An America Without Unions

In Westchester County the average public sector union employee now makes $70,000 per year, $10,000 more than his private sector counterpart and gets a pension to boot.

Somewhere things went very wrong
 
In Westchester County the average public sector union employee now makes $70,000 per year, $10,000 more than his private sector counterpart and gets a pension to boot.

Somewhere things went very wrong
agreed, but is it the fault of the unions for being better negotiators or the fault of the companies for being bad ones?
 
Most people who hate unions are just jealous that some Americans have managed to hang onto good paying jobs with good benefits and good job security,

jobs that someone can support a family on, jobs that someone can have a good life on.

The rarer these sort of jobs become, the more resented are those who manage to get them.

I disagree

It is better to have upward mobility and develop your skill set and productivity.

Like the story about the woman slapping labels onto beer bottles posted before your comments. It is not appropriate for her to be paid $20 an hour for just that, but it is not appropriate for her to be stuck in the same damn job either.

Your skill set has to improve while you age, if you get stuck doing the same dumb ass job for more than 10 years, then you must quit because your future survival hinges on your self improvement. Leave the dumb jobs for the smart asses fresh out of college/highschool!
 
In Westchester County the average public sector union employee now makes $70,000 per year, $10,000 more than his private sector counterpart and gets a pension to boot.

Somewhere things went very wrong
agreed, but is it the fault of the unions for being better negotiators or the fault of the companies for being bad ones?

Public sector unions so it Neo-Marxists negotiating with themselves on how quickly the can Cloward Piven us into revolution
 
Most people who hate unions are just jealous that some Americans have managed to hang onto good paying jobs with good benefits and good job security,

jobs that someone can support a family on, jobs that someone can have a good life on.

The rarer these sort of jobs become, the more resented are those who manage to get them.

I disagree

It is better to have upward mobility and develop your skill set and productivity.

Like the story about the woman slapping labels onto beer bottles posted before your comments. It is not appropriate for her to be paid $20 an hour for just that, but it is not appropriate for her to be stuck in the same damn job either.

Your skill set has to improve while you age, if you get stuck doing the same dumb ass job for more than 10 years, then you must quit because your future survival hinges on your self improvement. Leave the dumb jobs for the smart asses fresh out of college/highschool!
you argument doesnt address the fact that many people are not interested in upward mobility within a work environment. many are in fact completely content with the position and pay they have and dont necessarily want to take on more responsibility and the opportunity for more money.
 
In Westchester County the average public sector union employee now makes $70,000 per year, $10,000 more than his private sector counterpart and gets a pension to boot.

Somewhere things went very wrong
agreed, but is it the fault of the unions for being better negotiators or the fault of the companies for being bad ones?

Public sector unions so it Neo-Marxists negotiating with themselves on how quickly the can Cloward Piven us into revolution
so the better negotiator is at fault here? hmmmmm guess when the Broncos overpay for Manning, its all Manning and his agents fault that team took a basic risk..
 
No unions is a damned fine way to insure that this nation becomes a banana republic.

Hell, we're well on our way to that state already.

I know, I know...that's the economic model many of you want for this nation.

i'd rather be darfur than have fucking unions...
 
I used to be a member of one of the biggest unions in this country. I dropped my membership when I found out they where giving my dues to politicians I did not support, and then they lied to me about it when I brought it up. Fuck'em, I dont need them for anything.
I paid $360 a year in dues and got a couple t-shirts out of it. Now I send that money to a uniform store and buy uniforms and gear that I need for work throughout the year "I am actually getting something for my money compared to when I was giving it to the union".
no one forces you to join a union. its a choice

then they steal your paycheck...
 
One way to keep unions out of a company is to offer what union shops offer, and bingo, people have no need to join a union. Too bad they didn't start this practice, called englightened management, long ago, before there were unions. Had they done so we might never have had a need for unions.
 
You remember the old song performed by Tennessee Ernie Ford " You Load Sixteen Tons And What Do You Get, Another Day Older And Deeper In Debt"

That's not just the words to a song.....it happened. The railroads, the mines, every small enterprise or company paid the least amount they could get by with and there were no benefits at all. People worked 12 hours a day for less than a dollar and their mid day meal. If the company one was working for heard a complaint or a discouraging word an employee was told to collect their pay and find another job.

In the 1940's and early 50's a corporate executive earned about $20,000-$25,000 per year.Along about that time the unions began to negotiate for and gain some salary amounts and benefits. Every time the union was about to be successful at some effort the companies(by default) gave it to their salaried people first........where I worked sometimes as close as two weeks before they awarded it to the union employees.

By the 70's a corporate executive's pay had increased to several hundred thousand dollars a year because the unions were begining to accomodate base line employees with a living wage and new benefits each year.

When I hired in with Union Carbide Corp. in 1952 they had a pension plan but cost was shared by the employee. A person earning $4000-$5000 a year who had a family of four usually didn't even take part in the guaranteed lifetime pension which was based upon their salary at retirement and their years of service. They couldn't afford it if they planned to educated their children. I was single and began the first day to pay into the pension plan.

About 4-5 years later the union negotiated for and received a company funded pension plan and they negotiated for it to be retroactive. I received a lump sum payment for every penny I had paid into the plan and retired with a company funded pension after 41 years service.

People today have no clue about what the unions did for ordinary employees. The only reason companies today pay anybody a goddam dime more than they have to is the threat of a union. If they weren't still on the scene companies would still have railroad workers living in side cars paying half of their salary in rent and miners would still be working in totally unsafe conditions for enough to buy their groceries at the stores the companies operated.

The youth of today look around and think companies are on their side, and a few are, but for the most part a company operates for the highest bottom line profit and would screw their own kin for each employee to earn $10 a week less or to not be required to carry health insurance. Before unions there was no such thing as OSHA or the EPA and employees worked in asbestos, uranium, coal mines, and all manner of other potentially unsafe conditions and men bragged about working in the most adverse conditions. I know....I worked in the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant(ORGDP) where the light green powdered form of uranium was everywhere and the operators didn't even wear masks or wear an individual badge to determine radiation exposure till the early 70's

If there had never been such a thing as a union 90% of the employees of today would be working for a pittance in completely unsafe conditions. A company has never given anybody a dime they didn't have to and they never will. Thank goodness a few large corporations who employ mostly well educated technical personnel have begun to see the light and voluntarily treat the employees with respect and pay them good salaries.......It happens about as frequently as teeth in a chicken.

An America without Unions? Simple...we would actually MAKE things in the United States still, and our trade defecit would be nowhere near what it is today.

I respect your opinion on unions, you have been consistently anti-union and that's fine.
I am none union and so is my wife, but I do respect what the unions have done for the non-union working stiffs as far as driving wages (when the unions were stronger) as well as the worker protection and benefits for working Americans.
Since the near demise of the unions, wages have remained relatively flat/or not kept up with inflation and more and more the benefits of the working class are taking a hit. Per fasts, there is one small group that has benefited by these cut-backs and not many who cry and moan about unions target any anguish at those who are taking advantage of the middle class/working class and that sure puzzles me.
 
In Westchester County the average public sector union employee now makes $70,000 per year, $10,000 more than his private sector counterpart and gets a pension to boot.

Somewhere things went very wrong
agreed, but is it the fault of the unions for being better negotiators or the fault of the companies for being bad ones?

Public sector unions so it Neo-Marxists negotiating with themselves on how quickly the can Cloward Piven us into revolution

Yes..because there are so many 'unions' in commie countries.

Oh wait. :D
 
Unions can be great, and they can be your enemy.
The same may be said for our police, our military, our elected and appointed officials, our neighbors and even some of our "friends."

I agree that years ago they were needed and helped people to earn a decent wage.
They still are needed. And although their numbers have severely diminished those unions that remain continue to influence the wage standard. But if the right wing corporatists are successful in their objective to eliminate unions entirely you will see a rapid return to the an age in which America was a two-class society consisting of the wealthy and the poor with nothing in between but a nominal management class of virtual slave-drivers and brutal law enforcers.

But i think since they've evolved, some are just greedy.
The operative word in that statement is some and you are quite right. Some unions have become corrupted and there needs to be carefully studied legislation to impose effective but equitable controls. Corruption in unions, like corruption in government, can be eliminated by motivated, carefully monitored investigations and prosecutions. In fact, most union corruption could not exist without some level of cooperation by corrupt government officials who are willing to look the other way and ignore complaints.

I believe it's the fault of many unions that the prices of our everyday products have skyrocketed, hell you used to be able to buy a brand new car in the 70's for $3000.00!
If you will research the precipitous rise in corporate executive pay and bonuses, which occurred in proportion with rising corporate profits, you will find those unions which did indeed aggressively coerce inordinate wage increases did so on the basis of formulas which were proportional to their respective corporation's profit margins. I.e., When the auto industry realized a substantial rise in profits the UAW demanded a wage increase, which caused a rise in prices, which produced another rise in profits, which prompted another demand for wage increases, and so on.

Don't look only at wage increases while ignoring the respective industry's profit margins and their exorbitant increases in executive salaries and bonuses. When you have a CEO who formerly received a $50,000 bonus take home a $3,000,000 bonus, it simply isn't fair to point an accusing finger at a union that demands a piece of the obvious action for its member workers.

Yes it's greed, alternately escalating greed on the parts of both the unions and the corporations. But the only solution to the problem is government regulation -- which is anathema to the right wing.

Unions protect people, which is great. But they also have to protect the people that are idiots on the job and think they can get away with whatever they want, and the union is right there to represent them.
I agree completely on that specific issue.

My son-in-law has worked for UPS for over twenty years. He started out sorting packages on the night shift, graduated to route package delivery and now he drives a trailer on daily airport runs. He said there were problems such as you've described in one of his former stations but because the situation caused tension between management and the drivers they voted out the Shop Steward and the union's Business Agent, which corrected the problem.

You should know that unions are democracies, meaning their executive boards are voted in and out. Most problems in union management arise mainly from the same cause as problems in social management, which is voter apathy.

If your husband's union shop is not performing as it should, there is an available remedy.
 
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Made the middle class.
No, it is not the exclusive creator of the middle class. Remember, the middle class was originally the merchant class and started coming into being in the 1400's, and didn't really start to rise till the industrial revolution. Then it came into it's modern form as we know it thank to Henry Ford... the dirty rotten capitalist who stated that his workers should be paid enough to afford his product. This started a bidding war for qualified labor that goes on to this day. Unions piggybacked on it, and for a SHORT period, helped negotiate many things that did increase the quality of life for laborers.

It has long since lost that reason for existence because they have succeeded so well.

The REAL creator of the Middle Class, as it were are Opportunity, Individual Freedom, Property Ownership and Prosperity

The American middle class was made by FDR's new deal and Unions.

Before that? There were the very wealthy..and very poor.

That's simply Not True, Yet Another Liberal Myth.

There has always been a Middle Class, It has gotten Stronger but it was always there.

Despite you Delusional Liberals constantly trying to lay claim to single Handedly Creating it.
 
Unions can be great, and they can be your enemy. I agree that years ago they were needed and helped people to earn a decent wage. But i think since they've evolved, some are just greedy. I believe it's the fault of many unions that the prices of our everyday products have skyrocketed, hell you used to be able to buy a brand new car in the 70's for $3000.00!
Unions protect people, which is great. But they also have to protect the people that are idiots on the job and think they can get away with whatever they want, and the union is right there to represent them. That's why my husband would never be a union stewart....he refused to help someone that did something stupid and now wants to get away with it.

Unions have grown into a multi-billion dollar industry that is used by politicians and Union Leaders to launder money for the Statist Democrats.
 
No, it is not the exclusive creator of the middle class. Remember, the middle class was originally the merchant class and started coming into being in the 1400's, and didn't really start to rise till the industrial revolution. Then it came into it's modern form as we know it thank to Henry Ford... the dirty rotten capitalist who stated that his workers should be paid enough to afford his product. This started a bidding war for qualified labor that goes on to this day. Unions piggybacked on it, and for a SHORT period, helped negotiate many things that did increase the quality of life for laborers.

It has long since lost that reason for existence because they have succeeded so well.

The REAL creator of the Middle Class, as it were are Opportunity, Individual Freedom, Property Ownership and Prosperity

The American middle class was made by FDR's new deal and Unions.

Before that? There were the very wealthy..and very poor.

That's simply Not True, Yet Another Liberal Myth.

There has always been a Middle Class, It has gotten Stronger but it was always there.

Despite you Delusional Liberals constantly trying to lay claim to single Handedly Creating it.

No..there absolutely hasn't.

Counting a handful of folks..really doesn't count.

It wasn't always there. In fact this country was on the verge of going fascist or commie..thanks in large part..to the policies you support.

FDR..saved America. And it thrived and became the top super power BECAUSE of him.
 
Gee, how do the 85%+ of us that aren't in unions survive?

:lol:

It would be worse without the unions. You would have to find someplace else to live. The living room floor and the sleeping bag might be rented out to someone who can actually pay.
 

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