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A union will start you on probation, with little to no benefits for one year and at a set low wage.
In this day and age almost every employer is offering some sort of health INS and a competitive wage.
Ditch diggers need a union like they need a new hole in their heads
Sometimes the old dog needs to be replaced by one that can and will work that is life.
If you picked a hard manual labor job do you really think you will still be as productive at age 50 as you were at 20? Maybe you made the wrong choice?
But the union shop/ I mean the business owner, is now stuck with your overpaid unproductive #@%.
Any employer who wishes to remain in business will take care of the good employes and fire the bad.
With a union a employer will have undue expenses in time and money when they try to fire a bad employee.
No one wants to fire someone just because they can.
No business owner wants a union shoved down their throat.
Last edited by snofarmer; 02-14-2012 at 01:16 PM..
A union will start you on probation and at a set low wage.
In this day and age almost every employer is offering some sort of health ins.
Ditch diggers need a union like they need a new hole in their heads
Any employer who wishes to remain in business will take care of the good employes and fire the bad.
You'll note that I, along with many others, mentioned the caveats of unions. I'm certainly no union rooter...I have found many of the things they do to be at times shady, deceptive, or sometimes just dumb.
But you could minimally add an actual rebuttal rather than just rolling your eyes and pretending that you're better than everyone who doesn't mind unions.
If the fact that many companies offer health insurance is a sign we don't need unions, then it's a pretty poor argument indeed. In my part-time job, I work with a lot of people who are full-time employees (and not just teenage/college students) who don't have health insurance and even if they wanted it, would have to pay an exorbitant amount just to get basic coverage. But because my employer offers any insurance, I suppose that's all okay, right? I'm certainly not saying I need to be part of a union. To be honest, I don't care that health coverage isn't given to me. I'm young, healthy, and covered by a plan elsewhere. But my job for me is one I'll leave when I can get a better one. The same can't be said for many jobs that don't necessarily have an automatic promotion built into them. Nurses work long, hard hours, but they can't get enough experience and suddenly become doctors. The ditch diggers--who today would likely be construction workers--are dealing with heavy machinery and working in sometimes dangerous situations, with the same lack of clear path for promotion (though I'd actually argue it's almost more clear than being a nurse).
We talk about employers needing to treat people right and knowing they have to offer benefits. That would be more convincing if we saw a lot better conditions for everyone. What we have seen is the upper echelons of business pay themselves more money with relative little gains at the middle and bottom in the last several decades...all the while watching prices go up. Is this the treating the good employees good?
Well yes, you trade your hate of unions for the food on your table. You make a trade-off. Though actually, you could take advantage of any number of government benefits if your conscious really made you not want to join a union. Or you could just find a place that doesn't have unions. Most Minnesotans aren't part of one at all, so it's not like we have some huge problem to take care of.
I do agree that unions are at times more hindrance than help, but I do think they still serve a purpose in certain work environments. You'll notice that few white-collar workers are part of unions. This is likely partially because their skills make them harder to replace. But we do need people who do more manual and grunt work. These people do deserve a semblance of basic benefits and enough pay to survive, plus protection so that they can't be replaced whenever someone else of able-body comes and says they'll work cheaper. It's simply not stable for society to have high turnover like that. This doesn't mean that unions couldn't use a bit of updating, though...some of their rules and ways of dealing with issues are iffy at best.
Frankly I could care less about the "grunt work' unions as you put it. My hang up is with Public Employee high tech worker unions. Municipal Utilities etc...Line men, Power Plant operators, Water/waste water operators etc....I get guys that excell at their work yet I cannot recognize the extra effort they give. Then I get guys who should get 86'd or demoted but have the protection of the union. These are typically the very guys that got AFSCME or maybe IBEW voted in in the first place so they could get protection! It is what it it is Just makes it hard to replace them I can do it just have to dot the I's...........and make sure you get the right people hired back in.....
Location: Mableton, GA USA (NW Atlanta suburb, 4 miles OTP)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by snofarmer
The unions have out lived their usefulness we no longer need a union to look out for the worker as we now have GOVT Depts like OSHA the department of labor etc etc.
Having worked in various positions over the years that were sometimes less than OSHA-compliant (except when the inspectors were around), you will forgive me for being less than impressed.
Quote:
Unions hold back the productive worker while promoting people for no other reason that seniority.
All generalizations are false, and this is a prime example. I fully support the airline pilots unions, for example ... they existed initially for one purpose: safety. And that's still VERY relevant in this age of bean-counting CEOs. I'm sure there are others I could think of given enough time, and I'm sure there are unions out there where the benefit to the workers and to the profession outweighs the corrupt behavior you cite.
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Maybe you could get promoted on your work ethic or get paid what you are worth.
Doesn't that make more sense?
That doesn't happen in non-union shops now. What makes you thing the elimination of unions will change that?
I couldn't help but notice that back when unions were stronger the middle class was healthier. Also the service sector jobs, which are generally non-union, tend to have low pay and no health insurance.
I also couldn't help but notice that the right to work states are generally the poorer ones in this country.
Maybe this is all a coincendence, but do we really want to copy Mississippi or South Carolina? It seems like the way we have done things here works.
Right to work is an attack on trade unions. There is a lot of good in trade unions. I am a conservative (not a republican!) but I'm currently part of a trade union that has no seniority and no protection for cruddy workers. If you work hard, you work, if you're a drunk or old, you're laid off (straight onto unemployment but that's an unrelated issue). I'm not necessarily opposed to RTW but the attack needs to be on public unions for government workers, teachers, etc, where the government and the schools have no choice but to cede to every single demand of those unions, because our country cannot function for long without the workers. Trade and manufacturing (PRIVATE!) unions have no such ability to grind things to a halt; look at Crystal Sugar news stories from this summer...they decided to stick to their guns as they have the right to do, and Crystal Sugar decided to hell with you, and hired replacements for each and every worker on strike, who are now permanently out of work.
We need to differentiate between private and public. Our private union needs to separate themselves from public unions, as they currently don't. RTW attacks private unions, which are not nearly as damaging as public unions. Those should be the first enemy of our Republican lawmakers. As for a person who needs the job, union jobs are much harder to get BECAUSE they are supported by unions. It will be much easier for someone to find work in a non-union shop...but what do you know, the pay is significantly worse. And don't sit here and say you aren't killing the unions by passing RTW, because it would mean the death of private unions, because overnight no one would elect to put money into the coffers. For better or for worse...
Right to work is an attack on trade unions. There is a lot of good in trade unions. I am a conservative (not a republican!) but I'm currently part of a trade union that has no seniority and no protection for cruddy workers. If you work hard, you work, if you're a drunk or old, you're laid off (straight onto unemployment but that's an unrelated issue). I'm not necessarily opposed to RTW but the attack needs to be on public unions for government workers, teachers, etc, where the government and the schools have no choice but to cede to every single demand of those unions, because our country cannot function for long without the workers. Trade and manufacturing (PRIVATE!) unions have no such ability to grind things to a halt; look at Crystal Sugar news stories from this summer...they decided to stick to their guns as they have the right to do, and Crystal Sugar decided to hell with you, and hired replacements for each and every worker on strike, who are now permanently out of work.
We need to differentiate between private and public. Our private union needs to separate themselves from public unions, as they currently don't. RTW attacks private unions, which are not nearly as damaging as public unions. Those should be the first enemy of our Republican lawmakers. As for a person who needs the job, union jobs are much harder to get BECAUSE they are supported by unions. It will be much easier for someone to find work in a non-union shop...but what do you know, the pay is significantly worse. And don't sit here and say you aren't killing the unions by passing RTW, because it would mean the death of private unions, because overnight no one would elect to put money into the coffers. For better or for worse...
Interesting perspective on Public vs. Private, but I don't think you can easily draw distinction and protect one type of union but not the other. I do share similar views on problems we face dealing with teachers, government workers etc.
You would hope that people in a Union have enough loyalty to pay dues if they believe in them with or without Right to Work law. If the only thing keeping Union alive is a law requiring participation, it would seem loyalty is rather imagined.
I do support right to work in concept, but reality is too many employers are allowed to provide crappy if any benefits and minimum wage is too low. Perhaps some tweaks to that would make right to work more palatable. Not likely to happen though.
I couldn't help but notice that back when unions were stronger the middle class was healthier. Also the service sector jobs, which are generally non-union, tend to have low pay and no health insurance.
I also couldn't help but notice that the right to work states are generally the poorer ones in this country.
Maybe this is all a coincendence, but do we really want to copy Mississippi or South Carolina? It seems like the way we have done things here works.
Both those states have been able to tap into the auto industry and create jobs. I don't believe any state without right to work would be able to compete for jobs like this. It is not so simple as right to work will fix all our problems, but we do need to find ways to make the business climate more appealing.
Desire for cheap goods made overseas also has a lot to do with why the middle class is taking a hit. We have outsourced a lot of jobs that used to provide a decent living for Americans. We are now outsourcing high end IT jobs in great numbers. Seems this topic really needs to be looked at as well.
Minnesota has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country and high income levels. There is nothing wrong with our business climate.
Places like South Carolina get car factories because they are so desperate to grow their economy that they will do whatever the automakers want. We don't need to compete with them like that and we shouldn't if it means throwing Minnesota workers under the bus and lowering our living standards.
Interesting perspective on Public vs. Private, but I don't think you can easily draw distinction and protect one type of union but not the other. I do share similar views on problems we face dealing with teachers, government workers etc.
I don't see what is hard, I guess. Public employee unions (as far as I know) are the ones that the public both pays for insurance and pension through taxes, and relies upon to function as a society. These are what needs to be controlled. From my view, two simple things make these unions much more manageable. First, somehow make it so terrible employees aren't protected. Ultimately it benefits everybody besides the terrible worker, including the union and the union members. Second, everything (pension and insurance) need to come from wages negotiated in a contract.
For example, someone in a trade here makes $20/hour on their check, but the company is actually setting aside $35/hour for you...$6/hour goes to pension, $7/hour goes to health insurance, and the rest goes to other little things. Now, we re-negotiate, and our employer (or the government) can only afford to pay $33 an hour, we must all work together to figure out where that two dollars is taken from, whether it is take-home pay, or pension or insurance. Currently, when teachers demand a two dollar raise but the school districts can't afford it, they are coerced into raising pensions down the road, which of course only kicks the can farther and farther away. This of course will eventually bankrupt cities, counties, states, and the country. I believe this is part of what Greece is realizing right now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clifford63
You would hope that people in a Union have enough loyalty to pay dues if they believe in them with or without Right to Work law. If the only thing keeping Union alive is a law requiring participation, it would seem loyalty is rather imagined.
I think you're right, loyalty is rather imagined. People don't sign up for a union job because they are loyal to a union, rather they sign up because the pay and benefits are much better. However, if they are given the option of having $40 a week added to their check or continuing to pay the union, quite a few people (even if simply those who lean right) will quit paying, and the union will lose a lot of power to negotiate, wages won't increase, more folks will quit paying, and the union ends. I guess I can only make this argument based on what I have personally experienced, and only time will tell.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clifford63
I do support right to work in concept, but reality is too many employers are allowed to provide crappy if any benefits and minimum wage is too low. Perhaps some tweaks to that would make right to work more palatable. Not likely to happen though.
I agree. Not necessarily about minimum wage, but I do agree that too many employees don't offer a competitive wage or competitive benefits, and something (BUT WHAT) needs to be done. In my mind, this is the same as health insurance. Something needs to be done, but I don't agree that it should be mandated insurance and Obamacare. I guess I feel like jobs will only begin to pay more again when Americans realize they need to pay more for quality services and merchandise, and get over the need for CHEAP. Doing this artificially with mandates and laws is not a sustainable route.
Ultimately (probably to repeat myself by this point), I feel that striking down unions are a great talking point for Republicans, but RTW will strike down the wrong ones. I have to agree with Drewcifer that its not like we in Minnesota have a huge unemployment problem and private unions are devastating the work climate and need to be immediately stopped. It is simply a cause for conservatives to say rah rah rah and feel like they are accomplishing something.
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typical union talk,
