Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Unions down to about 12% of the workforce

Been there done it have worked booth sides of the street also and have had both Union and Non Union Jobs.

Tell me how can a union justify 40/50% salary increase when the COLA is 1.7 %. That's what a teachers union wanted a couple of years ago and struck for over on the Eastside of the sound.

Last time I worked with a laid off teamster was about 2 years ago. He was out of work for a week, went to the hall and was on a forklift making over $25 an hour the next day. Worked with the guy for some 14 months at a power plant (nothing lazy about him). Also if I'm not mistaken the teamsters are vested in 5 years, so if for some reason they do decide to make a change. If they took a withdrawl card they are still locked in to recieve something towards retirement. Now you can put your retirement funds in stocks and bonds, IRA's, and Company promises. But I'd much rather put mine with a union. Nothing's guarrenteed, I've got 11 years as a Teamster, and going on 9 as an Operating Engineer. That with whatever I might get from Social Security in another 8 years, and maybe I won't do too bad. But I'll tell you, I've got nothing to show for my non union years. Don't get me wrong, I don't let a union dictate to me. I don't agree with a lot of their politics. But my biggest gripe with the unions of today are their rank and file are mostly talk. I go by the contract at the time, and have no whims about standing up for my rights against a company that will agree and sign such contract, and then bitches about how it's dragging the company down. All the while there dumping all the company profits into company cars, condos, fancy offices, and bonuses into the millions.

Phil

[color:"red"] [/color] AMEN

Never been a Teacher. So I can't say. But in some school's in some towns in some neighborhoods I couldn't even imagine the disrespectful little foul mouthed kids they'd have to deal with.
Just my two cents but a qualified teacher isn't paid nearly enough. I have 3 kids very active in sports and at times I spend every night of the week at a school function. I have seen first hand what great teachers do for our communitys. They produce great productive young adults. You can't put a price on that.

All of my prior jobs were non union,didn't have a problem with that. If you did your job you stayed if you didn't adios. My present job " union shop" gets my weekly donation's and the only one's it seems to benefit until contract time are lazy and absent employees. But, rules do need to be set and a union does this, just as long as you don't have Monty Hall as a union president <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />.

Not all pay raises are about COLA. When my company merged..basically bought out...a gas company the pipefitters got a 28% wage increase. They were union to start with but it didn't seem to help their wages any.

I compared some of the acquired gas buildings to ours. I compared the salaries of their management to ours. Then I looked at what they paid their field people.

It was no wonder why a company like ours, which isn't run anything like the best it can be, was able to buy theirs. They spent most of their money on fancy buildings as monuments to their egos and paid their managers 20% more than the going rate while paying the field personnel pauper's wages.

You get what you pay for and the backbone of any industry is it's workers.

To use a Navy analogy: My dad was talking to a captain of a ship once. Somehow in that conversation this statement came up. "If this ship went to sea with an all enlisted crew it would come back dirty but it would get the job done. If it went to sea with an all officer crew it would never come back at all".

Without good field people to deliver the goods you can manage the best you can and have the fanciest building you can find but you'll go broke.

I would like to suggest another perspective to this topic. In the interest of brevity I will not fully support each point.

Unions evolved from labour guilds in Europe. These organizations came into being as a way to monopolize certain skilled labour pools in order to maximize the return for their efforts and to help ensure a uniformity of the quality of the labour thereby further enhancing the guilds value to both itself and to entities that utilized these labour pools.

These labour unions became more involved in worker rights with the onset of: the industrial revolution, due to draconian employment conditions and practices, and the birth, evolution, and growing popularity of socialist government philosophies.

The point here is that most trade unions start out well intended, their mission statement is to protect the membership from unfair, unjust, treatment.

The execution of that underlying purpose is being executed with varying degree's of effectiveness today. That is, there are examples out there of both good and bad unions.

With respect to the unprecedented economic growth and prosperity that the United States and Canada have enjoyed since the conclusion of World War II... This can in part be attributed to the hard working folks in these countries but I would suggest that a significant portion of this economic boon is attributable to being one of the only significant industrialized parts of the world not in ruins from the war.

North America boomed. The rest of the G7 scratched and clawed to rebuild their respective infrastructures and get back in the game.

Some companies (by companies I mean management, employees, or both) became arrogant, lazy, and spoiled by their success and lost sight of what was required to stay competitive.

Some became structurally redundant. A current example of this would be pulp and paper manufacturers in BC. Raw material cost, power cost, and labour costs are no longer, when compared as a ratio of gross revenue, in step with their global competitors. As profits fall they are unable to reinvest and provide an acceptable return for shareholders; CEO's satisfy shareholders and neglect investment knowing full well that this unsustainable. The competitiveness of these entities continues to erode and eventually most will cease to exist but because of the shear magnitude of the capital involved and the impact on communities it will be a slow and messy demise.

At the same time Chile's forest industry is burgeoning. They are building state of the art processing facilities that have a cost structure similar to the 50's in North America. They are in transition from a third world country to a primary manufacturing economy with the benefits of current technology.

This what is happening across North America today. Countries like China are developing a manufacturing sector to service consumer economies like North America's.

So the exporting of jobs is, to a significant extent, an economic structural shift rather than unions being bad or management being bad.

In conclusion the shrinking of the unionized labour sector is more due to structural economic changes to North America rather than the the direct fault of the management or the labour force.

Actually I was surprised myself, but the Chevy guys tell me that the brake pads tend to last a long time. I commute home on the weekends so I have a lot of road miles on it, but in day to day deiving, they'll last over 80K. As far as longevity, the other chevy I had was a little S-10 Blazer and I traded that in with 215K with no problems other than routine, but in fairness to the japs, the longest lasting truck I've seen was my friends little Toyota that he sold with close to 300K. The Tundra doesn't come close to the Chevy in performance but even if it was better, i just can't get past Dec 7, the Bataan death March and the fact those bastards have never even apologized for WWII and if you ever go over there, they hate us. I think unions are a pox, but I'll continue to buy American. jorge

I lived in Japan for three years as a kid and went back a couple of times in the Navy. I never had anything but positive interactions with the Japanese including one of their WWII Navy vets.

I think they treated the war criminals in the Pacific far too leniently but the people now are not those same folks and for the most part they seem to like us for the most part.

Steely Eyes; I guess we are digressing, but my experience was more or less like yours, and while I generalized the overall feelings of the Japanese people, the resentment is there. The fact remains than in their school books today, they accept no blame for their actions. jorge

Amazing how an A-Bomb boosts spirits...................

That is a little sobering when a society produces school books and histories that either out right lie about their country's actions and/or "revise" them.

Catholics have ravaged/savaged more folks than the Japs and you'll not find that in the kid's homework...................

well, that is true, Stick- sheesh, way to sink my arguement.
grins

There is very little true history in most history text books. It's all Walt Disney-ized.

I think that is probably true, I would guess that there are "revisionists" in every age and culture.

It's a very common practice,... and nowhere is it more common that right here in the good old USA.

Apparently you've not seen many, or at least not the ones I've seen. I routinely work with union carpenters, millwrights, electricians, boilermakers, iron workers, pipefitters, plumbers, operators, sheet metal workers, and more. The vast majority are hard workin' guys who take pride in their work and know how the [bleep] to do it right. The lazy ones just don't get much work, just like anywhere else. Half the chit we do can't be done by non-union workers cuz there aren't any out there with enough experience/training to do it. Say what you want, I KNOW, been doin' it for years.....The skill level of a journeyman union tradesman exceeds the others by far. It takes a 4 year apprenticeship program to become a journeyman, and upgrade classes are constantly being offered. Special types of various certifications are necessary for many of the jobs, if you ain't trained with a card to show it, you're not eligible. Right now we have to pass 18 separate training modules to go to work for the big three. Drug screening is also mandatory for many. I'm not talking about Joe shmo standin' on an assembly line pushin' a button, I'm talkin' about the guys who fabricate and build the assembly line, and tear apart and install conveyors, etc. Skilled labor by trained, certified tradesman...........Maybe some other types of unions are lazy, but the skilled trades aren't. If your lazy, or just not good, you don't work much, simple as that. These are the guys that end up non-union again, bitchin' about how unions are no good, or how they got screwed, when, in fact, they screwed themselves..........Rant over---2MG

Have seen them all and have yet to be impressed on any level......................

One more little fact. Since we've contracted our line work out to a non union outfit our power outages due to wind storms are longer. They might look like they work fast but they aren't very organized and the end result is more people without power for longer.