Kommie
join:2003-05-13
East Haven, CT
1 edit | reply to pandora
Re: [POLITICS] State Finally Does something good for the people
Unions = Better benefits and Pay.
As for small companies shutting down:
Its already happening:
»www.bankruptcyaction.com/USbankstats.htm
And its not by "Benefits" but by Globalization.Look at Germany, they have a positive trade deficit, lots of small companies and tons of strong unions with benefits Americans can only dream of.
Americans can't compete anymore. Look at American Cars vs German Cars. American Car Companies wanted faster and cheaper at cost of quality.
As for prices going up thats already happening:
»hornellhome.com/'60s%20statistic···ices.htm
Infact wages have decreased over the last 20 years for the average american family. Remember 50 years ago, only one person had to be employed in a family of four. Now both people have to work. |
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pandora
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|  said by Kommie  :Unions = Better benefits and Pay. Yeah, just look at what unions have done for GM, Chrysler and the airlines.
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"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." |
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Kommie
join:2003-05-13
East Haven, CT | Unions are not the ones that forced GM to make Crappy Cars like the GEO or like Chrysler with the Neon.
Unions didn't force Airlines to offer crappier service sending international fliers to foreign airlines. |
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pandora
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| said by Kommie :Unions are not the ones that forced GM to make Crappy Cars like the GEO or like Chrysler with the Neon. CAFE forced the big 3 to make cards nobody wanted. Unions merely helped increase the cost so they were sold at a loss.
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"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." |
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Kommie
join:2003-05-13
East Haven, CT
3 edits | You do know most American cars are only assembled in the USA now ? Remember Ross Perot and Nafta? Giant sucking sound of jobs going overseas. The cars are "made" outside the USA.
Somehow Toyota,Hyundai, and BMW are "making" cars in the USA and are out selling the American Companies.
Greed is what made the American Companies fall not unions. Like I said before the CEOs wanted faster and cheaper while decreasing quality.
And just recently in todays news the CEO of GM is getting 16 millon in a bonus. Imagine how many jobs that could of created.
Your arguments are not logical. Think it over. |
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pandora
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| said by Kommie :Somehow Toyota,Hyundai, and BMW are "making" cars in the USA and are out selling the American Companies. In right to work states without unions.
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"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." |
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ThirdShifter
Premium
join:2002-03-16
Vernon Rockville, CT
1 edit | reply to Kommie
This is a good law and most employers already offer sickpay and vacation. I see no big deal here.
Most businesses or services that don't offer it is in my opinion ridiculous given the notion that most workers are expected to a certain degree to come in when some one else fall sick to ensure productivity continues and their business runs smoothly.
This is a fair law and i agree the whole "will run businesses" is ridiculous.
CT of all places should be leading in these sort of laws. We certainly have the capability to. |
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cowboyro
join:2000-10-11
Shelton, CT
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said by Kommie :Unions = Better benefits and Pay. Unions=laziness made law and promotion of mediocrity. The last employee will be the first to go even if he's the best, older employees will be safe regardless of how bad they are since there are others in line to be cut... |
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Kommie
join:2003-05-13
East Haven, CT
| said by cowboyro :said by Kommie :Unions = Better benefits and Pay. Unions=laziness made law and promotion of mediocrity. The last employee will be the first to go even if he's the best, older employees will be safe regardless of how bad they are since there are others in line to be cut... It depends on the Union Contract, there are Unions that do not follow that rule. |
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Glenn
I'D Rather Be Skiing
Premium
join:2000-10-05
Wallingford, CT
| reply to Kommie
I heard a lot of businesses are run by mean nasty rich people who should pay their "fair" share. At least, that's what the ads on TV during the AM news keep telling me.
It'll be interesting to see if they can balance a budget. They have plenty of time to abolish the death penalty, but Godforbid you ask them to exercise a little fiscal restraint. "NOPE! We can't do that! There's no waste in state programs in fact...we need more money. We're going to hold our breath until our Governor gives us what we want."
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Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less. |
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harlenm
join:2002-09-02
Shelton, CT
| reply to Kommie
Everyone needs to stop arguing with Kommie, it's useless, no matter what you say to him, he won't believe you, and will distort the facts to fit his agenda.
Forcing businesses to spend money is never a good idea, especially when we are in a recession. They need to cut taxes, and lower the costs to run a business. That will lead to increased profits, which creates more jobs, and helps the economy. Increased fees lower profits and causes unemployment and pay cuts. |
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Kommie
join:2003-05-13
East Haven, CT | I havent seen any of your facts...
Last I checked unregulated capitalism is the cause of this recession. |
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pandora
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| said by Kommie :I havent seen any of your facts... Last I checked unregulated capitalism is the cause of this recession. Being informed is important. You may wish to investigate government attempts to push loans for unqualified buyers. Government pushing banks to give loans to unqualified buyers is at the heart of the financial meltdown. Banks looked for a way to monetize the unwanted government regulation.
»www.boston.com/bostonglobe/edito···_fiasco/
The roots of this crisis go back to the Carter administration. That was when government officials, egged on by left-wing activists, began accusing mortgage lenders of racism and "redlining" because urban blacks were being denied mortgages at a higher rate than suburban whites.
The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to "meet the credit needs" of "low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods." Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encouraged this "subprime" lending by authorizing ever more "flexible" criteria by which high-risk borrowers could be qualified for home loans, and then buying up the questionable mortgages that ensued.
All this was justified as a means of increasing homeownership among minorities and the poor. Affirmative-action policies trumped sound business practices. A manual issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston advised mortgage lenders to disregard financial common sense. "Lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor," the Fed's guidelines instructed. Lenders were directed to accept welfare payments and unemployment benefits as "valid income sources" to qualify for a mortgage. Failure to comply could mean a lawsuit.
As long as housing prices kept rising, the illusion that all this was good public policy could be sustained. But it didn't take a financial whiz to recognize that a day of reckoning would come. "What does it mean when Boston banks start making many more loans to minorities?" I asked in this space in 1995. "Most likely, that they are knowingly approving risky loans in order to get the feds and the activists off their backs . . . When the coming wave of foreclosures rolls through the inner city, which of today's self-congratulating bankers, politicians, and regulators plans to take the credit?"
Frank doesn't. But his fingerprints are all over this fiasco. Time and time again, Frank insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in good shape. Five years ago, for example, when the Bush administration proposed much tighter regulation of the two companies, Frank was adamant that "these two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis." When the White House warned of "systemic risk for our financial system" unless the mortgage giants were curbed, Frank complained that the administration was more concerned about financial safety than about housing.
Now that the bubble has burst and the "systemic risk" is apparent to all, Frank blithely declares: "The private sector got us into this mess." Well, give the congressman points for gall. Wall Street and private lenders have plenty to answer for, but it was Washington and the political class that derailed this train. If Frank is looking for a culprit to blame, he can find one suspect in the nearest mirror.
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"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." |
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signmeuptoo
Folding and Crunching Not just Breakfast
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join:2001-11-22
LOSTinSpace
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| reply to Kommie
And here, stupid me, I thought it was the credit default swap debacle, and how it was mismanaged.
I'm with Kommie, and I think it is HIGHLY unfair to accuse him of "twisting facts" in order to win his argument. Pretty much everything he says seems to come out of the wash pretty white to me.
How many of you guys have had to live on minimum wage, part time, with no health insurance, working your ass off as a middle aged person? None of you, so you don't get it.
States like Connecticut and California tend to lead the rest of the nation and while indeed, some aspects of worker's rights have made things worse for some, far more people benefit otherwise. Even the poor are consumers and customers, and their income is important to the economy.
I was put out on the street as a boy and worked my way into a technical job, through blood sweat and tears. I moved from CT thinking things would be better in the conservative states, and ended up working in jobs that didn't require brainpower and payed crap. I even worked under the table for less than minimum wage out of desperation for work a number of times.
I didn't have college or a highschool diploma. I couldn't go to family for help. I slept in my car, ate bean burritos for lunch and supper, and kept the most positive attitude I could.
At one point I got married and took on an instant family with two kids who I rescued from war. I had to work 3 jobs just to support them at a minimum, and that was including the wife working full time and part time as a maid. I delivered Pizzas, worked in KMart, and did courier work. Many nights I didn't sleep and I worked 7 days a week. I ended up with pneumonia for the second time in my life from the stress of no sleep and a difficult wife and jobs, and had zero health care and zero paid sick days.
We survived but it destroyed the marriage. I refused to go to the hospital when I was told by the doctor to go. I kept working even as sick as I was. I had no choice, I had babies to feed.
Call me lazy all you want, that is so sweet of you guys! All of us poor underpaid, no benefit, slave laborers are the ones bringing convenience and comfort to your lives, those of you driving late model cars, owning homes, retirement money, club memberships, and good meals. You all have those good things and you have the audacity to think that the poor slave workers, people who are grossly underpaid and mistreated and not covered with medical deserve nothing, that we have no right to the piece of pie because we are inferiors. That is really what this is about: Elitism.
We exploit the weakest amongst us here in America all while in other places the weakest at least get dignity.
I've been chased out of threads for my views, but I know I am not alone. Sadly, others who see things the way Kommie and I do are generally too poor to have a computer, or have money for an internet cafe or time for a library.
And more and more these days we have a growing populace of "underlings" who are not deserving of the smallest dignities.
So you don't let that Dollar General worker have paid work days, nor insurance, nor prescriptions. The worker ends up with pneumonia because she/he can't stop working and lose rent pay (lots of people miss house payments and stay in their homes, but renters are booted out to the street). The worker gets more and more ill and ends up in the hospital and fired from the job. She/he get very minimal care and get booted to the curb, homeless, car-less, jobless, hopeless.
OR:
The worker gets ill and takes advantage of the paid sick days and modest health care she has, gets medicine quickly and without having to sit in a frenzied clinic with hundreds of indigents among her. She rests 2 or 3 days, and refreshed returns to work, saves up some money, goes to college, gets a better job, and buys a house.
Proper treatment of low wage earners is more economical than decimating them. I know first hand. I've been homeless 4 times in my life, for different reasons but all greatly because I didn't have the pay scale and credit needed to find habitation. I've almost died from lack of medical care until a family found me and brought be back to health. I had gone over 3 weeks without any food save one Suzie Q pastry. I had no winter coat and bathed in a winter river. I was turned away when I asked for help and shelter, I was treated like garbage.
harlenm and the rest of you: A lot of where you get your stance from is from your ATTITUDE towards people in a different social class than your own. How many of you have lived a life and trouble as I am some of my friends have?
I know I have turned this into a personal related argument, but I tell you of my challenges so that you can know how bad it is to refuse even the minimum of labor treatment.
The unions aren't evil and blaming them for Detroit's problems is unfounded because the unions have existed for many decades with Detroit fattening their wallets. No, it was more greed (indeed some greed on labor's side, but nothing like management's side), the investment trade and the short term thinking and planning that gets forced on companies by investors.
American workers are fully capable of making quality affordable cars. Many great minds such as Dr. W. Edwards Deming have proven so with math and science.
Employers can be MORE profitable by GIVING paid sick days and health care with health maintenance. It breeds worker loyalty and productivity. It reduces the number of days off the job and reduces the need to hunt for new labor and reduces all the training necessary with replacements.
I am not as sophisticated, nor am I as educated as you more conservative types (remember, I'm poor, I was a starving college student, once I went a week without any food while in college). I only have an associates in science. I don't know many big words and don't know how to dig up cases to prove my arguments, and I have a bad memory. But I have a heart and that heart knows the truth, and what is right here, what is best for Connecticut.
If you want to lower standards, reduce taxes, and make all the other changes you all call for, you will have what we have in the poor South. You get what you pay for, and if you don't invest in your fellow human, if you don't provide quality of life elements, then you have poverty in a void like there is here where I reside.
Come to Dover, Tennessee, and compare the houses, stores, hospital, services to those in CT. What you all keep saying you want is what we HAVE HERE. Move here! Let's see how long you will stay.
Let the poor darn workers have a few lousy sick days paid. Doing so will pay for itself. Many studies have shown this, my brother is a Cornell Grad that knows about this stuff and I wish I had him here so he could explain...
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gregamy
join:2003-05-22
Middletown, CT
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| You guys are too funny. Seriously. It just doesn't get any better watching a Communist arguing with a Socialist about who's life is worse under capitalism.
Can't wait for the Fascists - if we're lucky, maybe even the Monarchists? - to join into the conversation. Should be enlightening to hear about how successful all these theories have been proven throughout human history... |
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Glenn
I'D Rather Be Skiing
Premium
join:2000-10-05
Wallingford, CT
| As Margaret Thatcher once said:
quote:
"Socialism works great until you run out of other people's money."
And on a budget note: We still don't have a budget! HOWEVER! Our wonderful elected officials have managed to pass a law that requires fast food establishments to post calorie/nutritional information. I guess we need this because people are stupid to realize that eating 6 Big Mac a day isn't good for you? I dunno. Maybe the Governor will veto it along with that crappy abolishment of the death penalty.
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Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less. |
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pandora
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|  I was watching some of our Connecticut legislatures debate on my Comcast local state info channel. They are still spending like drunk sailors. It amazes me that there seems to be little concern about the deficit.
After half an hour, I couldn't take it anymore. I think broadcasting our legislative sessions is cruel and unusual punishment. Maybe we could pipe the CT government channel down to Gitmo. 
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cowboyro
join:2000-10-11
Shelton, CT
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Give the workers free sick days w/o questions and see how many don't take all of them. Added employee expenses when companies are struggling.
I know what it means working to make a living, I came in this country 10+ years ago with $400 in my pocket and 2 suitcases.
(Yeah I'm the f#@king immigrant who comes and steals jobs from American workers).
I worked 80+hrs/week. I had to choose between 1 day of work and staying home sick... Kept my wife in college knowing it would be an investment in the future (didn't even qualify for student aid at that time) and she had to maintain a high GPA in order for the tuition cost not to be prohibitive. Stayed until 2AM or later improving my computer skills and woke up at 6AM to go to work. We both worked hard and sacrificed our lives and 10 years later we have a house better than we could have dreamed for and can afford going on vacations abroad.
See, for every sad story there is a success story. We could have settled for much less but the desire to break out of the "average" gave us power. I strongly believe that most people are capable of that only they prefer to complain how life and society are (mis)treating them. You can't believe how many opportunities there are in America until you see other parts of the world. Only opportunities won't chase you, they have to be taken and sometimes the best road isn't the straight smooth one. |
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gregamy
join:2003-05-22
Middletown, CT | Amen, brother Cowboy; amen! |
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Diogenes
Qui Me Amat, Amet Et Canem Meum
Premium
join:2000-08-16
Southbury, CT | Second that.... |
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