New Posts
  • Hi there guest! Welcome to PoliticalJack.com. Register for free to join our community?

Unions - Good or bad?

Ah but that's the point of a union - that it IS a "contracted term of employment". IE it puts the worker on the same footing as other vendors that contribute COGS to company. You'd be hard pressed to argue that there shouldn't be Purchasing Contracts and Service Level Agreements in place between vendor and corporate customer.

Yet that is EXACTLY what you are doing by arguing against unions. You are in essence saying that workers - for some unknown reason - need to NOT be treated on an equal level with corporate vendors.

Why?
Ahemmmmmm!!! Did not Dave say Unions can be good and bad?. Unions in many instances have taken a hostile attitude towards their employer this history will need a lot of water under the bridge before a large non union employer will willingly engage in negotiations with a union. Why would any employer want to sign a contract with an organization that is almost certain at one time or another turn hostile
 

Dave

Council Member
How so? Trade shows are "fast and furious" followed by long periods of fallowness. Union requirements at tradeshows create an incentive for the venue bookers to keep the usually tax payer funded venue, as full as possible.

You keep forgetting the offsetting factors and only see the hassle factors
120 bucks to have them plug a light into a socket? If they find that you did it you get fined. They charge for each small task they do, and essentially you are forced to do everything through them. My first tradeshow in 2002 we had computers on our truck and told the guys that we didn't want them to handle them, they said we had to pay and that usually they get tipped to handle delicate stuff. So we laughed, and paid them for the pc movement, and did it ourselves behind their backs. 20 minutes later, a laptop was stolen right out of our booth with 8 of us standing in there. Only people in there were co-workers and the union guys.

After talking about this with other people at the show, there were from what we could tell about 5 laptops stolen, and apparently this was common practice every week at the sands expo - http://www.venetian.com/Las-Vegas-Meetings/Sands-Expo/
 

Dave

Council Member
The poster has told that story a dozen times.Time to post a new one.

Sorry,Dave.This one really hit me. I still pay Union dues and gladly will until I die.I know what they have done for me. I also know the average Union worker takes great pride in what he does. I lived through the days when management was screaming to get those parts out the door,no matter how flawed they were!

I saw older workers angry at those who came in with an attitude that they deserved the same wages older workers had worked for and walked a picket line to get. That is gone now, and I am glad.They start at lower wages and work up.

GM has all new management now and they listen to their Designers and Engineers,the guys that design the cars. You see how quick they turned around with new products.
I understand where you are coming from, and I know you and others on this site are part of unions, and I have friends/family that are as well (waste management, nurses union in MPLS, etc). They all, to my knowledge, work hard and don't screw their employers. In that sense, I am happy for them, I really am. It's like you said though, there are those that come in and get the attitude of what they deserve. If they don't get it, they don't do anything to make their company suffer. They can't be fired. It's a mess in many cases.

I brought up this post because I watched two guys carry 1 2x4 at a time into a locker room for a week. That really hit me!! I know it isn't the case for all union workers, which is why I placed the "good or bad" in the title.
 

Dave

Council Member
Ah but that's the point of a union - that it IS a "contracted term of employment". IE it puts the worker on the same footing as other vendors that contribute COGS to company. You'd be hard pressed to argue that there shouldn't be Purchasing Contracts and Service Level Agreements in place between vendor and corporate customer.

Yet that is EXACTLY what you are doing by arguing against unions. You are in essence saying that workers - for some unknown reason - need to NOT be treated on an equal level with corporate vendors.

Why?
So you are all for an employee having the right to leave a company at anytime, but the company not having the right to fire somebody at anytime?
 

degsme

Council Member
So you are all for an employee having the right to leave a company at anytime, but the company not having the right to fire somebody at anytime?
if a company has a union contract the union provides substitute staffing.

Note also that a worker that leaves without 2 weeks notice invaraibly gets a bad career tail...
 
That would be your desired right but it does require a view of employees as pieces of meat and exposes your management style as nothing more than a ruthless, selfish and cruel task master..in essence, a slave owner.
 

degsme

Council Member
120 bucks to have them plug a light into a socket? If they find that you did it you get fined.
I've done trade shows... I know the fees.

Again the issue is that the Trade show is a situation where you are Feast or Famine as an employee but the operator is subsidized by the tax payer. So a union basically evens out the negotiating positions. It would be better for the satisfaction of the vendors if the operator simply charged a flat rate per booth and folded the labor costs into it. They don't because they know that makes it seem like a cheaper event than it is - thus easier to market up front, and the union takes the bad rap for the actual full cost.

But that's not an accurate analysis

absent a union, the setup would be done by unskilled and temporary labor. You would have a lot more "shrinkage" and fire hazards from sloppy work, and the Venue operator would have much higher complaint rates.

Think it through from the perspective of ALL of the transactional interests in play.
 

degsme

Council Member
So you want the prices at walmart to go up? :0
They should. Because right now Walmart is externalizing some of their COGS onto the public and other companies. That's a clasic case of The Tragedy of The Commons. It also leads to an economically inefficient marketplace. If you want to optimize market allocations, you do want Walmart to have to reflect ALL of the inputs into their COGS including all of the costs associated with their labor.
 

connieb

Senator
I don't know under what scenario you work - but many industries don't utilize purchase contracts or Service level agreements - and when they are utilized many are only for a specific time period or part. Not really the same as using a person day after day after day. And, in general - there are only penalties ot ending the agreement early - which is generally paid out to an employee in the form of a severance package or unemployment.... so they are in essence in equal footing.
 

degsme

Council Member
Unions started up to protect the workers. They served a good purpose at that time, but like many good things, they've grown into a big strong effort in the direction of "screw everybody but me".

I see unions being a huge detriment to progress and a huge contributor to our bad economy. Just my opinion.
And what "you see" is hardly - if ever - supported by anything remotely factual.

Given that corporations are there to maximize Return on Equity for shareholders, how is that not "screw everybody but me"?

So then why should there not be a union attitude to offset that?
 

connieb

Senator
Uh.. because they are a pain in the butt? And, people who are like that are difficult to work with and cause problems with morale and productivity.
 
There is an implied 2 week notice that all workers have when changing jobs. In a market where the employee has the advantage, the employer will have to adapt or lose the employee. In a market where the employer has all the advantage, the employee will have to adapt as well. However, the ability of an employer to survive the loss of one employee is far greater than the loss of a job by any single employee in an at will contract. If you actually care more about people than money, the choice is simple.
 

connieb

Senator
Yes, and you need to spend time documenting that cause and then someone gets to determine if that is enough cause etc. When someone is a consistent low level screw up who is just not a productive employee it is very hard to make those cases. Sure you can fire someone who does a major screw up that everyone notices or that is dangerous, but even then its documentation and administration time to deal with it.
 

connieb

Senator
I haven't. That post was not talking about union labor - but talking about working with people who are difficult to work with in general.
 

888888

Council Member
There is an implied 2 week notice that all workers have when changing jobs. In a market where the employee has the advantage, the employer will have to adapt or lose the employee. In a market where the employer has all the advantage, the employee will have to adapt as well. However, the ability of an employer to survive the loss of one employee is far greater than the loss of a job by any single employee in an at will contract. If you actually care more about people than money, the choice is simple.
seldom have I ever been given a two weeks notice, so seldom I can't ever remember one. I have seen where employers want a two weeks notice, even require it. My kid just got told to be back to work on Friday last week, he worked Friday, sat and Sunday night only to be told he wasn't needed on Monday morning at 8:00 am. Three of them were laid off with no notice.

all a union does is make a company to have a set of rules they must follow, not just a set of rules that an employee has to follow. And the truth is a company has a set of rules, which they can get rid of, change or add to at anytime before or after the fact.

I understand to someone running a company that may be a problem they don't want, but for an employee that is something that allows them to sleep at night knowing they have someone on their side.
 

Addy

Rebuild With Biden!
I love it "SCABS" guys not in the union with families to support and are willing to take a job under threat of having their tires slashed or worse are 2nd class citizens in your mind. Thats mighty big of you
Lupe...Scabs may or not be in the Unions... I don't advocate violence.. but the workers striking have united for a reason,, companies hiring outside workers or allowing union members continue to work slows down the mediation process..
_____________________________________________________________________
A strikebreaker (sometimes derogatorily called a scab) is a person who works despite an ongoing strike. Strikebreakers are usually individuals who are not employed by the company prior to the trade union dispute, but rather hired prior to or during the strike to keep the organisation running. "Strikebreakers" may also refer to workers (union members or not) who cross picket lines to work.
Strikebreakers are employed worldwide, often occurring wherever workers go on strike or engage in related actions. However, strikebreakers are used far more frequently in the United States than in any other industrialized country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikebreaker
 
Top