I am assuming that in number 1 that you are talking about the union. As far as I am aware, the union has done not to be charges with. #2. Perhaps when the contract to have a pension plan paid by the company wasn't a dumb idea. However, things change. If we look back at when the contract with this particular item was accepted Hostess could have financed the retirement plan. Now, with people eating healthier, their confections are not as desireable as they once were, so the union that is charged with protecting the jobs of the current workers should be giving concessions to keep the jobs viable for the current employees instead of forcing the company to file for bankruptcy and jepordizing all of the jobs. #3 You named it earlier, the steel unions.
I also grew up in a steel town, Johnstown, PA. However, what you state is accurate, the government didn't help by allowing nations such as Japan dump their cheaper steel on the US markets. I also remember my uncles discussing the lose of jobs at the mills. Although they and my grandfather's we in the forfront of the unionization of the mills, they were appauled that a man who was hired as a sweeper sweeping the plant floors could sit around for four hours after his work was done and read the paper because the union contract stated that each employye had to receive no less that an 8 hr. shift per day. The company could not send him home after his job was done because of the union contract, he got paid 4 hrs. for doing nothing. Before the bar, rod and wire mill (the biggest mill in Johnstown) was shut down, I had two cousins that worked in that mill and I was told when I askd how they got so much time off, that there wasn't enough work so what they did was split the work in 6 month increments. Working for six months and sitting on unemployment for six months. The reason that my family moved from Johnstown to the D.C. area in the mid 50's was because my father, who was a train engineer for the mills was layed off because of lack of production at the mill and a direct consequence of that was that my parents lost their house in Johnstown.
If a company can not get the concessions it needs from the union (concessions being legtimate one) and they have a choice between bankruptcy or moving to save the company and wanted to move, I would supprt it. I would also support worker owned companies. That is because those worker unlike the mill and Hostess workers had a stake in the company where the others did not.
Who are we to tell a company what it can and can not invest in as long as it is their own money and not money obtained in the form of a government bailout? The main readon I was not for the bailout of GM and Crysler was that Crysler had gone though a government bailout in the 70s under Iacoca and they hadn't learned their lesson. The management of GM as well did not deserve the bailout they got because they mismanaged their funds. Yet the left thought it was vital to circumvent the established way of doing things instead of letting these companies file for bankrupcy just to save Obama's butt.
Yes, I do. An American company just like an other American citizen in this land of ours has the right of freedom of movement and that should be respected. The government should not be able to tell a company where it can and can not move to, just like it should not be able to tell any person in this nation where they can and can not go.
I don't know of to many places where the minimum wage is paided in factory work and that include here wher I am at. Most cashiers these days make at the least $9.00 an hour. As I said earlier, when you apply for a job you have some assumption of what you will be paided and you diffently know what you will be paided when you go in fpr the interview. So if you accept the pay at the prevailing wage offered, that is your decission. If you didn't like what was offered you could have gone on looking. Don't blame business for your decissions.
1. I live in south central Pennsylvania. Here one of the biggest employers is JLG, you know who they are, the lift people. One always has a choice.
And that's what happened. GM came back to life, is now number one, and is making great products. It's workers too substantial cuts in pay and benefits to keep their jobs. And the union is on for a third of the stock, so now the workers are investors with a vested interest in keeping the company moving forward. Which is what they do in Germany.
