apechild

Unemployment rates:

U.S. - 6.0%
Germany - 9.7%
France - 10.5%
Italy - 8.7%
Spain - 8.9%

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Ustwo

Thanks apechild, I was thinking of making a long post on why European labor is screwed up, but you covered it pretty well.

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Superbelt

So you think if we got rid of the collective bargaining ability of Unions that employers would just even keep the STATUS QUO out of the goodness of their hearts?

Every year I hear of stories of employers trying to take away their employees health insurance or force them to pay 300-600 a month to have it and so on.

Unions are still protecting our rights as workers today.

Bush wanted to do away with our overtime laws and allow an employer to force their employees to work as much overtime as necessary and not have to compensate them with their comp time for up to 5 years!!! That would have been a huge step backwards and thank god it failed.

We still need to stay vigilant and protect ourselves from opportunistic people.

Unions protect america.

apechild

Superbelt,
Are you willfully ignoring the economic facts I have presented? And please remember, employers can't force their workers to do anything. If anyone is trying to use force, it's the unions.

Now I'll tell you what would happen if unions disappeared:

Wages for a few ex-union workers would drop to their equilibrium levels (fair market wages)
Employers would use their wage savings to hire more workers and increase output
Unemployment rates would fall (as would the tax burden of everyone supporting unemployment benefits)

But wait - there's more!

Competition among workers would improve productivity and efficiency
Productivity and efficiency gains would translate into increased profitability
Increased profitability would create greater growth opportunities
Growth opportunities would lead to greater demand for labor
Greater demand for labor would lead to increased hiring and higher wages

Want more? OK

Higher wages would lead to higher disposable income levels and increased personal spending
Increased personal spending would result in more economic growth opportunities
Growth opportunities would lead to greater demand for labor
Greater demand for labor would lead to increased hiring and higher wages

And so on...

Unions protect America, you say? Wrong. Unions protect themselves at America's expense.

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filtherton

One of the first things i learned in microeconomics was that economics is largely guesswork based on flawed models. This was not a conclusion i came to on my own, rather it was offered by my prof, a phd in econ. So you can show your diagrams and give your free lesson in economics, but don't pretend that what you say is accurate all of the time, or even most of the time. You can say this and i can say bullshit.
Explain to me again the economic effect of greedy ceos and stockholders on employment.

filtherton

It may be that in some circumstances, unions contribute to unemployment, but that is far from their only function. You can dismiss union activities as contributing to unemployment and leave it at that, but then you should also dismiss everything else that also contributes to unemployment. It is silly not to acknowledge the positive effects of unions.

Basing an argument on pure economical theory and ignoring any kind of actual human problems inflates economics to be more of a priority than it should be. It makes perfect economic sense to not hire women-men don't need maternity leave- think of the boost it would give to our economy. Or how about the economic sense it would make if employers could refuse to hire members of the national guard- i'm sure many small business are hurting from the employees they were "coerced" into hiring because they couldn't say no. It would also make good economic sense to completely eliminate any kind of restrictions on how employers can deal with their employees. Think of all of the jobs we could create if we could tap into the sweatshop markets. Even though all of these things might make sense for the economy(some of you may argue that they don't) following those paths would be a step back for our society.
My point is that you can't use economic theory to bolster a perspective in an argument about the real world because, as some people would say, econ is autistic.- it can count real well, but it generally misses the point.

ubertuber

I'd have to say that the best working conditions seem to be created not by unions or corporations, but by the tension between unions and corporations. The musician's union is pretty much the strongest one there is, and they get their way a surprising amount of the time. However, often we find that we win battle after battle only to make the war more and more hopeless. It is true that a union's first duty is to itself - otherwise they would fade away and not do anyone any good. This is also why they can do destructive things when their power gets to the point that they are basically unopposed.

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redravin40

No Unions=

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
Child Labor
Black Lung
Sweat Shops
60 hour week
No overtime

Tman144

Why don't you look at it like this. Unions are just corporations in reverse. Many people can band together to form a single unit in a corporation, so the workers should also be able to form their own unit to bargin with it. You need either both to keep a balance. Without a group of workers to bargin with the bosses, you get feudalism with the workers treated like crap. If the workers have all the power, you get a system like communism and no more work is created. Of course, when you have two things that balance each other there will be extreme cases, like the Tyco exec or the corrupt union. The Unions will try and get the workers more money than their worth, and the bosses will try and pay the workers less than what their worth.

apechild, your assuming that the owners are good people. The best system is one that accounts for the worst actions in people, not the best or right ones. Thats why our system of government works so well. It has checks and balances to try and keep the worst of us from doing too much harm.

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hiredgun

I've got to agree with that. A good economy is not an end in itself, it is a means to improving or maintaining our quality of life, and there is a limit to what costs we should endure in its pursuit. What good is a good economy if workers are suffering as a result?

However, that's only applicable to the extent that unions are actually protecting workers' legitimate needs rather than arbitrarily inflating the cost of labor. While redravin's list of tragedies is daunting, I don't think the disappearance of unions, now, would send us back to those mishaps.

onetime2

Collective bargaining of unions does not help non unionized labor and only helps those union members that remain employed. I most certainly do not think that corporations will keep the status quo. Most corporations are moving away from unions as fast as they can anyway. That in itself means that the status quo will not remain.

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onetime2

Without a good economy there will be few workers. Workers are consumers. Employment allows consumers to spend. Consumers, to a very great extent, ARE the economy.

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Superbelt

Heh, Corporations have been "moving away" from unions since the day the first union was created. It's in there own self interest.

And we can all see where that effort has led.

sixate

Yeah, if you live in China.
It isn't 1920, and there are many laws to protect people. If people are dumb and let someone take advantage of them I could care less. They deserve it. Unions served a purpose once, but they don't now.

Unions can be good, but 95% of the time they're complete shit. I'm part of a union and I don't like it. My union protects all the lazy fucking drunks and potheads who get high at work and do nothing. The other guys who don't get high sleep half of their day. Do these lazy fucking pieces of shit deserve a decent job making a solid paycheck and great insurance? Hell no, but the union protects them and creates an us against them mentality that makes me want to vomit. I have been fucked over numerous times by my union. I would go into detail, but the important thing is my union cost me nearly $10,000 this year. And on top of that they take $50 a month from my ass.

If I didn't have a union my employer could get rid of all the losers and I could get a raise. I'm limited to my contract right now. What's bullshit is there aren't 6 guys combined that I work with who can produce like me, but I can't make any more cash than the lazy fuckstains that I work with. I could go on and on about how much I hate unions, but I don't feel like typing out that much shit because it's just gonna piss me off. Once I get some bills squared away I will quit and get a job where there isn't a union. This is my one and only union job. I'll never do it again.

onetime2

Where has that effort lead?

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Superbelt

A happier america!

apechild

What are some of the most heavily unionized industries out there?

Let's see...

There's the steel industry, which is decaying faster than any tariffs can ever protect it...

There's the auto industry, where the Big 3 are now facing enormous underfunded pension liabilities and are teetering on the brink of ratings downgrades that would bring their bonds below investment grade ("junk" bonds)...

There's public education and the infamous NEA - and we all know how well teachers are paid in this country and how much the quality of education has improved...

There's the airline industry which is, well, mostly bankrupt (United, US Air just emerged, American and Delta are on the brink... and remember Eastern? TWA? Pan Am?)...

Draw your own conclusions...

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Superbelt

There is also the trucking industry

Service peoples industry

Construction

All heavily unionized, all doing great!

Auto Industry includes Harley Davidson, which is unionized and is doing swimmingly. You can make an argument that the american auto industry is lagging because we fall behind most foreign car companies in fuel efficiencies, and overseas, where fuel prices are much higher that is a terrible disadvantage. Even here our fuel prices are becoming more and more of a factor in the past couple years.

Ustwo

You never worked in a Union did you Superbelt.

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apechild

Sure, you can make that argument, but that isn't the argument being made by the investors, analysts, and rating agencies whose job it is to evaluate the company's ability to survive.

Look, my point here is not to engage in a pissing match or win an internet argument, but to present the facts and the economic realities as I know them. You can ignore what I have to say, you can dismiss my words if you like, but if the point here is to learn from constructive discussion, then you really should re-read my economic analysis objectively. Especially the supply and demand curve / price floor / surplus concept. This is basic, textbook stuff, and it would do you a lot of good to understand it. Again, my participation in this discussion is not motivated by some narcissistic desire to "win," but to share some of what I have learned during my past ten years in finance and economics.

The information is there. Take from it what you will...

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Superbelt

I was a teamster. My father is a Teamster.

My father is the second highest paid Truck driver in Pennsylvania. He works for UPS.

I worked for UPS as a package handler for 3 years until I finished college and started my career as a Transportation Planner for my county.

Thank god for the Union fighting to keep the benefit for part timers of tuition assistance. That helped me out more than most people could ever know!

onetime2

Harley Davidson is hardly an example of union success. It was not long ago that it was on deaths door. It was the management of the company (non-unionized) who turned it around and it is the 50 year old professional (also mostly non-unionized) who buy the products.

The service person's union is hardly the reason that the industry is growing. It's the mostly non-union people who don't want to do the work themselves that are driving the growth. Look at the wages members of this union are still typically paid. I think the average in Manhattan, New York is somewhere around $30 to $40k. Hardly, if even, liveable there.

Construction is doing well, again not because of unions but because of the purchasers of construction services.

The trucking industry, again, not because of the unions but because shipping is increasing (people buying stuff again).

Now, we can get into why these are the unions who are growing. These jobs can't be shipped overseas. Someone in China obviously can't empty the waste baskets in the Empire State building, build the skyscraper down the block, or deliver the newly purchased refrigerator bought on ebay. Overall trends in the economy and specific industries drive the success of these industries, not union practices.

In the failed or failing unionized industries, corporations could not compete internationally on price due to lower production costs abroad.

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filtherton

sixate, why don't you find a new job if you hate it so much. Is it cause you don't want to lose your seniority?

I don't understand what you are trying to say apechild. You're not trying to win some internet discussion- the point is to learn from constructive discussion. But still, if we just read what you said about textbook economics we'd know that you were right?
I'm sorry, but i know that a lot of econ is bullshit. Econ is brilliant when it comes to explaining what happened a month ago, but dismal when it comes to accurately predicting next week.
I read your textbook econ post and i concede that your figures may be accurate in theory, but barring any actual real-world examples it remains just that, theory. And when was the last time econ was ever very accurate just in theory? Which economic system are your diagrams based? Free market? Competitve oligopoly? Both exist in the american economy and both may have different properties with respect to unions.
Besides, if it were about learning from constructive discussion you'd acknowledge that unions do more than just cost people jobs just as i've acknowledged the truth in some of what you say, i.e. that unions can also have a negative impact on the common worker.

matthew330

in addition to my personal experiences with unions, this is why i don't like unions in a nutshell

the union limits the potential of the company to succeed but eliminating motivation for it's employees to succeed. Your benefits are directly and solely proportional to the amount of time you have been there (which in the union is undoubtedly indefinite - assuming you don't kill one of your co-workers). You view your employer who pays you as the enemy, and the union who does nothing but take your money as your savior.

This is sort of microcosmically (would that be a word??) my main problem with liberalism in general. Those in power, as much as they scream to care about the little guy, need the little guy to need them. Throw 'em a couple bones, make them believe they can't do it on their own.

The argument that if you don't like the union find another job, what's that about. The union doesn't frickin employ you. What if you already like the job. Like one of the previous posters suggested, if your dumb enough to let yourself get taken advantage of......who's fault is that. If that's occuring, then you shouldn't like the actual "job", get off your ass and find a new one.

matthew330

..and superbelt - we have something in common!!!!

I worked for UPS, hadda load 4 frickin trucks, from 3am to 7am or so my last couple of years in college. It was a bitch, but a fun way to start the day (especially unloading those 40 ft tractor trailors), goin all out for 3-4 hours straight as soon as you wake up.

Anyway - I should make my point i guess (I never got tuition reimbursement!!!! that's fucked up...). But from the company's standpoint - if they were trying to take that benefit away. I'd imagine in order to make a significant impact in your tuition over the course of 3 years of college that would have meant contributing thousands and thousands of dollars. Probably more than your total income, great for you but what kind of sense does that make. I don't know when you worked there but i worked there from 94-97, part time at 8.50 an hour. I don't see how they are obligated to pay for your tuition - especially when you clearly are not going to college to benefit UPS, like you said your outta there now. It'd be different if you were going to college and your education were somehow in the future going to be put to use for that company.

Superbelt

I made 8.50 working there too.

Perhaps things are different district to district. But in Central Pa we got tuition assistance.
Actually all the trucking companies in my area tout the fact that they offer tuition assistance in their radio ads to attract employees.

We are actually a 'nexus' of trucking here. 40% of the US population is reachable from here within 8 hours. That makes this a very attractive place to locate your warehouses etc.

Perhaps the high level of trucking firms necessitated that once one company did it, they all had to to keep up.

sixate

I could give a flying fuck less about my seniority! What good is seniority without a fucking pension and 401K. If a union can't even get me that then what fucking good is it? The only reason I stay right now is I have bills I need to pay off and I'm not gonna chance quitting and getting a new job until they're paid off.

BTW, I'm in the Steel Workers union, and they're all corrupt. Those fuckers don't help out at all. My company violates my contract all the time, and the union does nothing about it. The fucked up part is I can't even get a lawyer because there isn't a lawyer on the face of the planet that can do shit. They all say go to your union. I have to rely on them. Unions are a big reason that many places close down, and it won't be long before it happens where I work.

Superbelt

Your steel problems are more a function of government subsidized steel being dumped in the US than anything a union could do.

Ustwo

I note you ignore all his claims about the union itself.

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Superbelt

No, if he's right. I can see that that would be a frustrating place to work.

But the main reason those businesses will fail is because american is becoming too big to support too much raw goods manufacturing anymore and the dumping of cheap steel in america.

sixate

My company doesn't make steel. We use steel to make shit. We're a fab shop. So foreign steel dumping helps us because we can get better steel and get it a lot cheaper. Those stupid steel tariffs almost killed us because American steel is fucking expensive, and it's complete junk, and you ask why it's expensive and shitty steel.... Because unions drive up labor costs, which wouldn't be a bad thing if it wouldn't make guys lazy. I know a guy who works at a place that makes steel. It's called WCI, and he pulls in over $70,000 a year and has great benefits, but he fucking sleeps half the day, and sits on his ass the other half. He says he could produce a lot more, but sees no need to do so. That's a typical lazy union attitude. Because everyone that he works with has that attitude he will be looking for a job soon because that place is going under. There have been many steel manufacturers in this area close over the past 18 months. So what good did those steel tariffs do? The didn't help at all. The simple fact here is the steel making industry has been on the decline for over 30 years, and that has nothing to do with the government or Bush. It has everything to do with lazy fuckers who don't do work which are protected by worthless fucking unions.

redravin40

My sense of history tends to make my examples seem irrelevant so lets try something a bit more current.

Reduced power of unions=

Tyson Chicken Factory Fire in which there was 25 deaths and 54 people injured. No inspections or union representaion. Some of the doors were locked to keep people from taking breaks.

LINK

Sweat shops

On August 2, 1995, a multi-agency task force led by the California Department of Industrial Relations raided a fenced seven-unit apartment complex in El Monte, California, a small community near Los Angeles. What they found was one of the most horrendous U.S. sweatshops in modern times.

Law enforcement officers arrested eight operators of a Chinese-Thai, family-owned garment sweatshop and freed 72 illegal Thai immigrants. The workers, most of them women, had been held in virtual slavery behind fences tipped with razor wire and forced to sew garments in conditions significantly worse than those found in most sweatshops.

LINK


No overtime, breaks and having to work off the clock...


Wal-Mart sued for labor abuses
BY JULIE FORSTER
Pioneer Press

Debbie Simonson was asked to straighten up her area of the Wal-Mart store in Brooklyn Park at the beginning and end of her shifts when she worked there in 2000 and 2001. She followed her supervisor's requests to work "off the clock," passing out promotional items to customers, assembling candy bags and clearing carts from the parking lot.

Most often, she didn't get meal or rest breaks, and after she was promoted to supervise cashiers, the store was so understaffed that there was never anyone to relieve them for breaks.

She complained to higher-ups but nothing changed. "They didn't care," she said. "It wasn't a priority."

Now Simonson is fighting back by suing her former employer, the nation's largest retailer. On Friday, she and three other women will ask a Dakota County District Court to give them class-action status on behalf of 63,000 current and former workers in Minnesota. Their lawyers estimate that Wal-Mart workers across the state lost tens of millions of dollars in wages and 500,000 hours of breaks per year since 1998.

Link

And as an example of the measures an American Steel company will take to stop a union lets visit Columbia...

ILRF and the United Steelworkers of America filed a suit against the Drummond Company, an Alabama-based mining corporation with facilities in La Loma, Colombia, on behalf of the families of slain workers and their labor union. The suit, filed in US District Court for the Northern District of Alabama on March 14, 2002, charges the company with hiring paramilitary gunmen to torture, kidnap and murder union leaders.

LINK

sixate

All examples of people who allow themselves to be taken advantage of. I could care less.

Unlike China, something can be done about that stuff, right?

Do you think that unions don't participate in illegal activities? You're crazy if you don't think so.

I'll edit in a personal experience. My sister is a manager at a company. When she worked in Chicago and the new place was being built a union was protesting because her company is non-union. Union protesters broke into the place when people weren't there and destroyed shit all the time, which pushed back their grand opening on more than one occasion. After the place was open the manager above my sister was beat up. He was beat so badly, by union members, that he was in a hospital for weeks! But I guess it's OK for unions to do that, huh? I guess it's perfectly legal for unions to do whatever the fuck they want... That sounds like something that some fucking commies would do! My sister was smart and moved out of there shortly after that.

ARTelevision

I am opposed to the existence of things that have outlived their usefulness, unions being one of them.
Rather than argue the point, I'll just say that I've taught in both non-union universtity settings and unionized high school settings. In my personal opinion, the teachers' union was a lame and anti-educational institution. It's sole purpose was to extort funds from the entire proces toward the end of feathering its members nests - this ensured its strength and continued existence. It looked (from within) to be a corrupting influence with no justification other than wielding political muscle for a group that already had the entire population by the balls.

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Sparhawk

sixate, you said yourself that you don't want to find a job right now, and that is your basis for not quitting. You haven't mentioned it, so I'm assuming you work a 40 hour work week, plus overtime pay; you work in a safe workplace; you can take breaks during the workday. Thank, if not your union, then unions in general for making that possible.

On a personal note, I would sympathize more with your position if you hadn't shown a lack of pity for those without the protection that you have.

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sixate

You know nothing about my personal situation or my protection other than what I've told you.... My job is not secure, that's why I went to midnights and work a part time non-union job during the day, which I like 1000x more than my regular job. If I chose to work a 40 hour week at the part time job I would absolutely make more money than I do at my union job, but I have the freedom to work that job whenever I want....... The only thing that I have at my union job that I don't get at the non-union is insurance, but that's not as good as is sounds. My insurance is about the only thing that keeps me there, but the company went against my contract, changed insurance coverage to something that fucking sucks dick, and guess what my union did about it? Nothing! I even tried to get a lawyer on my own to get something done, but because I'm in a union a lawyer won't touch it. They all said that I need to go to my union and have them take care of it. If I had a contract, without a union, I could get lawyer, and get it changed. We could also walk out and fight to get our insurance back, but the worthless union workers are all stupid fucking potheads who are broke as fuck and their lives would be wrecked if they missed one day of pay. I have no need to go into further detail of my personal life because quite honestly it's not anyone's business.

BTW, I have breaks at my other part time job, and I get treated a million times better, and the quality of people I work with is nothing like all the lazy drunken pothead losers that I'm surrounded with at my union job.... When I get certain things taken care of I'll quit both jobs and move my ass away from here. Until then, I'm in the position I'm in because of stupid choices that I've made, and I'll never blame anyone other than myself for the position I'm in. It's not the union's fault and it certainly isn't the governments fault. That blame is on my shoulders, but I learned my lesson, and I won't make the same mistakes twice. No pain no gain.

Tman144

sizate,
So why don't you do something about your union? I'm sure its much eaiser to change things in a union then it is to argue with people who lock you in a room with barbed wire everywhere like those people in California. If you're unhappy with your union, do what they did. Get other people who agree with you and protest, write letters, or some other type action.

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Ustwo

Or MAYBE, just be allowed to work without having a union?

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Tman144

I forgot to post my actual reaction to the orginal post after reading the rest of the thread.

Yes, you should be able to work without having a union, but you shouldn't get the same benifits as the union workers. If you don't join the union, you have to work out benifits with the company by yourself.

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smooth

Sixate has a non-union job. Since he chooses to work at a second, unionized job, I'm not sure what the beef with the union is.

From the limited informatin he provided, it appears as though his complaint is more with lazy people than unions wrecking a particular industry. In fact, the one reason he cites as desiring the union job, health insurance (while simultaneously complaining that the coverage isn't worth anything), is the issue most unions are currently activating their leverage.

This doesn't present a very compelling illustration of the uselessness of organized labor. Rather, the opposite seems to be the case. The non-unionized job Sixate works at doesn't provide health care coverage. Sixate values health care coverage. He chooses to work in a less desirable environment in order to get some sort of coverage. Instead of working with organized labor that is currently protesting across the nation, he rails against the power of labor movements. This sounds misplaced to me, but I'm supportive of labor.

But I'll reiterate: His example illustrates false consciousness more than the deleterious effects of unions.