Guys,
I think I'm starting to get an idea as to why union people are pro-union: They actually believe the horse hockey propaganda the unions are telling them!
The unions say "You have breaks because we make it so and non-union employees don't get them!" And that makes it true........
The unions say "You get paid vacations because we make it so and non-union employees don't get them!" And that makes it true.......
The Unions say "You get 40 hours a week, overtime for anything over and Saturday and double time on Sunday because we make it so and non-union employees don't get this!" And that makes it true......
The unions say "You get health and life insurance because we make it so!" And that makes it true......
The unions say "You get a retirement/pension plan because we make it so!" And that makes it true.....
And so on and so on..... Blah, blah, blah........
Did you know that the work "GULLIBLE" is not in the dictionary?
Seriously, you people need to wake up and get outside a bit more often. I don't mean to offend anybody, but do you really think the only people who get these benefits are in union shops? I'm 38 years old. I've been working (mostly) full time since I was 20 (after about two years of getting my brains beat in, I stupidly walked away from college). I've never worked a day in a union shop of any kind and I've always had every benefit any union shop offers except the rediculous wages and the ability to tell my boss to stick it without the risk of losing my job. Everybody I consider a friend, with the exception of one (who recently got bought out from Delphi), can tell you the same thing.
If you really think the union is protecting you in any way or is providing you something you wouldn't otherwise get, consider this:
The friend I mentioned above was recently bought out from Delphi. Everybody in his plant that had at least ten years under their belt got a settlement of something near $140K. This represents one year of each employee's load on the corperate budget. ONE YEAR! He was "earning" a little under half that a year. Do the math. If Delphi were building cars instead of automotive components, they would have to sell 5 or 6 cars on average (Malibu's, not Corvette's, obviously) just to recover one employees load, and that doesn't add in the actual cost of building the car! Plus they get a full year's unemployment, paid by Delphi, full education reimbersement, and up to an additional year of unemployment while they are enrolled in school.
The real killer in all this is that many of his co-workers were very upset by all this. They truely believed that the company somehow OWED them something more. I can't tell you how many people I saw on the news, living in 150-250K homes, crying "How am I supposed to pay my mortgage now?" or condemning Delphi for taking away their jobs. Imagine that, the liberal media covering union employee's being wronged by the big corperate meanies..... They actually think they are entitled to a 100K a year lifestyle for running the same screw in the same hole while they sit on a stool and watch a TrailBlazer chassis cruise the line, with no education or marketable skill set. Some people just kill me.....
There was also a major DOD installation near where I live that was half union and half non-union. Why, I couldn't tell you, but that's the way it was. I have worked with many toolmakers that served decades at this facility who were non-union. The non-union workforce was always better paid and had better benefits. After the facility was shut down (thanks to Clintons systematic dismantling of many miiltary programs), all the non-union toolmakers were easily re-employed, while the union guys found it very difficult to find someone willing to hire them. This was in the late 80's, when the economy was considered by most to be very good. Manufacturing, at the time, at least in the greater Dayton, OH area, was very strong. Why were the employers slow in picking up the union guys? Simple. They were very apprehensive about taking on a "tail-dragger", as one guy I worked with called them (extremely good toolmaker, one of the best I've very known, non-union).
It all boils down to this: The unions serve no purpose anymore, except to make things worse. In their day, they were a nesessity, but since those days, we have governmental offices who regulate nearly every aspect of the world of "labor and wage". Is it a perfect system? No. But the unions aren't helping, and they haven't for about 30 years.
Thanks. Brad.
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