NO theres no reasoning with stupidity. Union has nothing to do with it. You talk as though you know all about unions though. How many union people do you know? How many union jobs have you worked on? Hell how many nonunion jobs to have you worked on? How do you know my view of the company I work for or the views of the hundreds of guys I've worked with? I love where I work and would do whatever was in my power to ensure there success and mine. You don't know me so how can you make an idiotic statement about what my view are of corporations?

I've worked both union and non union. I prefer union, and since I have spent considerable time on both sides I feel I can speak on it versus talking out of my *** about what I think I know.

 

Well you are all over the place on this. Being union or non-union has nothing to do with the wage you are deserving of. I think that unless you are from a part of the country where factories are a big part of the community and its history than you have a very misguided and generalized view of it. This whole talk towards assembly line workers like "I could do that". Unless you've worked on an assembly line, how could you possibly know the difficulty of the job. It seems more like just a prejudice against those who dont go to college.

 

Hit the nail on the head.

 

Well thats for you to deal with too. If a bunch of low quality workers put your $38K dollar car together that becomes your nightmare as well. A warranty may cover the car but it hardly replaces the lost time and headache that comes along with owning a lemon.
More ignorance, OSHA doesn't regulate a damn thing. OSHA stands for Occupational safety and health administration. There job is to encourage all businesses to establish safety and health programs and find and fix hazards to prevent workplace injuries and illnesses. OSHA is not on the job regulating anything. Its up to the company and the employees to follow the rules and abide by the safetly programs in effect. Now OSHA can be called in, or they can just show up. And they can and will shut a job down if they see violations. They can fine the hell out of the company or you depending on the violation. The real responsibility lies with trained employees. Believe it or not there are companys that like unions. Why because the union is there to provide training for its own people. The union I am a part of has a 4 year apprenticeship training program that is college accredited with real time training very specific to whats going on with the company and what that employee will be doing. Does Mcdonalds offer that? Are you as a company gonna want a bunch of Mcdonald hamburger flippers costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines because there not trained to do the job correctly or following the proper safety procedures. Never mind the millions of dollars worth of equipment and product there gonna be working on.

 

I don't have a college degree, and I don't feel like it's prejudice. And really, that prejudice seems to be quietly steaming from both sides of the argument in this thread. Granted, I have no experience with a large entity like the UAW...only smaller local unions who did little for me other than collect dues. I guess it does all come down to the work "culture" that one comes from. Down here most blue collar guys have grown up looking out for themselves finding a job that paid the right wage and offered the right benefits. I'm no exception and I certainly don't feel like I've been cheated out of anything that I didn't accept for myself on my own terms. I take responsibility for myself, I don't expect some billion dollar corporation to do that for me.

I guess what alot of guys in here are getting at is where do you draw the line? You can ask some of the guys I worked with at that tractor plant what they think their job was worth and I'm sure most of them would have spit out a pretty high number. We all busted butt in the heat, but we all could have gone somewhere else if we didn't like the conditions or weren't satisfied with the compensation. Some of us did. I mean, what would you think if McDonald's workers did unionize and start making, say, 28 bucks an hour? Would you immediately contact your union rep and tell him you aren't getting a fair shake....that you no longer earn what even a fast food worker does?

This all just comes down to entitlement....a sense that one has a right to get what they think is fair (an ever growing attitude problem we have in this country). Am I siding with big business here? Hell no. I'm just pointing out that a free market is what many of us in here wanted as far as big company survival goes. If the company fails, let it fail. I just want to know why those same companies are not free to take their chances with benefit levels for employees. Why let free market determine the fate of the business, but not let it determine fair wage levels for that job segment?

Either way, this argument got tired about 9 pages ago. I'm sure I'll get flamed for offering an opinion out of what some will likely consider pure ignorance, but that's ok. I'm not gonna be a child about this. Cheers fellas

 

i dont have a degree and make middle class and i deserve every ******* penny. i make my employer a ton of ******* money and they still cry and continue to take **** away.


anyone that thinks im overpaid can go **** themselves. my co. union competitor makes about $10 more an hr than me in pay, benefit,s pension ect and their co. is raking it in just fine.


unions are very necessary right now.

 

I have personally seen Unions drive local companies into the ground. It is a pretty simple concept that you cannot pay factory workers close to the same wages as engineers and still have a company that is profitable.

A successful company shouldn't ever have to rely on Unions for quality. That should be internal within the company, if they don't have quality they wont sell product. That is common sense, it does not take Union training to have quality employees producing a quality product.

Please explain how Unions are necessary right now, because from what I know about them I'm just not seeing their importance?

 

Again I say, its all in where you live. My hometown is home to Deere & Co. and once home to 3 Case IH plants, CAT plants, FORD tractor, Minneapolis-Moline.....I could go on. Those factory jobs put a lot of kids through college and grew our community to amazing levels.Now all but the Deere factories have closed the doors and moved the jobs elsewhere. Those jobs and the union bargained benefits allowed me to grow up in a good home and now people like you say the issue is that we have a belief in entitlement.

Let me say this, Generations have fought for those benefits long ago and all we are doing is fighting to keep them. The growing attitude in this country is "greed". And if you think im wrong then explain to me why the people that are getting rich in this country are the clowns down at Goldman Sachs that set up "designed to fail" loans for people and then bet against them and walked off with billions scott free...And yet the mob is sitting outside the UAW halls while they are being robbed by the banks and saying "shame on the working man for trying to keep his job"

 

thisblood hit the nail on the head 100%

camaro z is also correct.

/thread

 

Well considering organized labor is a workers representative democracy Id say its an important tool for American workers. Unless you feel a worker should have no recognized voice with his employer? Govt programs and agencies dont have rules to prevent pay cuts or benefit cuts or plant closures. So whats wrong with workers having a voice?

 

vote with your feet. they cut your pay or benefits suck it up or find a new job.

I dont feel like my employer ever owed me a damn thing. I could leave when I wanted and they could fire me when they wanted.

 

they dont understand man. they are brainwashed by the coroporate media. these fellows want sweatshops

 

Simplicity at its finest. Excellent post Bottom line is, if unions gouge for above average pay, companies will move elsewhere and the worker will be out of work. I would rather work for average pay then not work at all.

stop acting like bitches and man up is what I'm getting from your post. I consider union workers to be the little brother type, they need big brother to speak up for them. Not me.

 

where were factory workers making near engineer pay?


so youre saying the training trades union workers have arent necessary?


corp. and mngt abuse is common and unions protect workers from that crap.

 

so its ok for mngt to get together and do whatever they want but its not ok for workers to stick up for themselves?


doesnt seem right to me.

 

[QUOTE=88blackgt;14067956]vote with your feet. they cut your pay or benefits suck it up or find a new job.

its called striking.

 

based on these stereotypical responses of isolated examples without any proof id say youre correct.

 

If you work at a company where you feel that you have no voice or no workers rights and need a union to accomplish that then you are working for the wrong company. There are thousands of successful companies with employees who are happy with their work environment, make wages that they are above average, that includes quality and training necessary to be successful, all of which without unions in place.

You cannot sit here and say that a company or its employees cannot be successful without a union because it simply is not true.

It seems the people who are "brain washed" aren't those who are not supporters of unions. It is those who pay a portion of their paycheck everyday to pay a third party for a service that in reality isn't necessary for a company and its workers to be successful.

 

They are paying that 3rd party for their above average wages. They ARE buying something with their money

 

Those above average wages cause below average profits for a company, which in turn causes them to go elsewhere to find less expensive labor and/or lay off employees no matter how unfair it may be.