You Company Men Weigh In Here...Don't Be Bashful!

[CrusaderFrank]

Your charts should have correlation with what the rest of us call "reality"

Were union outlawed in 1970? 1979? No. What's the point of your charts?

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Unions might have been useful at one point, but even that is debatable. They are like wooden teeth and buggy whips, time to send them to the Museum of Things that Might have been useful at one point

The only ones to whom it's debatable are those who think the uppercrust owe nothing to the idea of patriotism and want all the money:

You sounds like a Marxist and a really old, drooling one at that

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Unions might have been useful at one point, but even that is debatable. They are like wooden teeth and buggy whips, time to send them to the Museum of Things that Might have been useful at one point

The only ones to whom it's debatable are those who think the uppercrust owe nothing to the idea of patriotism and want all the money:

Total U S Debt


09/30/2009 $11,909,829,003,511.75(80% Of All Debt Across 232 Years Borrowed By Reagan And Bushes)

09/30/2008 $10,024,724,896,912.49(Times Square Debt Clock Modified To Accomodate Tens of Trillions)

09/30/2007 $9,007,653,372,262.48
09/30/2006 $8,506,973,899,215.23
09/30/2005 $7,932,709,661,723.50
09/30/2004 $7,379,052,696,330.32

09/30/2003 $6,783,231,062,743.62(Second Bush Tax Cuts Enacted Using Reconciliation)


09/30/2002 $6,228,235,965,597.16

09/30/2001 $5,807,463,412,200.06(First Bush Tax Cuts Enacted Using Reconciliation)


09/30/2000 $5,674,178,209,886.86(Administration And Congress Arguing About How To Use Surplus)

09/30/1999 $5,656,270,901,615.43(First Surplus Generated...On Track To Pay Off Debt By 2012)

09/30/1998 $5,526,193,008,897.62
09/30/1997 $5,413,146,011,397.34
09/30/1996 $5,224,810,939,135.73
09/29/1995 $4,973,982,900,709.39
09/30/1994 $4,692,749,910,013.32

09/30/1993 $4,411,488,883,139.38(Debt Quadrupled By Reagan/Bush41)

09/30/1992 $4,064,620,655,521.66
09/30/1991 $3,665,303,351,697.03
09/28/1990 $3,233,313,451,777.25
09/29/1989 $2,857,430,960,187.32
09/30/1988 $2,602,337,712,041.16
09/30/1987 $2,350,276,890,953.00
09/30/1986 $2,125,302,616,658.42
09/30/1985 $1,823,103,000,000.00
09/30/1984 $1,572,266,000,000.00
09/30/1983 $1,377,210,000,000.00

09/30/1982 $1,142,034,000,000.00(Total Debt Passes $1 Trillion)

09/30/1981 $997,855,000,000.00

One Obama Deficit > All Reagan Deficits

One Obama Deficit > Any Reagan Budget

Reagan ran the entire federal government on less than an Obama annual deficit

 

[asaratis]

Unions might have been useful at one point, but even that is debatable. They are like wooden teeth and buggy whips, time to send them to the Museum of Things that Might have been useful at one point

The only ones to whom it's debatable are those who think the uppercrust owe nothing to the idea of patriotism and want all the money:

Total U S Debt


09/30/2009 $11,909,829,003,511.75(80% Of All Debt Across 232 Years Borrowed By Reagan And Bushes)

09/30/2008 $10,024,724,896,912.49(Times Square Debt Clock Modified To Accomodate Tens of Trillions)

09/30/2007 $9,007,653,372,262.48
09/30/2006 $8,506,973,899,215.23
09/30/2005 $7,932,709,661,723.50
09/30/2004 $7,379,052,696,330.32

09/30/2003 $6,783,231,062,743.62(Second Bush Tax Cuts Enacted Using Reconciliation)


09/30/2002 $6,228,235,965,597.16

09/30/2001 $5,807,463,412,200.06(First Bush Tax Cuts Enacted Using Reconciliation)


09/30/2000 $5,674,178,209,886.86(Administration And Congress Arguing About How To Use Surplus)

09/30/1999 $5,656,270,901,615.43(First Surplus Generated...On Track To Pay Off Debt By 2012)

09/30/1998 $5,526,193,008,897.62
09/30/1997 $5,413,146,011,397.34
09/30/1996 $5,224,810,939,135.73
09/29/1995 $4,973,982,900,709.39
09/30/1994 $4,692,749,910,013.32

09/30/1993 $4,411,488,883,139.38(Debt Quadrupled By Reagan/Bush41)

09/30/1992 $4,064,620,655,521.66
09/30/1991 $3,665,303,351,697.03
09/28/1990 $3,233,313,451,777.25
09/29/1989 $2,857,430,960,187.32
09/30/1988 $2,602,337,712,041.16
09/30/1987 $2,350,276,890,953.00
09/30/1986 $2,125,302,616,658.42
09/30/1985 $1,823,103,000,000.00
09/30/1984 $1,572,266,000,000.00
09/30/1983 $1,377,210,000,000.00

09/30/1982 $1,142,034,000,000.00(Total Debt Passes $1 Trillion)

09/30/1981 $997,855,000,000.00

Your picture of the deficit is a bit out of date. It may have been useful in an argument against increasing the debt limit back in 2009.

Obama is the very first President to run a deficit of over a TRILLION FUCKIN' DOLLARS in his FIRST FUCKIN' YEAR IN OFFICE.

Since then he has managed to accomplish that goal of his EVERY FUCKIN' YEAR!!!

Obama is bankrupting the country...ON PURPOSE!

Obama is a goddamned Marxist!

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

I witnessed first hand what the unions did for the working man. In 1953 I hired in on what was at that time considered a good job...$1.71 an hour. Six months later the union negotiated for an increase for the classification I had hired in for and they made it retroactive. I was paid a lump sum of $0.10 per hour for every hour I had worked during that six months. When I hired in the company had a "shared" pension plan. Each pay period a deduction was taken from my check to pay my part. Two years later the union successfully negotiated for and was granted a company funded pension plan. It was also retroactive....I received a lump sum check covering every penny I had paid to that point.

When negotiations were ongoing for a new benefit for the hourly employees the salaried personnel of course were not included because they were not members of the union so every time we got a benefit the company gave the same thing to the salaried....sometimes no more than a couple of weeks before we got it.

Companies will not give or pay anyone a goddamned cent more than they have to and if I told you about the toxic and radioactive materials we worked in until the union and OSHA got some regulations in place you wouldn't believe it. It was 1974 when the company first issued individual film badges to measure what each employee was subjected to and then because of what they saw being recorded, for the first time they began to improve working conditions in the uranium plant where I was working. Before that the men working in the feed plant where the uranium was flourinated and heated would shovel the stuff with 18" spades and were not even issued shoe covers or simple masks. Those of us in the process cascade worked with our street clothes on and tracked that light green powder(uo2f2) away from the plant and into our homes. Sometimes when the atmosphere was heavy the flourine in the air was so dense that it would irritate one's nostrils.

In January 1953 about 100 of us were divided into four shifts and worked 24/7 until mid April cleaning up the biggest uraninum spill in the plant's history. There were five large individual plants at the site, K-33 at that time contained the third most construction steel of any in the world...falling behind the Eifel Tower and the Empire State Building. The effected plant(K-27) was about a quarter mile long, 100 yards wide and had three floors. An operator was heating up a 10 ton cylinder of feed material and the copper pigtail between the cylinder and the 5" feed line into the cell ruptured and all ten tons of material escaped into the plant. All the way from one end of the plant to the other and on all three floors icycles of the material condensed on the six inch contruction steel beams. The powder on the floors was half an inch deep in most places. We ran so many vacuum cleaners that one operator was assigned to the circuit breaker panel to reset them when they tripped from overload. The bags in the machines were all filled and guess what the labels we placed on each one said..."Class D Household Filth" You can bet your ass the company buried it in a land fill. To this day some of the highly radioactive materials are still being dealt with.

Beginning in the mid 1980's the company fought law suits but so many were sick and dying the DOL finally set up a fund, $140,000 per sick employee which was usually claimed by the survivors. Thank goodness in the early 60's I was caught in a broad reduction in force and managed to get another job in the computing center.

Anybody who thinks a company is their friend or that the company will do one inconvenient thing or give one extra penny to ordinary workers has their head so far up their ass that they will never see daylight again. Unions made the middle class of America and folks who can't see it just don't want to.

Sounds like your life is one poor choice after another.

Pathetic. No wonder you're such a miserable ****.

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

Unions might have been useful at one point, but even that is debatable. They are like wooden teeth and buggy whips, time to send them to the Museum of Things that Might have been useful at one point

The only ones to whom it's debatable are those who think the uppercrust owe nothing to the idea of patriotism and want all the money:

You sounds like a Marxist and a really old, drooling one at that

Yeah, I bet he's a hoot to be around in person. Probably that old drunk sitting at the end of the bar, mumbling to himself that nobody wants to go near.

 

[blackhawk]

I have never been a member of a union or worked for a union company and I'm doing very well thank you very much if people want to join a union fine go for but no one should have to join a union as a condition for employment.

 

[Cammmpbell]

Your charts should have correlation with what the rest of us call "reality"

Were union outlawed in 1970? 1979? No. What's the point of your charts?

If you are unable to look at those charts....taken from the CBO, the Census bureau and the Dept of the Public Debt and see that beginning with Reagan taxes were cut for the wealthy, we began to go into bigger debt than at any time during the 200+ years of our government and at the same time the richest people in the country started an upward spiral because of the borrowing from foreign banks you really don't even have any business in an argument. Bill Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy, balanced the debt, even generated $400 billion of surplus and had us on a path to completely pay off the debt and then W. Bush cut taxes twice using reconciliation to block Democratic opposition and doubled the debt again. Please.....it simply means you didn't look much less study.

As far as the unions and the middle class.....Reagan had not been in office a year when he fired PATCO and that was the beginning of the end of the unions:

 

[AmyNation]

I couldn't say whether the union my father belonged to was typical of unions, or simply sub-par. Only that he often complained about them, and considering the conditions he worked in it didn't seem like they were very helpful to me.

 

[boilermaker55]

Hell, then those individuals working in factories in China, Mexico , Vietnam, Cambodia etc, and other 3rd world countries should really being doing quite well. Working 16 hours a day, one break and live right on the factory grounds.
Damn, those union people sure have missed the boat to prosperity.

I couldn't say whether the union my father belonged to was typical of unions, or simply sub-par. Only that he often complained about them, and considering the conditions he worked in it didn't seem like they were very helpful to me.

 

[Cammmpbell]

Hell, then those individuals working in factories in China, Mexico , Vietnam, Cambodia etc, and other 3rd world countries should really being doing quite well. Working 16 hours a day, one break and live right on the factory grounds.
Damn, those union people sure have missed the boat to prosperity.

I couldn't say whether the union my father belonged to was typical of unions, or simply sub-par. Only that he often complained about them, and considering the conditions he worked in it didn't seem like they were very helpful to me.

Hold your breath a little while......that's what this whole goddamned right wing conspiricy is about. The global economy was a "big business idea." When they have what used to be the middle class fighting their goddamned wars, mowing their grass, cleaning hotel rooms and sucking their dicks when they want it and doing it for the same wages and benefits as a Maylasian day laborer they will finally be satisfied.

 

[AmyNation]

Hell, then those individuals working in factories in China, Mexico , Vietnam, Cambodia etc, and other 3rd world countries should really being doing quite well. Working 16 hours a day, one break and live right on the factory grounds.
Damn, those union people sure have missed the boat to prosperity.

I couldn't say whether the union my father belonged to was typical of unions, or simply sub-par. Only that he often complained about them, and considering the conditions he worked in it didn't seem like they were very helpful to me.

My father was a steel worker. He worked 12 hour days in a factory that had no heat and no air conditioning. In the summer they would open the trunk doors and my dad would bring a little fan, in the winter he would wear layers.

The work was hard ,dirty and dangerous. I cant count the number of times my dad came home with a duck tape band-aid when he should have gotten stitches.

And, he didn't like or appreciate being forced to join a union.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Hell, then those individuals working in factories in China, Mexico , Vietnam, Cambodia etc, and other 3rd world countries should really being doing quite well. Working 16 hours a day, one break and live right on the factory grounds.
Damn, those union people sure have missed the boat to prosperity.

I couldn't say whether the union my father belonged to was typical of unions, or simply sub-par. Only that he often complained about them, and considering the conditions he worked in it didn't seem like they were very helpful to me.

Those countries are in the process of building and growing their economy; they've not yet reached the point where they can afford to have economic leaches and parasites feast off the labors of others

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I witnessed first hand what the unions did for the working man. In 1953 I hired in on what was at that time considered a good job...$1.71 an hour. Six months later the union negotiated for an increase for the classification I had hired in for and they made it retroactive. I was paid a lump sum of $0.10 per hour for every hour I had worked during that six months. When I hired in the company had a "shared" pension plan. Each pay period a deduction was taken from my check to pay my part. Two years later the union successfully negotiated for and was granted a company funded pension plan. It was also retroactive....I received a lump sum check covering every penny I had paid to that point.

When negotiations were ongoing for a new benefit for the hourly employees the salaried personnel of course were not included because they were not members of the union so every time we got a benefit the company gave the same thing to the salaried....sometimes no more than a couple of weeks before we got it.

Companies will not give or pay anyone a goddamned cent more than they have to and if I told you about the toxic and radioactive materials we worked in until the union and OSHA got some regulations in place you wouldn't believe it. It was 1974 when the company first issued individual film badges to measure what each employee was subjected to and then because of what they saw being recorded, for the first time they began to improve working conditions in the uranium plant where I was working. Before that the men working in the feed plant where the uranium was flourinated and heated would shovel the stuff with 18" spades and were not even issued shoe covers or simple masks. Those of us in the process cascade worked with our street clothes on and tracked that light green powder(uo2f2) away from the plant and into our homes. Sometimes when the atmosphere was heavy the flourine in the air was so dense that it would irritate one's nostrils.

In January 1953 about 100 of us were divided into four shifts and worked 24/7 until mid April cleaning up the biggest uraninum spill in the plant's history. There were five large individual plants at the site, K-33 at that time contained the third most construction steel of any in the world...falling behind the Eifel Tower and the Empire State Building. The effected plant(K-27) was about a quarter mile long, 100 yards wide and had three floors. An operator was heating up a 10 ton cylinder of feed material and the copper pigtail between the cylinder and the 5" feed line into the cell ruptured and all ten tons of material escaped into the plant. All the way from one end of the plant to the other and on all three floors icycles of the material condensed on the six inch contruction steel beams. The powder on the floors was half an inch deep in most places. We ran so many vacuum cleaners that one operator was assigned to the circuit breaker panel to reset them when they tripped from overload. The bags in the machines were all filled and guess what the labels we placed on each one said..."Class D Household Filth" You can bet your ass the company buried it in a land fill. To this day some of the highly radioactive materials are still being dealt with.

Beginning in the mid 1980's the company fought law suits but so many were sick and dying the DOL finally set up a fund, $140,000 per sick employee which was usually claimed by the survivors. Thank goodness in the early 60's I was caught in a broad reduction in force and managed to get another job in the computing center.

Anybody who thinks a company is their friend or that the company will do one inconvenient thing or give one extra penny to ordinary workers has their head so far up their ass that they will never see daylight again. Unions made the middle class of America and folks who can't see it just don't want to.

Anybody that thinks a union is their friend has their head just as far up their ass as any company man.

 

[Toro]

Hell, then those individuals working in factories in China, Mexico , Vietnam, Cambodia etc, and other 3rd world countries should really being doing quite well. Working 16 hours a day, one break and live right on the factory grounds.
Damn, those union people sure have missed the boat to prosperity.

I couldn't say whether the union my father belonged to was typical of unions, or simply sub-par. Only that he often complained about them, and considering the conditions he worked in it didn't seem like they were very helpful to me.

Those countries are in the process of building and growing their economy; they've not yet reached the point where they can afford to have economic leaches and parasites feast off the labors of others

Sweatshops absolutely benefit developing economies. They pay higher wages and are necessary in the early stages of economic development. Economies don't suddenly transform from subsistence agrarian societies where life is dependent on the weather to a post-industrial consumer paradise. There is a reason why 100,000,000 Chinese have migrated from the inland to the manufacturing zones on the coast over the past 30 years.

 

[Harry Dresden]

My dad was a union worker, he hated it.

He said they took his money, didn't do a damned thing for him and would throw you under a bus in a second if they thought it would benefit the union.

yea i have heard that before......

 

[Harry Dresden]

Oh, please. If things were really as bad as you say they were, you'd have been dead a long time ago. It's absolutely crazy how the liberals and the lazy complain about how bad business owners are, yet feel no compunction whatsoever about robbing states blind and forcing people out of work because the damn unions refuse to compromise. There is absolutely no reason at all for a union worker to make $75k for doing the same job as a non-union worker making $45k. Just because you belong to a union doesn't mean you deserve to be making $30k more per year. And that doesn't even take into consideration union benefits and retirement plans. It's insane. Until unions become more reasonable in their demands and actions, they will continue to hemorrhage union members and will eventually be reduced to little more than a barely noticeable annoyance.

the Union guy is probably $15000 overpaid while the non-Union guy is probably $15000 underpaid.....do you think the Union guy will take a 15K CUT?......do you think the Non-Union Company will give him that 15K raise?....id say no on both counts....

 

[Harry Dresden]

Unions and Liberals are similar...
Those in unions who don't want to work ride on the coat tails of those who do.
Liberals want the successful to pay the freight for those who just want to coast through life.

Don't strain yourself there with all that verbiage. This place has more geniuses who think a one liner will suffice than any place I've ever been in my life. Why don't you people ever actually address the body of a post instead of just trying to ignore it and cover it up? I started out in a union and I've never been around anybody who worked harder than I did....for 43 years.

Guess you've never paid attention.

Every union shop I've worked in has it's layabouts. Every single shop.

same with the Non-Union ones i worked in.....every single one.....

 

[Harry Dresden]

My dad was a union worker, he hated it.

He said they took his money, didn't do a damned thing for him and would throw you under a bus in a second if they thought it would benefit the union.

I have no clue where or who your dad was involved with. I was a member of local 9-288 of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers(OCAW) and we were like brothers. Less than 5% of our work force were scabs. You know what a scab is I assume. It's somebody who rides the train to it's destination but doesn't pay the fare.

So the "scab" isn't really "working".....? They just sit around and watch you "real men" do the work?

Fukin liar...

The way I see it, if a man or woman is doing their JOB, they are "paying their fare".

i agree Inf.....but if they partake in the Union benefits without paying...is that right?....

 

[Harry Dresden]

IF you were employed by a unionized company and were allowed to not join the union, but you had to work for 2/3rds of the union employees wages, would that be fair? Sure it would.

if the person was going to actually work there.....dont you think they would then join the Union to get the same pay and Benefits?....if not the person is an idiot...