Unions make Wisconsin business an offer they can't refuse.

[matt0611]

Henry Ford was also an enormous benefactor to industry, both worker and producer.

Some Ford quotes:

Those are all great quotes!
I agree with them all. Henry Ford was awesome.

People like him are the real heroes.
Did much more for us then any government bureaucrat, politician, or union ever will or can.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

No, they didn't have to. Henry Ford could hardly have employed all the workers from the other plants. Unions were the key.

Keep on believing that union fairy tale. Keep on giving them your money.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Keep on believing that union fairy tale. Keep on giving them your money.

You haven't read many of my posts. I'm not pro union, I'm anti corporation.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Go read up on George F Johnson of Endcott-Johnson and explain how the unions affected his decision to institute a 40 hour work week. He is considered the father of the 40 hour work week.

 

[PeshakJang]

You haven't read many of my posts. I'm not pro union, I'm anti corporation.

What is the difference between a corporation and a union, other than the fact that a corporation pays its employees, and a union is paid by its employees?

If a corporation took taxpayer dollars and funneled it into political campaigns, would that not be equivalent to a public sector union taking dues and doing the same?

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Their goals are different. Corporations will destroy jobs in America to add to their bottom line. Unions will strive to maintain jobs at the cost of some businesses.

 

[jackschmittusa]

All you need to do is look at what the mining and steel unions did for safety in industry and it's obvious that they contributed greatly to America and its citizens.

Not to say that the unions haven't done some really stupid shit too, but those that espouse that unions have only negative value are either willfully ignorant, or just inclined to pass BS as fact.

 

[Svnla]

Like your 8 hour work week?
Thank the crybaby unions...
Like weekends off?
Thank your crybaby unions...
Like employer healthcare?
Thank your crybaby unions...
Like vacation time?
Thank your crybaby unions...
Like a safe work place?
Thank your crybaby unions...

Unions gave us workers, all workers both union or nay, a pretty nice employee environment.
These "crybaby unions" gave union workers a quality standard of living.
The fear of unions forced non union employers to follow suit.
Take away the crybaby unions, and you'd soon find a lot of crybaby employees.
Non union crybaby employees working in a dangerous environment, with no offered healthcare, no vacations, no sick days, 80 hour weeks paid as 40.

Say bye bye to a decent salary and any benefits.
Say hello to the minimum wage US worker.

I think we had that once in America. It was called slavery.

I'd love to see your face when your boss tells you to count on working 12 hour work days, and tells you they will no longer offer healthcare, and to count on working 12 day weeks. Oh... and you get to do all this after we cut your salary by 60% starting yesterday.

And that smell you might start sensing?
It's just he highly toxic paint we are painting your office with.
And when your at Wal-Mart next time, you'd better pick up a few mouse traps
(at your own expense, naturally), cause we fired the exterminator.
Better yet.. rat traps.

You left out the bad side of union. Here are some stories of UAW at a major manufacturer.

Want to ask union employees to make minor changes/adjustments for QC improvement/workflow improvement?
Good luck with that, you have to wait and talk to the union rep, no exception even it is critical.
Want to pick the best employees (the ones that always show up and never late) for critical jobs?
Good luck with that, you have to pick the most seniority employees, aka the dumb and the lazy.
Want to work in the same plant and not join the union?
Good luck with that, union would publish your name in the hall of shame section of their monthly newspaper and union employees would treat you like scum.
Want to discipline union employee because he did not show or call for work?
Good luck with that, have to wait for union rep and that employee probably would get a slap in the wrist.
See a piece of trash on the floor, want to pick it up and make the floor looks tidy?
Good luck with that, union employees would report you as violator of collective bargaining rights.

Shall I go on? Those are just a few minor examples of my several years with the local UAW, not stories of my dad/uncle/friend but my own.

If an employer asked me to do shit as your example, I would quit and get another job somewhere else because of my skill and education, I don't need anyone to stand up for me (and then have to pay dues for them) but myself. I worked and work for several Fortune 100 companies for the last 10+ years and so far, no such employer exists. And please don't scare us about "if no union, we will all make minimum wages", GM signed agreements with UAW and hired new employees in the 14-15 bucks per hour, hardly minimum wages. Give us examples of any employers paid employees minimum wages after the union left.

One more thing, if union is so good, then why union numbers <except public employees> are falling and falling?

 

[the DRIZZLE]

There are ways to do it without challenging the right to assemble.

Perhaps raising taxes to sustainable levels? Or just not cutting them to create phantom deficits?

What will happen to the quality of the employee if wages fall?

The right to assemble =/ collective bargaining.

They can get together and have meetings all they want. They can even lobby the government for more money or benefits. They just can't collectively bargain. Do you really believe there is a natural right to collectively bargain?

 

[senseamp]

Union members have a right to buy and not buy whatever products they want, and they have a right to free speech, just like the rest of us.

 

[Nebor]

Union members have a right to buy and not buy whatever products they want, and they have a right to free speech, just like the rest of us.

Typical entitled attitude.

 

[PeshakJang]

Union members have a right to buy and not buy whatever products they want, and they have a right to free speech, just like the rest of us.

Yep... they still have all of their rights. Glad you finally see that.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Hahaha, I would just ignore them. Although, I would delight in responding simply with "bring it," I would strive to be non-confrontational when possible should I be running a sizable business.

For the record, I support their right to boycott, although it will be a waste of time, like most non-state mandated boycotts.

 

[Darwin333]

Starving as in losing your job and being replaced with someone earning half as much.

If there are people that are willing to do your job for half as much and have the ability to do it just as well, you are overpaid. That system works fairly well until we start competing with 3rd world labor (exported or imported).

 

[senseamp]

Yep... they still have all of their rights. Glad you finally see that.

Yep, including right to vote, as GOP is going to find out very soon

 

[Darwin333]

Like your 8 hour work week?
Thank the crybaby unions...
Like weekends off?
Thank your crybaby unions...
Like employer healthcare?
Thank your crybaby unions...
Like vacation time?
Thank your crybaby unions...
Like a safe work place?
Thank your crybaby unions...

Unions gave us workers, all workers both union or nay, a pretty nice employee environment.
These "crybaby unions" gave union workers a quality standard of living.
The fear of unions forced non union employers to follow suit.
Take away the crybaby unions, and you'd soon find a lot of crybaby employees.
Non union crybaby employees working in a dangerous environment, with no offered healthcare, no vacations, no sick days, 80 hour weeks paid as 40.

Say bye bye to a decent salary and any benefits.
Say hello to the minimum wage US worker.

I think we had that once in America. It was called slavery.

I'd love to see your face when your boss tells you to count on working 12 hour work days, and tells you they will no longer offer healthcare, and to count on working 12 day weeks. Oh... and you get to do all this after we cut your salary by 60% starting yesterday.

And that smell you might start sensing?
It's just he highly toxic paint we are painting your office with.
And when your at Wal-Mart next time, you'd better pick up a few mouse traps
(at your own expense, naturally), cause we fired the exterminator.
Better yet.. rat traps.

OSHA is up my ass constantly and I have a squeaky clean record, does that mean they won't be up my ass anymore? Those labor laws that prevent me from doing most of the things you say are going away too (not to mention my guys would simply quit and seek employment elsewhere)?

 

[Darwin333]

Their goals are different. Corporations will destroy jobs in America to add to their bottom line. Unions will strive to maintain jobs at the cost of some businesses.

That is the built in "equalizer" between unions and corporations. The unions can become more powerful than the company and demand too much and the company will go out of business and the employees will no longer be employed.

There is no such equalizer with public unions.

 

[Jhhnn]

OSHA is up my ass constantly and I have a squeaky clean record, does that mean they won't be up my ass anymore? Those labor laws that prevent me from doing most of the things you say are going away too (not to mention my guys would simply quit and seek employment elsewhere)?

Well, OSHA isn't very far down the Republican hit list, and it depends on Federal funding. Unions are self-funded, and therefore can't be legislated out of existence the same way...

In today's economy, seeking and gaining employment are entirely different things... Things need to get pretty bad for any sane person to quit their job today...

 

[Craig234]

That is the built in "equalizer" between unions and corporations. The unions can become more powerful than the company and demand too much and the company will go out of business and the employees will no longer be employed.

This is one of the multiple myths you are a victim of.

For just one thing, why would the unions want to lose all their employment that way?

Now, why don't you do something reasonalbe and find, for example, a study comparing how companies do - growth, profit - that's apples and oranges between union and non-union.

Find some EVIDENCE to back up your baseless claim at this point that unions are putting companies out of business.

If you do find some examples where CEOs make bad short-term policies to please Wall Street's demand for short-term profits - for example, if they get unions to accept less pay now in exchange for better pensions that some other schmuck CEO will have to deal with much later, but will help your agenda now to make the bonuses and a higher stock price - remember whose fault that is - the system's, Wall Street's, the CEO's.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

This is one of the multiple myths you are a victim of.

For just one thing, why would the unions want to lose all their employment that way?

Now, why don't you do something reasonalbe and find, for example, a study comparing how companies do - growth, profit - that's apples and oranges between union and non-union.

Find some EVIDENCE to back up your baseless claim at this point that unions are putting companies out of business.

If you do find some examples where CEOs make bad short-term policies to please Wall Street's demand for short-term profits - for example, if they get unions to accept less pay now in exchange for better pensions that some other schmuck CEO will have to deal with much later, but will help your agenda now to make the bonuses and a higher stock price - remember whose fault that is - the system's, Wall Street's, the CEO's.

Read what he wrote again. He was saying the possibility of driving the company out of business forces the union to act responsibly.

 

[sactoking]

I'm not pro union, I'm anti "right to work."

Yeah, it's pretty terrible in "right to wok" states, not having to join a closed-shop union to get a job. I mean, teachers in NV, a RTW state make more than teachers in LA California, a forced-union state, when cost of living is adjusted for.

$45753 average salary in NV
$60583 average salary in LA

$45753 in NV = $62981 in LA

 

[Craig234]

Those labor laws that prevent me from doing most of the things you say are going away too (not to mention my guys would simply quit and seek employment elsewhere)?

You fall for another myth here. That's NOT how it works.

Why didn't workers in 1900 who didn't like working alongside their children for 12 hours a day 6 days a week in unsafe conditions for barely enough to eat just quit and get work that had weekends off, worker safety, no child labor, middle class compensation - heck, a pension?

Because it's about a balance of power you don't understand. When unions can't collectively negotiate, competing companies will cut a bit from them, and then competitors will too, and then cut more and competitors will too, and cut more, and cut more, and competitors will too, and then cut some more. There WON'T BE THAT GREAT ALTERNATIVE.

There isn't even any 'companies will have limits to these cuts' type protection - competition can force companies to do bad things.

This is why some companies ASKED FDR to do more regulation - competition was forcing them to do bad things, that they couldn's afford to not do if unless their competition did.

For example, we saw this in recent years as banks that had bragged about how they would not get caught up in the reckless housing bubble simply could not find any customers when bad banks were willing to make ridiculous loans, because those loans could be used for big bucks - and the 'good' banks, like mine, were acquired by the 'bad' banks.

Sure, it'd all come crashing down later, but for the years it went on, you either did the bad stuff or you went out of business.

Not only would your guys not be able to quit and do better, YOU would be FORCED to slash their costs - less pay, less benefits, and more.

Your post is incredibly naive and shows the danger of these myths.

In the meantime, you are expendable, too - it's all about the top 0.1%. Make them money for less for yourself, or you can be replaced.

The ONLY thing that can improve this is the democratic (I mean the system and not the party, but it pretty much means the party too) government forcing improvement.

But the ignorant voting public is sold on the propaganda for the rich to make the unions that make them better off their ENEMY, those dirty corrupt workers making too much.

Voters can be told all day about the 'starve the beast strategy' to FORCE budget crises to let cuts be made that could not otherwise get approved under democracy, and yet the people act like they were not warned, and leap to do the bidding of the rich, devided and conquered, one group of workers DEMANDING the other get cuts, and then back at them.

In the meantime, the one chart that matters most is the one showing the share of wealth of the extremey rich, going up hundreds of percent in income while others are at zero.

And yet you probably can't hear the information I'm giving you. You are probaby ready to keep screaming the same old things that lead to the move to plutocracy.

This really is what it was like for anyone who wanted to reform the Soviet or Maoist systems, who would point out the flaws of the systems and get hostility from the people who would benefit from those reforms, not getting the information because they were indoctrinated.

That's the problem with successful policies like the ones that built the middle class - you are born to the successful system and don't know why the middle class does well.

You just INVENT that people can 'quit and get good benefits' if the systme is changed to remove the things that give the middle class prosperity. What do you know about 1900?

And so the ever-present pressure from the top to take more from those below gradually does it more and more, people falling for the same myths.

The US has gone from being the biggest creditor under the liberals to the biggest debtor under the right, and people don't have a clue about the cause.

It gets harder and harder to correct the more it happens, when the few at the top have so much more than the rest they can laugh at the idea of democracy opposing them.

It'd be the time most might thing first of democratic revolution - but the system is owned by the top preventing any chance of that - and then real revolution which is impossible in today's day and age, the media controlled by the top as well, simply the world's most stable plutocracy eventually, the people without political or economic power.

The people only get the PRETEND, the FACADE, of power because they have the vote now, even if the politicians are largely pretending the people matter but are hired hands to do the bidding of the rich while keeping the people from rebelling; as this goes on, the vote will eventually mean nothing, and then the people will be treated as in any tyranny.

This is not that far, there are already people who are ready to do things like restrict the scope and power of goverment that's elected, so that while it can declare the national bird and name buildings, it CANNOT tell those with money anything about how they can behave towards the people. All the anti-government propaganda and ideology is building support toward that.

Jefferson could not have had a clue about the modern corporatocracy in his far simpler, agrarian society, but he was right:

"If the American people ever allow private banks
to control the issue of their money,
first by inflation and then by deflation,
the banks and corporations that will
grow up around them (around the banks),
will deprive the people of their property
until their children will wake up homeless
on the continent their fathers conquered."

“I hope we shall crush… in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

It's safe to say that we have just that aristocricy - not the egalitarian model of opportunity for all the founders wanted, but the few owning more and more and more.

You are playing into their hands, with your animosity towards the prosperity of union workers, who add to the prosperity of the other workers, forcing wealth to the people.

Save234

 

[The-Noid]

Amazing no one brought up the fact that M & I will be owned by the Canadians soon and there is a very good chance M & I management isn't even here in a year.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/12/17/us-bmo-shares-idUSTRE6BG32C20101217

This movement is anti-Canada! (sarcasm)

I won't throw a political bone either way on unions, however I don't get the logic of boycotting a soon-to-be Canadian bank. Did they not do their homework? Wouldn't it be the ultimate irony if BMO throws out M & I management? That would seem like a major black eye to collective bargaining, which strives for fairness and job security when management likely goes the way of the wind because of the takeover.

 

[DaveSimmons]

As productivity increases (assembly line etc) companies can pay more and have their employees work less.

Also, after Henry Ford cut shifts from 9 hours to 8, so did the other companies, they had to, competition works.
This was in 1914 too, well before unions even mattered.

Unions were active in the 1800s, almost 100 years before Ford. Back then employers swapped blacklists of suspected organizers, hired Pinkertons to infiltrate them or to beat up strikers and their families, etc.

 

[RFE]

All you need to do is look at what the mining and steel unions did for safety in industry and it's obvious that they contributed greatly to America and its citizens.

Not to say that the unions haven't done some really stupid shit too, but those that espouse that unions have only negative value are either willfully ignorant, or just inclined to pass BS as fact.

The topic was about public sector unions. Sorry, but its difficult to imagine someone comparing the dangers of teaching to working on the floor of a steel mill or in the depths of a mine.