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| Unions Granted there are bad unions, where corruption has run rampant. Theyre the exception, not the rule. On average, the unionized worker is paid roughly 30% more than their non-union counterparts.
The company I work for does its very damned best to keep wages low. Directors of departments are given bonuses based on keeping budget, and the biggest hit to budget is employee "compensation". The tech position I hold has not had its starting wage raised in over eight years. In spite of cost of living being almost double what it was since then. What can we do about it? Complain to the director is directly profiting by our wage staying low? Even should he decide to "go to bat" for us, he has to go through HR to get it raised, and they will be ineffective because theyre told to follow a corporate formulae.
We have other properties whos technicians are paid about 50% more than us. Theyre unionized. They also have strict guidelines about what and what is not their job duties, while HR recently expanded ours. And what can you do? Yes you can leave for a competitor, but the problem is they fix their wages at the same rate as each other and benefits are about the same. So your choice is to pay for education out of your own pocket to start a new field, give up years of experience and loyalty.
Also, the company has repeatedly shown hositility towards unionization of its workers and to date, the only properties that are unionized at all are ones that were bought that way. Our turnover rate is somewhere around 60% and were routinely understaffed. This has been going on for about 3 years now and yet nothing is done. Annual employee surveys always have the same number one complaint. Wages are too low. Yet the company ignores that and instead has picnics and "employee rallies" to try to raise morale because its cheaper.
Yes theres laws protecting workers against blatant abuse, but under capitalistic wage slavery they will never enact laws to protect your right to get fair compensation. That is what unions are for. Any non unionized worker can be told at anytime that theyre going to do more work for the same pay. And if your area has high unemployment, then you cant exactly threaten them with leaving. So forgive me if I have severe reservations believing the anti union sentiment. | |
 BIGMIKEPremium
join:2002-06-07
Westminster, CA | I am not a lawyer but I am shore he’s 'Innocent Until Proven Guilty' | |
Reviews:
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| said by BIGMIKE:
I am not a lawyer but I am shore he’s 'Innocent Until Proven Guilty'
Unless yours was the connection that was taken down.
This is not new for union labor, especially when on strike. Cross a picket line when you are not even a member of any union and you will get spit on, things thrown at you, and in some cases physical harm. It is not uncommon to have tires slashed and vehicle damaged.
These are supposed to be people the demand the right to work at decent wages, with decent conditions. Yet these same people will deny others the right to work. Why is that not wrong?
Work should be about supply and demand. If a job is only worth $10.00 an hour why should some HS drop-out that can't balance a checkbook be making $13.00 an hour?
Next time you have to pay $250.00 for a plastic taillight with $2.00 worth of material, blame the union that makes the taillight, the union that packages, the union that inspects, the union that ships, workers that load trucks, dock workers that load ships, etc. for the high cost. The high price is primarily caused by unions, the multiple segregrated jobs so that a product passes through the most hands.
That is what unions are doing for this country. | |
| said by raythompsontn:
said by BIGMIKE:
I am not a lawyer but I am shore he’s 'Innocent Until Proven Guilty'
Next time you have to pay $250.00 for a plastic taillight with $2.00 worth of material, blame the union that makes the taillight, the union that packages, the union that inspects, the union that ships, workers that load trucks, dock workers that load ships, etc. for the high cost. The high price is primarily caused by unions, the multiple segregrated jobs so that a product passes through the most hands.
That is what unions are doing for this country.
Check out the location that plastic tail light was made. China? Mexico? Phillipines? You will likely see that is was made overseas with very cheap labor. The $250 price is simply an exammple of the COMPANY gouging you. Not the American worker who does not have a job making those taillights.
By your logic, a carton of milk would cost $20.00 a gallon or more in union related markups between the manufacturer and customer. | | |
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BIGMIKEPremium
join:2002-06-07
Westminster, CA | We American people are so blind, blaming the Unions and some for in country worker, they have no one to blind but them self and are U.S. government Corruption. We American people need to wake up and get are head out of are ass. Like are for fathers did over 200yrs a go.  | |
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| reply to unclebob
said by unclebob:
Check out the location that plastic tail light was made. China? Mexico? Phillipines?
I did. U.S.A.
Between union labor, union packing, union loading, union shipping, union unloading, union distribution, union delivery, etc. the price becomes 100 times what the product cost. | |
BIGMIKEPremium
join:2002-06-07
Westminster, CA | greedy American companies
Henry Ford the rill American
To combat the high turnover and to boost morale, Henry Ford announced the famous "$5 a day" wage. It was actually a profit-sharing plan. (The bonus wage came with certain obligations to which the employee agree.) Nevertheless, Ford's plan doubled typical wages and sent shockwaves through the other car companies. They thought Ford was crazy and would soon go out of business. Ford knew, however, that this new deal would not only lower costs due to decreased turnover, but it would create more buyers of his cars: the employees themselves!
»www.michigan.gov/hal/0,1607,7-16···,00.html | |
 KrKHeavy Artillery For The Little GuyPremium
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK
 ·AT&T DSL Service
| reply to raythompsontn
said by raythompsontn:
Work should be about supply and demand. If a job is only worth $10.00 an hour why should some HS drop-out that can't balance a checkbook be making $13.00 an hour?
This is one of those examples where a simple principle looks good on paper or in theory but doesn't work in reality.
The reason? Supply and demand is manipulated, and is not fixed or at least steady. How do I mean? Well, let's take the USA and the immigrant issue. If the USA could control it's borders, you'd have a point. If a company's wages were too low, they'd be unable to hire people, and so would have to sweeten the pot in order to draw employees back to their fold. Therefore, wages would naturally adjust with the cost of living. However, as we know, this isn't really the case... because the Government fails to maintain the immigration policies, cheap labor is constantly flooding the US... and I'm not talking just from Mexico, either. The supply of labor is going up, and wages *are* going down. Recently, you have heard the argument "These people fill the jobs that American's don't want."
This is misnomer, an extemely pro-business agenda. In reality, it is "These jobs pay too low... nobody in America really wants to do that kind of work for such low pay that they can't make a decent living doing them."
The solution? Wages would have to stabilize at levels that meant people could work such jobs and feel ok... Maybe the job itself isn't desirable, but the pay would increase until it became worth it.... however, because the cheap labor fills these jobs, the "price" of labor remains stagnant or even falls, instead of increasing as it naturally should under the law of supply and demand.
... so that brings us to where we are today. We have a plentiful supply of people who are willing to work cheaply because they aren't paying the real costs of living in the US as a US citizen. Don't kid yourself, many of these workers pay little taxes, health-care, or retirement such as social security. Many actually further burden the working class by taking advantage of government benefits and leaving various social costs bills unpaid (such as medical treatment). Therefore, due to their much lower expenses, they can afford a job that pays 50% LESS (or more!) then what you make and still live at the same standard of living as you do. Employers think this is great idea, extremely low labor costs, extra profits!... but for the working class... LOOK OUT...
In other words, wages are artificially low, and just turning to supply and demand doesn't work because that principle is built apon the idea that supply is fixed or at least limited in growth.
Let me put it another way. Let's say you work for a company, and they announce a new "Supply and Demand" wages policy. At first, you're ok, because you're in a small town a fair ways from anywhere and the labor pool is limited. Things seem balanced, and the workers are OK.
.... but then one day you come to work, and there's this line of buses parked there.... and some new Barracks style housing and a cafeteria is being built. It seems the company has sent a convoy down into Mexico and hired a few hundred men to work for the next 6 months. They pay each man $10,000k to work for that period, to travel here, stay for 6 months, then return. To many of them, living at low costs of living in Mexico, this is a small fortune, and they are all over it.
So, management has a meeting with you and your former workers. They explain how it's just supply and demand, and they are willing to hire you all back.... Provided you're willing to work for a lower rate then $10,000k for six months.....
See the problem here?
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"Regulatory capitalism is when companies invest in lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians, instead of plant, people, and customer service." - former FCC Chairman William Kennard (A real FCC Chairman, unlike the current Corporate Spokesperson in the job!) | |
KrKHeavy Artillery For The Little GuyPremium
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK Reviews:
·AT&T DSL Service
| reply to raythompsontn
said by raythompsontn:
Between union labor, union packing, union loading, union shipping, union unloading, union distribution, union delivery, etc. the price becomes 100 times what the product cost.
Actually, there was probably little or no union involvement, accept prehaps at the assembly plant.
The price is not set on costs of manufacture. It is set on "What is the maximum price the market will bear". It's even worse in this case because the manufacturer is just one company, and the parts business is a very lucrative near monopoly, especially on vehicles under 5 years old.
Also, I have a suggestion, if you want to save money, try a salvage yard. Even brand new cars are getting into accidents and junked---- you can get a lot of perfectly good lens covers that way.
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"Regulatory capitalism is when companies invest in lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians, instead of plant, people, and customer service." - former FCC Chairman William Kennard (A real FCC Chairman, unlike the current Corporate Spokesperson in the job!) | |
| Or how about try nothing is made in the USA due to "high overhead" because of those pesky unions....no US manufacturing = less jobs = nobody can afford the tail light at all! | |
BIGMIKEPremium
join:2002-06-07
Westminster, CA | The debate over American companies outsourcing jobs is often tainted by misconceptions and anecdotal evidence, which the media tends to accept at face value. But as outsourcing emerges as a hot-button issue in the presidential election, it is time that some of the most common myths about outsourcing be dispelled.
Take, for example, the complaint that outsourcing takes jobs away from Americans. On the most basic level, yes: when one company ships 500 jobs currently held by Americans to India, those 500 Americans do lose their jobs.
But that’s not usually the way it works. Many times, American companies will create new jobs specifically for overseas workers, jobs they’d never consider if forced by law to give them to Americans, because they’d be too expensive. Many recent domestic start-up companies have spent their first few years of existence employing only overseas workers, with a few executives here in the U.S. overseeing things. Once they’ve established financial footing, these companies can then expand, and begin to hire more expensive American workers.
America is actually a net importer when it comes to jobs. Far more foreign companies come to America to hire people than American companies go overseas to hire cheap foreign labor. We’re even a net importer of tech jobs.
The problem then, is that if we begin to punish American companies for hiring foreign workers, as some politicians and protectionists have suggested, it’s almost certain that the countries exporting jobs to the U.S. will forbid their own companies from coming here. The net result will be an overall loss of U.S. jobs. Not to mention that we’d have fewer goods to choose from as consumers, and what goods we could choose from would be more expensive, which also costs jobs.
Often, outsourcing opponents will be quoted as saying that American companies ought to be patriotic, and hire American workers.
The result of this, however, would be American companies losing business to foreign competitors, and perhaps going out of business themselves.
The idea that American companies should handicap themselves by hiring more expensive domestic labor solely out of patriotism is itself un-American. America’s prosperity was built on entrepreneurship and free enterprise. If American companies can’t capitalize on cheap overseas labor, foreign companies in the same field will, and American companies (as well as the people they still employ in the U.S.) will suffer. Is that really the example that the world’s beacon of capitalism ought to set?
Another common myth is that America was built on manufacturing. If we ship all of our manufacturing overseas, we won’t be able to create wealth. And what will we do if there’s a major war?
We aren’t shipping all of our manufacturing jobs overseas. There’s plenty of manufacturing power on American shores. Given that the most of the rest of the world has seen a net loss in manufacturing jobs over the last decade or so, the idea that we’re shipping all of our blue-collar jobs to the third-world just doesn’t hold water. If we’re moving jobs, someone ought to be gaining them.
So where have all the jobs gone? Well, the short answer is that we’ve gotten more efficient. We’ve figured out how to make the same goods with fewer hands. And while that may seem like a bad thing for the hands that aren’t working anymore, you have to keep in mind that this has been going on for the last century.
The invention of the automobile displaced people who manufactured and drove carriages, and who raised and trained the horses who pulled them. Computers displaced all sorts of professions. At the turn of the century, almost half of the American workforce worked on a farm. Today, that number is less than five percent. Yet we produce exponentially more food now than we did then, due to new agriculture technology. American ingenuity resulted in many farmers and farmhands being displaced, and those people were hurt in the short run. But as a nation, we’re better off for it. We have more to eat, and we can do more productive things with the land and labor no longer used for agriculture.
Despite the ramifications for those who lose their jobs, society as a whole benefits from increased productivity while the jobs displaced in declining sectors are replaced with jobs in emerging sectors. Finding cheaper labor is just as much a part of increasing our productivity as inventing a faster computer.
A key focus of the outsourcing debate is the charge that American companies go overseas to exploit third world labor because they’re greedy.
It depends on what you mean by greedy. American companies do look to maximize profits and minimize costs, just as we all do as individuals. But it costs a lot of money to close down a domestic plant and move it overseas. Investing in developing economies also typically carries huge risks. The workforce may be cheap, but it’s also unreliable and uneducated. The Third World also lacks the stable institutions you need to run an efficient business, such as a consistently enforced, predictable rule of law and property rights. Developing countries also tend to be politically unstable, and foreign firms can be the target of insurgencies and civil unrest.
In short, companies typically pack up and move overseas only when the tax and regulatory environment at home gets overly burdensome. Indeed, a cursory look at the data shows that the states with the most aggressive tax and regulatory policies tend to be the states that are losing the most jobs to other countries.
There is also the claim that the U.S. government ought to look out for Americans. If that means forbidding American companies from giving jobs to foreigners, so be it.
There are several problems with this way of thinking. First, as noted above, any action by the U.S. government to limit how many foreign workers American companies can hire will most certainly lead to reprisals, which will likely mean a net loss of jobs for Americans. Is that “looking out for Americans?”
Restrictions will also mean less choice for American consumers, and higher prices for all of us. Higher prices also mean fewer jobs. Is forcing all Americans to sacrifice for the jobs of a few displaced workers “looking out for Americans?”
The people who start up, invest in and run corporations are Americans, too. In fact, they’re the epitome of the American dream, and American-style free market capitalism. If an American puts his own financial reputation on the line to start up a tech firm, and can only afford to hire foreign workers until he gets his feet on the ground, do we really want the U.S. government telling him he has no choice but to hire more expensive domestic labor, even if it bankrupts him? Even with big firms that are well-established, do we really want to empower the government to restrict who they can hire? Is that “looking out for Americans?”
Finally, several states have now passed laws forbidding any company that does business with state governments from employing cheap overseas labor. In Indiana, politicians decided to cancel a contract with a firm to upgrade the state’s computer systems because the firm employed workers in India. As a result, the state hired a competing firm from Florida, at an additional cost of $8 million to Indiana taxpayers. Even if an Indiana firm had bid on the job (and none did), it at most would have meant an additional 50 jobs in the state. Were Indiana lawmakers really “looking out” for Hoosiers by charging taxpayers an extra $8 million so Floridians could upgrade the state’s computers instead of Indians?
There’s no doubt people get hurt in the short-run when the economy shifts and embraces new business models, but it’s been that way since the industrial revolution. Those self-correcting measures have in the long run made us the most prosperous, comfortable and productive society in history | |
BeeperPart Of The Problem
join:2001-09-27
Dayton, OH | reply to Bubbles5
said by Bubbles5:
no US manufacturing = less jobs
US Durable goods manufactured in 1994 = $694 billion
US Durable goods manufactured in 2001 = $812 billion
US Nondurable goods manufactured in 1994 = $529 billion
US Nondurable goods manufactured in 2001 = $610 billion
What other nation on the planet manufactures $1.4 trillion dollars in goods annually?
Why do people believe that the US doesn't manufacture anything?
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Guaranteed Fear and Loathing. Abandon all hope. Prepare for the Weirdness. Get familiar with Cannibalism. | |
| reply to runlevelfour
Annual employee surveys always have the same number one complaint. Wages are too low. Yet the company ignores that and instead has picnics and "employee rallies" to try to raise morale because its cheaper
Why don't you quit? Why not work for a company that will pay you what you feel you deserve [be it in the same town, another state, or whatnot]? | |
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