Supermarket in S. Cali

[2quiktocare]

No offense taken Myclone. The main problem I have with unions are they force a company to comply with their wishes. This is so against the human spirit it is repulsive. The simple fact of the matter is that a worker has no investment in the company other than they show up to work. They can go out and find employment to meet their needs if they are so qualified. If a company fails it affects many people. Investors, stock holders, community, and government.

You say that you are striking for benefits more than wages. The thing is, benefits are what kills a company. That was my point whit the U.A.W. and what they have extortred from car manufacturers.

My other beef with unions is that the greatest number of people represented by them are government workers now days. That blows as far as i am concerned.

 

[Racer X]

Some Unions will force a company to submission, but as I stated earlier, if you look at the building trades this is really not the case. We have a committee that meets once a month to discuss how to keep our industry strong and SAFE. This panel has an equal number of members from the Union and the Contractors. This is one huge reason we don't strike. It is a partnership between the two. The Union needs to keep it's members working and the Contractors need to stay competitive to get work.

The Building Trades recognized about twenty years ago that an adversarial relationship would be bad for everyone. We DO NOT have any seniority. You don't cut it, you're gone and that's it. No grievences. You just go out and find another job. If you produce, you stay employed. Pretty simple. Our Contractors make money (and trust me they are doing just fine) and our members make a decent living and go home SAFE. This safety issue is important since alot of us work on high rise buildings and such and it's hard work as well as dangerous.

The toughest battle we face is doing Government jobs and not because of the Union Government people, but the red tape we have to go through to get our job done (but that's a whole new thread )

The point is, the Unions can still serve a purpose, but they just need to change their business model. I still believe it is a good check between the haves and the have nots. A lot of have nots like working with their hands and building things and they should have a voice to talk for them. Corporate bosses all get advise from lawyers and accountants on how to deal with their business, why shouldn't Joe Six Pack? That's all collective bargaining is really.

Anyway, just a few thoughts from me

 

[2quiktocare]

Racer, I know that during the 70's in Southern California that illegal aliens came in and closed down the unions for both framers and drywallers and worked as scabs. Within 10 years they were forming unions again and drove the building cost thru the roof (no pun intended) again. Just a point in history. Mark

 

[Racer X]

I remember that well. They came up here, broke up the Unions and then got to the point where they were working for $0.02 a sf. These guys would have to work 12-15 hours a day just to make a $100.00 with no benefits. Then one day, one of these dumb as.....errrr.....workers realizes that they are getting the high hard one So they decide they want to join the Union they had disbanded. All of us guys welcomed them with open arms...NOT! My local calls me up and asks if I can donate to their cause, I tell him to go $h1t in the lake. They broke it, let them fix it!

Where a some of the escalated costs in my industry come from are not so much in the cost of the raw labor, but the Workers Comp that has darn near tripled in the last decade, thank you to our Governors one and all, and unsafe working practices of unskilled people in the buildings.

Any how, I suppose we have beat this to death

Cheers!

 

[tom h]

"free" or "no cost" medical visits is what leads to outrageous, out of control medical costs and workers compensation costs.

What if diamond rings, or wide screen TVs, or any good or service was "free"? Wouldn't people stuff their pockets with diamond rings on every visit to the store?

In reality it's not "free", someone else pays. When the person using the service has absolutely no incentive to be sensible, it creates a twisted non-market economy and ever spiraling costs for society.

California worker's compensation insurance system is similarly screwed up ... doctor and therapist visits are not capped, and as a result "injured" californians somehow "need" twice as many doctor visits as workers in other states.

The state is full of crooked lawyers and doctors who are scamming the system, driving up costs, and driving businesses out of the state.