery was approved and covered 100%. That the approval was good for a year. I didn't want to have to go through recovery from the surgery during the holiday season so I had the surgery in January 2011.

A couple months after the surgery I got a letter from the insurance company saying they weren't going to pay for the surgery. Even though months before they sent me a letter saying they approved it. I called the insurance company. I read them the letter they sent me. They said that didn't matter they weren't going to pay for that surgery.

That was on a Thursday. That same day I called the SPEEA union and told them about my problem. They have union reps that do nothing but work with the insurance companies for the union members. I read them the original letter and they told me to come to their office with both letters. I did. They scanned the letters and told me they would work on the problem. After the weekend, on Tuesday, I got a call from the union telling me that the insurance company will pay the bills.

If my husband had not been in the union we would still be in legal hell trying to get the insurance company to pay those bills. We would have had to pay thousands in legal fees because we would have had to hire a lawyer to get the insurance company to keep their word. We would have won but it would have taken years and thousands of dollars we didn't have to spend on a lawyer.

That is just one situation out of many that I've experienced with a union. I'm not in a union now but was when I was in college. It was the hospitality/restaurant union. I was paid more, I had benefits, vacations, holidays off, my uniform was cleaned and pressed by the company I worked for at their expense unlike most in the restaurant industry. When I was laid off, the union found me another job quickly.

Those who don't want to be in a union, don't get a job that's a union job. But stop trying to destroy unions for those who want to be in one. I will never understand why you people believe you have the right to tell everyone how to live. You can't be happy to have the freedom to live as you choose, you need to force your way of life on everyone.

You only seem to believe you and those who agree with you have any freedom to choose how to live.

HA!! Unions......Done....
Unions have done so many good things....50 years ago...Now they destroy work opportunities by forcing business to relocate or close.
Unions failed to adjust to economic necessities brought on by the need for new technologies and failed to adjust to the realities of global competition.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Unions were needed back when. No doubt.
But we live in a Capitalist society and like it or not that's the way it's going to stay.
Unions at their heart are socialist leaning. That's not news.
Unions are very fast becoming a thing of the past. Their association with the Mafia has not helped.
At the rate union membership is declining there will be no unions in the US within a decade.
I predict that the bulk of union leaders now in the country will be leaving their sinking ship like rats and will relocate to more socialist leaning countries where unions are still tolerated depending on the political climate.
If the NDP ever take power in Canada for instance, there will be a five mile long line-up of 'union leaders' wanting to move to Canada.

And if there are no unions, the rich will slowly but surely remove all those benefits they worked hard to provide for workers. That's why companies don't like unions, they like having ultimate control over their worker's lives because they don't view them as human beings.

Straw man....

 

[thereisnospoon]

Hey, the folks willing to work for less money won out. I'm not hurting. I have a hell of a phone, a 720 hd ish tv and a Windows XP computer. Not to mention I can do websites, type pretty well, do some Excel visual basic, operate a forklift, put up decent numbers when forced onto the sale floor and have another decade plus of physical laborin me!

What's your boss's number? Perhaps I'm interested in underbidding you for your job? That's just how capitalism works. No pride in the fact some Americans are hungry enough to work for less.

I'm self employed so I live there. Maybe everyone in America should be self employed, it forces you to not be dependent on others or expect someone else to take up the slack. Entrepreneurship would reign supreme and maybe some of those jobs lost to high labor demands, high taxes and overbearing regulations and would come back.

The internet that you are using right now could not have been invented, developed and expanded by one person.

Jobs went overseas because American corporations discovered they could exploit the hell out of poor countries, extract every last fucking drop from them and then move on.

Google Ethiopia and how manufacturing is moving there from China. Why? Because the Chinese are demanding higher wages. Higher than .30 an hour, you stupid fucking idiot.

Angry and irrational....Typical of you pro union lib progressives.

 

[thereisnospoon]

What's wrong with workers organizing for their rights? The corporations have the supreme court as their unions. Remember citizens united? Unlimited funding to buy off politicians. Enabling a corporate person to claim a residence in Ireland while doing business in this country? No, better to worry that a guy might be making enough to have a decent life and maybe a retirement in his old age.

"The corporations have the supreme court as their unions.".....
I cannot remember a more inane comment anywhere in this thread.
Why is it you feel the need to take things to such a personal level that in order to convey your point you find it necessary to engage in hyperbole and out right fabrications ?

 

[thereisnospoon]

What's wrong with workers organizing for their rights? The corporations have the supreme court as their unions. Remember citizens united? Unlimited funding to buy off politicians. Enabling a corporate person to claim a residence in Ireland while doing business in this country? No, better to worry that a guy might be making enough to have a decent life and maybe a retirement in his old age.

The problem is workers are NOT organizing. Union managers stir up the workers, tell them all kinds of nice things about how the management is screwing them and how the union will get them raises and benefits. That all the workers have to do is show loyalty to the union ( pay dues) and when the union bosses tell them to walk off the job, do so. Meanwhile unions act in their own self interest. Just like any other business attempting to increase profits.