American unions

[Psychoblues]

Seriously, CR, I don't think bl is kidding.

Careful, BL. American's don't do irony!

I've read through many of the posts and I don't see where the irony as you intimate is applicable in this case. In other words, the post by bl was very serious and you accepted it as somehow funny.

 

[midcan5]

I suspect Bush Lover is a troll having fun exaggerating the social darwinist republican cheap labor conservative point of view.

"Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has correctly concluded that China's yuan policy provides a subsidy on exports. By the scope of intervention, this is a 45 percent subsidy. However, the Bush Administration has rebuked any suggested U.S. policy to offset this subsidy as protectionist-a profoundly different view than the one it has adopted on other forms of industry aid offered by China."

http://www.counterpunch.com/morici12132007.html


Offshoring: The Next Industrial Revolution? By Alan S. Blinder

"Their economics were basically sound: the well-known principle of comparative advantage implies that trade in new kinds of products will bring overall improvements in productivity and well-being. But Mankiw and his defenders underestimated both the importance of offshoring and its disruptive effect on wealthy countries. Sometimes a quantitative change is so large that it brings about qualitative changes, as offshoring likely will. We have so far barely seen the tip of the offshoring iceberg, the eventual dimensions of which may be staggering."

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060...ffshoring-the-next-industrial-revolution.html

http://bostonreview.net/BR26.1/fung.html

"Even "buying American" can mean paying for sweatshop labor. There are an estimated five thousand illegal, unregistered sweatshops in Los Angeles alone that label their products "Made in the USA." Only a few years ago, a company producing clothing for Mervyn's, Montgomery Ward, and BUM International, and selling their US-labeled products on the racks of Macy's, Robinsons-May, and Filene's department stores, was found to employ Thai immigrant women who were working in virtual slave-labor conditions. And this company had recently passed a Department of Labor (DOL) inspection."

 

[midcan5]

Saw this recently.

http://www.counterpunch.org/macaray03142008.html

 

[Diuretic]

Good to see a few myths exposed to scrutiny.

 

[jeffex]

I attended a really interesting lecture in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, given by a professor from Boston University to a bunch of us at the national trade union movement training centre.

He made the point that a union goes through various stages of development and decay and this was in the context of renewal of unions. I hope I remember this correctly but in a nutshell this was what he said

The union at each stage of its development has it's "heroes" and they reflect the value and purpose of the union.

In the organising phase the heroes are the organisers, the people who sometimes risk their wellbeing by trying to organise workers.

When the union has established itself and is in the position to negotiate its first contract the heroes are the negotiators.

When the union has won contracts for its members and has established itself as a powerful, useful and beneficial organisation the heroes are the people who manage to keep the union ticking along at peak performance.

When the union turns into a bureaucracy that becomes self-serving then the bureaucrats are the heroes.

His point was that when the union honours its bureaucrats then it's time for renewal.

I thought his thesis was very interesting and it made and still makes sense to me.

I am in a large union that has reached the latter stages of this thesis. I have been active as an assistant shop steward (not wanting more since I also run a business as well as a full time job). My help came from interpreting the contract . there has been no real fight in decades mostly bend over! Many older members are getting out of the union and the newer members just see it as a social club. The power remains with the retirees who fought the fight and are still pro-active. They look out for their interests and the working members just take what they get. Very apathetic. It will take a new threat of mass job loss for the current membership to wake up and show up at meetings and act as one. I'm sure its in the works with the latest contract asking for more temp workers. The observation I would like to make about unions is that they are keeping middle America alive for now by staving off the desire to hire immagrants who will work for less and from sunup to sundown. Unions are the last bastion of blue collar middle America. From the trade unions to federal unions with all their ills they give Americans the ability to purchase homes and the time to come home and enjoy their families. Without unions middle America will not have time for little league baseball because the parents will be competing with illegal immigrants who have found the holly grail in America and will work under any condition all day long. Unions keep Americans from becomming second class citizens. Just let me say I too have had to sit in on meetings where the person up for removal should have NEVER even been hired but I had to honor my commitment to our contract and adhear to its value to the entire group of workers not just one bad apple. Even worse legitimite grievences are routinely traded off to save a worker who SHOULD BE fired. In my shop we try and police our own but not everyone shares the work ethic.

 

[Diuretic]

Thanks jeffex, that's really interesting. I know what you mean about having to front up and defend when you know that someone should just be let go. I've been there a few times when I worked full time for our union. The way I saw it, it was like being a lawyer, you get your instructions and you do your best for the member according to the rules. If due process is followed then the assumption is that the "correct" decision is made. Having said that, the number of ingrates in our membership, at least in my experience, was startling.

 

[jeffex]

true !!! oh so true!! I can at least see retirement so I stepped away from the front lines and look out for #1 these days. thankless job for sure. The question I ask myself is "would I want a union workforce at my business?" I would like to think I could provide the kind of workplace that wouldn't require one but I don't think the keep the workers down method works in the long run. The american method of mgt. style needs to blend in a little of the Japaneese style where the supervisors simply achieve the role they were meant to be in and are valued the same as the line worker. Where I have seen mgrs. think they were anointed with great power the minute they put on the suit/ dress. Antiquated system that needs fixing from the top down IMO but who cares any more . I reminded a top level mgr during a speach he made about the work ethic that it is a LEARNED behavior and expecitng it to walk in the door these days is crazy. It is HIS job to teach it from the top down . Didn't go over well with thebig wigs but I'm not affraid to speak my mind.

 

[Merlin]

In my opinion, unions were the best thing since sliced bread in the 50s and 60s, but now they are like large corporations. I haven't heard much about the "right to work states". I have to agree with supermarine because a lot of companies are paying more per hour wages than union, and some even have great benefits, like Dr. and hospitalization. There were 20 right to work states the last I heard and that law has effectively killed the unions in those states. No, there are no more killings between business leaders and unions. The individuals in each may kill each other once in a while, but not over being union or not. Yes, "if" the employees vote among themselves to unionize, the company can't do much about it. If the workers don't want a union, the company can still sign a contract with the union but can't lay off any existing employee that don't join. And here where I live a union job don't have a union Stewart any more. Its gotten where the workers that are working side by side as partners don't know if the other one is union or not. I draw a retirement from a union but it is so small it won't buy my cigarettes. That said, I go on a job once in a great while as a consultant, but I wouldn't uncover my head in the morning for less than fifty dollars an hour and all expenses paid.

 

[Taomon]

In another thread there's a subsidiary discussion that is getting into the ideas of unions. I didn't want to derail the thread by taking the discussion in to unions and labour relations but it's a very interesting topic to me and I've been a senior union official in my union (was for some years, not now) so I'm biased in favour of unions and what they do, but I'm not blind to their faults.

US unions are a strange lot to me. Although they are tied up with the AFL-CIO (an interesting organisation) and are supposed to be close to the Democratic Party, US unions seem to me to be highly apolitical (compared to unions in Europe and Australia I mean). I'm not ignoring Canadian unions which are organised similarly to US unions, so I suppose I should have titled this North American unions but I didn't because I didn't want someone to think it was about the <reaches for tinfoil hat> the coming union of Canada, the US and Mexico.

Are you in a union? Do you think unions do good or are just out to get your dues and give you nothing in return? Are unions needed? Are they effective?
Any opinion at all?

I am not in a union presently. I work for a company that is so fair to it's employees that a union is unnecessary.

However, I have worked in places that should be unionized, like Blue Cross Blue Shield, EquiServe (associated with Fleet Bank), and many places in UpState NY.

Unions are good because the workers of North America do not have a viable job market. As a Clinton pundit bragged, the economy is stronger due to greater worker insecurity. Workers are scared to ask for more money, better benefits, and so on. And they should be scared. Their jobs can be shipped overseas, temps can be brought in to undermine unionization, and mostly, the working class is starving.

If I lose my job tomorrow, there are a hundred candidates ready to take that job and feed their families. Those of you who say "we are in a recession now," I have this to say: We have been in a recession for years, the upper middle class & the rich are now beginning to feel it and are saying that this is a recession.

I guess it only matters when it happens to the rich. Another reason why unions are good - who will help the poor against the tyranny of the rich? Only when we band together can we the people stand.

 

[Diuretic]

Interesting ideas there Taomon. Your comment about the necessity for a union in a company is apt. A union, like any other organisation, sees itself as having to keep growing. The people who run it, the management, are just like those (in this sense) in a corporation. Theoretically there's a point at which the union can grow no longer (if every potential member was signed up) but this will never be reached, so the union continues to strive to grow.

The paradox is that every union leader should have as his or her career objective the loss of their own job. They should be working to create a fair society where unions aren't needed. Of course that isn't going to happen either. But I do think that that attitude is a useful antidote to the attitude that the union exists so that its leadership can wield influence and provide sinecures. Otherwise the union is just another bureaucracy that exists for the sake of its management rather than the people it should be serving.

That's why the business union idea needs to be jumped on. A union that has social and political aims has an ideology to fulfil and that makes it more than a bureaucracy.

 

[indago]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2uErWWwQTo]Job Market 2009[/ame]

 

[nibor]

I've worked in five unions..................they were all necessary for the industries involved, they served very important varied purposes..........but our unions really needed to be revamped and restructured................mostly away from organized crime!

 

[midcan5]

FYI

Australian labor unions reverse a trend

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/03/australian-labo.html

 

[cbi0090]

I grew up in a midwestern union town...nothing but factories. I didn't even dare approach the subject of wanting to go to college with my father or grandfather, as they saw it as my wanting to join the white shirts...management, engineers, professionals. You couldn't breathe unless you had a union card and the various unions were dominated by either certain families or certain ethnic groups. I had no chance of becoming, say, an electrician, or a steel workers among many others. I could have become a carpenters apprentice but I was more likely to be a coal miner, as many of my family were miners.

I lived in the deadeningly dull neighborhoods of the workers and felt the sickening humiliation of seeing my father and neighbors kiss up to the union stewards, who everyone knew provided upward mobility, whether it was deserved or not, based on how far you shove your nose up his rectum. I lived through the strikes and listened to the endless Us-against-them speeches.

When I was a child I did childish things and believed their crap. When I became an adult, I put away childish things and realized what they were and saw where they were taking us. They were handing over our manufacturing capability first to Japan then the remaining developing world by not working with management, developing employees, or bending with the times. They just wanted power and money.

I fled, as soon as I could, to Florida, an open shop state, where bosses just wanted you to show up and work hard. I could do that. If I made them money, I didn't have to be their friend or kiss up at all. The rules were simple, measureable, and real. In time, it allowed me to become a white shirt and build a business of my own that provides jobs to others.

I stood over my dying father several years ago, in my white shirt and tie, and all he could say was I never really knew what it was like to work hard. He spoke out of ignorance and I don't really blame him as much as I do the ignorant world he lived in.

 

[cbi0090]

I grew up in a midwestern union town...nothing but factories. I didn't even dare approach the subject of wanting to go to college with my father or grandfather, as they saw it as my wanting to join the white shirts...management, engineers, professionals. Who the hell do you think you are?? was all heard in reply.

You couldn't breathe unless you had a union card and the various unions were dominated by either certain families or certain ethnic groups. I had no chance of becoming, say, an electrician, or a steel worker among many others. I could have become a carpenters apprentice but I was more likely to be a coal miner, as many of my family were miners.

I lived in the deadeningly dull neighborhoods of the workers and felt the sickening humiliation of seeing my father and neighbors kiss up to the union stewards, who everyone knew provided upward mobility, whether it was deserved or not, based on how far you could shove your nose up his rectum. I lived through the strikes and listened to the endless Us-against-them speeches.

When I was a child I did childish things and believed their crap. When I became an adult, I put away childish things and realized what they were and saw where they were taking us. They were handing over our manufacturing capability first to Japan then the remaining developing world by not working with management, developing employees, or bending with the times, while demanding more for less. It was irrational and was obvious they just wanted power and money.

I fled, as soon as I could, to Florida, an open shop state, where bosses just wanted you to show up and work hard. I could do that. If I made them money, I didn't have to be their friend or kiss up at all. The rules were simple, measureable, and real. In time, it allowed me to become a white shirt and build a business of my own that provides jobs to others.

I stood over my dying father several years ago, in my white shirt and tie, and all he could say was I never really knew what it was like to work hard. He spoke out of ignorance but I don't really blame him as much as I do the ignorant world he worked in.

 

[Diuretic]

cb - that's an interesting read. I get the impression that you feel the unions are at fault for what happened in the town in which you grew up.

The behaviour of US business unions has interested me for a long time, their lack of political philosophy is probably to blame for the union leadership mirroring the behaviour of the employers. My meagre knowledge of US union history stirs, I think I remember reading something about Gompers keeping ideology out of union politics.

 

[nfiRONWORKER]

I've been a union Ironworker off and on for 30yrs,if you want to make a wage to be able to live in the present US economy, unions are the only way to achieve that. As a union member you will get a good health care plan and a retirement plan that will carry you through your latter years. Non union companies pay far less than union scale and most offer no retirement plan unless you pay for it out of your wages.
Even though unions have problems, the most important thing is the members consider themselves a brotherhood, and will take care of there own, especially when a fellow worker becomes physically unable to perform the work load required by most companies, they will get you on a job and the younger members will carry you and give you a job your capable of performing till you reach the age of retirement, I'm talking about brothers that have taken there toll on the body from the years of abuse to your body because of the work involved in the performing the work at hand.
Non union, as soon as you can no longer peform at the pace they expect, your gone.
With unions, the younger ones will gladly work a little harder so you will get to your retirement age.
Forget about the executives of the union, its a whole different world between the ones who actually do the work.
So, the bottom line is, do you want to have the money required to live a decent life, and make it to your retirement, or do you want to do a dangerous job where shortcuts are common in the non union arena who think nothing of the danger they put you in, and struggle to make ends meet, OR work union, live a decent life and would all walk off the job if the contractor tries to put you into a dangerous situation in a all ready dangerous job just to fatten their bottom line.
Weigh the pros and cons and make your own decision

 

[Diuretic]

nfiIronworker it seems that in the US it's the unions themselves that look after union member's working conditions. If that sounds a bit confused it's because I'm confused.

Where I live the union doesn't negotiate a health care plan with an employer because we have a universal health care system. We do have industry superannuation though, the system was set up by a previous Labor government on a federal basis and the funds are jointly administered (and they're worth squillions of bucks).

Worker's compensation schemes here operate at federal and state/territory level and are actually administered by a government agency at both levels.

So, we have social benefits that were gained by unions (usually in accord with Labor governments) but the unions don't run them any longer and they benefit everyone. I think people here forget how those social benefits were gained.

 

[editec]

It's not at all too much of a stretch to note that the decline of purchasing power (not incomes, but the actual value of those wages) has been decling at the same rate that the percentage of working American who are in unions has been going down.

Contrary to the myth of the neo-cons Adam Smith did NOT advise that nations offshore their manufacuturing based on wages. (go check if you doubt me, please)

He was mostly talking about a nation not trying to compete in markets where some other nation had "natural advantages" that made those foreign nation, rather than the nation at hand, the sensible maker of products.

His point wasn't that England should offshore all work, but that England shouldn't try to become (for example) a wine producing nation when Portegual could do it better.

FREE TRADE, as designed by our illustrious leadership, is little more than an undeclared class war.

What cracks me up, is how surprised so many Americans seem to be that we are now in finacial trouble.

Did they really imagine that we could screw about half the American consumers and STILL have a vibrant economy?

Of course they did. Every time you read somebody explaining that only "unskilled workers" are at risk of losing their jobs (and because they were stupid and didn't study hard enough in school or some crap), that is exactly what they were imagining...that the problems of those displaced workers wouldn't come back to effect every American.

Hubris...it's what's for breakfast, luch and dinner, folks.

If your neighbors are getting poorer, guess what? You will be too... and sooner rather than later.

 

[nfiRONWORKER]

diuretic, in our unions (construction) our package is made up of x amount of dollars per hour to include wage per hour, so much a hour for health care, retirement, vacation and sometimes an annunity. For example:
wage $30 hr
health care $5 hr
retirement $5hr
vacation $4 hr
annunity $2 hr
total package $46 per hr
all $ goes to union hall except wage, union offers members choice of several health plans, retirement goes to your account, vacation is paid out twice a year, and annunity can be left to build or you can withdraw it and pay a 10% early withdrawal fee to the gov't.
The only thing I disagree with is the retirement, since its an hourly amount the contractor pays to the union on your behalf, if youleave the trade you can't take it and roll it into a ira, it stays with the union and if your not vested, you lose it.
but all in all, working non union, I wouldn't even get the wage and all the other things are not even in the picture.
In our union, you can work anyware in the country at a different local and have your benifits sent back to your local and added to your account.