Unions - Good or Bad

[Mark@Sea]

Too right unions are like the government. The unions have done to the auto industry what Congress is doing to the taxpayer.

Choking the life out of it.

[Mike]

I'm in a union at CSX...

Nothing but $60 a month down the toilet.

It sucks I can't work there otherwise.. Closed shop.

[Rightwinger]

Mike,

File greivances every chance you get on Union reps for not addressing petty issues that you bring up. Take it to their bosses and keep them uneasy. Get your 60 dollars worth!

[Guest Astra900]

Mike,

File greivances every chance you get on Union reps for not addressing petty issues that you bring up. Take it to their bosses and keep them uneasy. Get your 60 dollars worth!

Heck yeah, I'd give them $60 worth of aggravation!!!

[Rightwinger]

I'm watching Fox 17 and they just showed the boys and girls at the Bowling Green Corvette plant rallying to show their support of the bailout!

Hmm....not once in all this have I heard the Union reps or members state that they would be willing to assist keeping their jobs by lowering their contracted wages. I think 80 or 90% of what I'm making now would be better than nothing if the job goes away totally or what the union might give me for a few weeks until the coffers were dry!

They just do not get it! Hold the hand out till there is nothing left.

I do not think congress ought to bail them out. There is enough impetus in these giants that if they grow a pair and lay out the facts and tell them "folks, we have to make X amount of dollars to keep the doors open vs what we pay out to you and the suppliers" they might have a chance to recover. The supplier base is already being low balled to death as are the 3rd party logisitics providers.

I could be cutting my own throat as I work for one of the aforementioned 3rd party logistics providers. We serve both Chrysler and GM locally and all the big three nationally.

Build a good product, price it competively for its value and pay the correct number of employees to build it. Its simple math. You will never succeed paying someone 28 dollars an hour to use an airwrench 60 times an hour to run in 4 bolts that any 18 year old out of highschool with a Xbox education could do!

I say let the chips fall where they may. If it gets real bad, I'm off to points unknown with the Fox fire books and some seed corn!

Where was that survival forum at again?

[Guest Astra900]

I say let the chips fall where they may. If it gets real bad, I'm off to points unknown with the Fox fire books and some seed corn!

Where was that survival forum at again?

If you decide to head west of Nashville, swing by and pick me up:D

[Rightwinger]

You got any maps of Wyoming?

[Guest Dean_JC78]

I would like to see 1 of the big 3 not get the bailout and allow them to "restructure" (Meaning dropping the unions) and see how long it takes for their business to boom. My guess is within 5 years they would be a major force in the market.

[Guest colrmccoll]

In their beginning, I think they had some utility but for the most part they are no longer necessary and have become counterproductive, ie the big 3.

[Guest grimel]

I worked commercial construction. We were a union shop. We out produced the non-union carpenters at least 3:1 with better quality.

Our job steward kept time, hired and fired the carpenters, and generally provided all the needed incentive to produce, thus, ensuring we got paid 3x what the non-union guys got paid. If you were late, the steward was in your a$$. If you were screwing around, the steward was in your a$$. If he had to get in you a$$ very often you were sent back to the hall and a worker replaced you. If you were sent back to the hall too often your card was pulled.

Now, I work in a union shop modeled after the UAW. The only reason to keep the union card is to try changing the mentality. I have NEVER seen people do so little, get paid so much, and complain how hard they are worked and abused.

Done "right" unions are a great thing, done wrong, they are nothing more than legalized extortion.

As a side note, if the demoncrates get this stupid signatures vs secret ballot to unionize a shop passed we might as well start packing up manufacturing jobs.

[TripleDigitRide]

Many of my family members belong to a union, have belonged to a union, or own companies who have become unionized. All of them are doing very well, and I've never heard any complaints coming from their direction.

Most of them belong to the Mason Union or Ironworkers union. Several have retired very well. Most others have been members for 15+ years. After listening to most of them talk over the years, they are in it to make as much as they can as fast as they can. They are looking out for #1. If and/or when unions are a thing of the past, they will deal with that if/when that time comes. Until then, they are getting their piece of the pie. I've often considered moving up north to do the very same thing, but I hate it up there.

I have no personal experience, so I can only speak of what I hear and read. I can see both sides, but with the events going on these days, it's not looking very good for many of the unions.

[Mark@Sea]

Below is from a 2006 article about UAW and the auto industry....

Ken Pool is making good money. On weekdays, he shows up at 7 a.m. at Ford Motor Co.'s Michigan Truck Plant in Wayne, signs in, and then starts working -- on a crossword puzzle.

Pool hates the monotony, but the pay is good: more than $31 an hour, plus benefits. "We just go in and play crossword puzzles, watch videos that someone brings in or read the newspaper," he says. "Otherwise, I've just sat."

Pool is one of more than 12,000 American autoworkers who, instead of installing windshields or bending sheet metal, spend their days counting the hours in a jobs bank set up by Detroit automakers and Delphi Corp. as part of an extraordinary job security agreement with the United Auto Workers union.

The jobs bank programs were the price the industry paid in the 1980s to win UAW support for controversial efforts to boost productivity through increased automation and more flexible manufacturing.

As part of its restructuring under bankruptcy, Delphi is actively pressing the union to give up the program.

With Wall Street wondering how automakers can afford to pay thousands of workers to do nothing as their market share withers, the union is likely to hear a similar message from the Big Three when their contracts with the UAW expire in 2007 -- if not sooner.

"It's an albatross around their necks," said Steven Szakaly, an economist with the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor. "It's a huge number of workers doing nothing. That has a very large effect on their future earnings outlook."

General Motors Corp. has roughly 5,000 workers in its jobs bank. Delphi has about 4,000 in its version of the same program. Some 2,100 workers are in DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group's job security program. Ford had 1,275 in its jobs bank as of Sept. 25. The pending closure of Ford's assembly plant in Loraine, Ohio, could add significantly to that total. Those numbers could swell in coming years as GM and Ford prepare to close more plants.

Detroit automakers declined to discuss the programs in detail or say exactly how much they are spending, but the four-year labor contracts they signed with the UAW in 2003 established contribution caps that give a good idea of the size of the expense.

According to those documents, GM agreed to contribute up to $2.1 billion over four years. DaimlerChrysler set aside $451 million for its program, along with another $50 million for salaried employees covered under the contract. Ford, which also maintained responsibility for Visteon Corp.'s UAW employees, agreed to contribute $944 million.

[Guest Abominable_Hillbilly]

I worked commercial construction. We were a union shop. We out produced the non-union carpenters at least 3:1 with better quality.

Our job steward kept time, hired and fired the carpenters, and generally provided all the needed incentive to produce, thus, ensuring we got paid 3x what the non-union guys got paid. If you were late, the steward was in your a$$. If you were screwing around, the steward was in your a$$. If he had to get in you a$$ very often you were sent back to the hall and a worker replaced you. If you were sent back to the hall too often your card was pulled.

Now, I work in a union shop modeled after the UAW. The only reason to keep the union card is to try changing the mentality. I have NEVER seen people do so little, get paid so much, and complain how hard they are worked and abused.

Done "right" unions are a great thing, done wrong, they are nothing more than legalized extortion.

As a side note, if the demoncrates get this stupid signatures vs secret ballot to unionize a shop passed we might as well start packing up manufacturing jobs.

This is pretty much the way I feel about things.

I work union. First time in my life. As a railroader, I work for a company that requires me to be in a union. Norfolk-Southern has some of the best financial numbers in the world. Because of Taft-Hartley, our unions can't go on strike. We're not all like the UAW. Some of us do good work for very highly profitable companies, and we do a lot of it.

[Mike]

This is pretty much the way I feel about things.

I work union. First time in my life. As a railroader, I work for a company that requires me to be in a union. Norfolk-Southern has some of the best financial numbers in the world. Because of Taft-Hartley, our unions can't go on strike. We're not all like the UAW. Some of us do good work for very highly profitable companies, and we do a lot of it.

What do you do at NS?

I'm a Carman at CSX.

[Fivestring63]

When I was non-union, we were working at a union job at night. One of our workers turned on a big light unit so we could see. Ther union guys jumped all over him to turn it off because he wasn't a union electrician. We had to wait for a union electrician to come in and turn it off and turn it back on again.

Now that I am union, I see where there are a lot of dead weights that don't hardly do anything. Some are just there for the insurance. Only because that they're the old timers is the reason the union is keeping them. I've seen the company fire really great workers for trite reasons only to have the union sweep it under the rug because the worker didn't have have enough time in to fight for.

[Guest Abominable_Hillbilly]

What do you do at NS?

I'm a Carman at CSX.

I'm a qualified engineer, but I can't hold the extra board. Working on a switcher as a brakeman. M-F daylight, with weekends off.

[Mike]

Hah, At least you're on daylight.

3rds with Tuesday-Wednesday off for me. Sucks being at the bottom of the totem pole...

[fury2neon]

Unions? You mean where organized crime went to become legit?

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