Labor unions are cool 
Unionized Workers...Good or Bad
- Thread starter Civickiller80
- Start date
Labor unions are cool
They are cool until someone gets caught ******** on their shift. Gets suspended, and then gets back pay for the days they missed because they filed a grievance.
They are cool until a guy gets caught smoking weed and ******** at work, and when confronted about it, he claims he is an addict and the company pays for treatment and rehab. Oh, and he gets employee of the month for completing his rehab.
They are cool until a guy gets fired for being a lazy sack of **** and a detriment to the workplace, files a grievance, gets re hired 3 years later with a management position and back pay for the 3 years he missed.
Meanwhile, the people that do bust their ass every day, don't get any recognition at all and no chance for promotion because someone unqualified with more seniority cuts them.
:fight:
The negatives out weigh the positives by a huge margin IMO. All they do is allow the lazy fucks to take advantage of the protection the union provides. They don't do anything for the person who comes in everyday, puts an honest effort into their work and takes pride in their position.
:2 cents:
I agree with this. There are good and bad unions although for myself I can mostly do without them. I don't like the fact that in most cases if a company is unionized the employees have to be a member. I also don't like some of the tactics some unions use to try to get their union into a company. On one of my former jobs a union tried to come in and they were lying about the company to try to get votes for the union to come in. They were voted down because most of the employees recognized this.
jasonk282
Banned
This
Well, since you guys don't seem to go for complicated thinking, let me just say that, given your attitude about unions and a basic knowledge of some of the real-life benefits that unions have brought you, whether you're in one or not, I hope you have many, many, many really shitty weekends in your future, since the universal weekend was, in fact, brought about by the struggles of labor unions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekend
http://ask.yahoo.com/20050617.html
Or, read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/pr...0/104-1861481-7801555?_encoding=UTF8&n=283155
:hatsoff:
jasonk282
Banned
Unions were needed a hundred years ago because managment was ******* its workers hardcore but my opinopn of unions are based on the following.
how about the fact that my *** was a Steel Worker and my ******* is a Boilermaker(Pittsburgh Local 154)
Nothing like everyone being paid the same no matter how hard you work. once you in you can never be fired. Remember the iron Workers never raised a union due in 100 years, its just 2% of what you make.
Or how bout the fact that once a teacher is tenured and in some cases it takes 2 years to get tenure, no matter how bad the teacher is they can not get fired.
Yes Union's protect their workers and they also protect the lazy ones that do absolutly nothing and get money out the ass. I have no problem with people actually working hard to earn a buck, but I have a problem with people who just sit around and collect a paycheck every week and did absolutly nothing.
I have seen first had what unions do and don't do and I have taken numerous labor relation classes in college with professors form management and professors from unions. I have formed my opinion based on actual working unions in my ****** and my college experiences.
Okay, whatever. If your attitude remains "fuck unions" then I think you should really volunteer to always work on weekends, at least on Saturdays. Also, you shouldn't limit yourself to 8 hours in a day. And you shouldn't gripe if your boss makes 500X what you make.
A lot of what you are saying is just mythical boilerplate anti-labor b.s., too. Unionized teachers can and do get fired. Yes, they're often protected from unfair or excessively arbitrary dismissals without cause, but since when is that a bad thing??
Is your ******* as anti-union as you are? Perhaps he should work in a non-union workplace. They're easy to find. Somewhere in the vicinity of 88% of workplaces are non-union, that goes up to 92% if we're just talking private sector (sans govt. workplaces).
Yep paid overtime,the 40 hour work week,safety protections,and so many other things we just take for granted were won by people in unions who suffered through tough strikes,beatings and some even died for those benefits.
And they are not obsolete now.Just take Walmart as an example,biggest employer in america (the world maybe even) who pays shitty,gives only 1/2 their employees health insurance and resists unions coming in to organize their employees tremendously.All while making huge profits.Told their employees they should vote republican in 2008 as dems would hurt the company.Companies have all the power when they have no union to deal with,by themselves workers get nowhere in ******* such wealthy powerfull entities to do anything.
Unless your one of the employers your interests lie with the union movement and you owe a lot to them.FDR knew who stood up for the rights of workers and actively encouraged the union movement as part of the "New deal".All that led to the explosion of wealth and incomes for working americans after WW2 and the creation of a vast middle class.Contrast that with people like Reagan who busted the air traffic controllers union which sent a very clear signal to employers across the country,bust your union.
Union memebership has been on the decline since and the results have been an explosion of wealth for the people at the top and stagnant wages and decline in living standards for workers.
Time to sing a Woody Guthrie union song!:thumbsup:
lechepicha
Prince of the Rotten Milk
exactly my toughts.
:hatsoff:
in theory they're right, but in the real world, they're not (there are exceptions, of course)
jasonk282
Banned
6 years as a hourly employee in food service and 7 years as management after I graduated college. I got paid for working 50 hours per week, 10 hours per day and weekends off is non-existent since it is our busiest days of the week. So I can easily say that I never work a 8 hours day, 40 hour week and never had weekends off in 13 years.
if they don't met the goals of the school they should be gone.
He also worked in the food industry with me for 3 years, he went to a tech school and after school he worked as a IT support person for 7 years before his wife's uncle got him into the Boilermakers local 154, eventhough the local was taking no applications at the time.
I have seen the good and bad of the unions.
Did you get to see your ******, a pround vietnam vet, cry at the kitchen table because he got laid off from Shengino Steel and could not provide for his ******?
And then have your ****** declare bankruptcy in 1991 because we could not afford to pay our bills anymore?
Did you get to see a WHOLE City pretty much decimated overnight with the colaspe of the Steel industry.
IMO unions bad out weight's any good that they do, but then again what do I know? You can preach on your soapbox all day about the benfits of unions, but I have deep personal experiences and formal education that form my opinion, no manner of preaching is going to change it.
Definitely bad. Why?
1. They breed distrust between management and workers.
2. They inflate the cost of production (just ask what used to be GM!).
3. Once established, membership is often not a choice for employees.
4. They are the "Guardians of Labor," but as the saying goes, "who watches the guards?"
5. Fighting for jobs lost through employee negligence often gives tacit approval to a sloppy work environment.
6. Often an underlying cause of exported jobs.
1. They breed distrust between management and workers.
2. They inflate the cost of production (just ask what used to be GM!).
3. Once established, membership is often not a choice for employees.
4. They are the "Guardians of Labor," but as the saying goes, "who watches the guards?"
5. Fighting for jobs lost through employee negligence often gives tacit approval to a sloppy work environment.
6. Often an underlying cause of exported jobs.
They are cool until someone gets caught ******** on their shift. Gets suspended, and then gets back pay for the days they missed because they filed a grievance.
They are cool until a guy gets caught smoking weed and ******** at work, and when confronted about it, he claims he is an addict and the company pays for treatment and rehab. Oh, and he gets employee of the month for completing his rehab.
They are cool until a guy gets fired for being a lazy sack of **** and a detriment to the workplace, files a grievance, gets re hired 3 years later with a management position and back pay for the 3 years he missed.
Meanwhile, the people that do bust their ass every day, don't get any recognition at all and no chance for promotion because someone unqualified with more seniority cuts them.
:fight:
The negatives out weigh the positives by a huge margin IMO. All they do is allow the lazy fucks to take advantage of the protection the union provides. They don't do anything for the person who comes in everyday, puts an honest effort into their work and takes pride in their position.
:2 cents:
Someone please defend these issues ^ instead of just telling me to start working every weekend (which I do, and have for the past 9 years) and to enjoy my 40 hour work week. I always void my overtime so I can work more than 40 hours when they need someone. All the "40 hour workweek" does is limit me to how many hours I can work.
I have made my defense of unions and how I think overwhelmingly they have been good for america and workers in other countries as well.
But my reason for responding to your post is I am not sure I understand what you do as far as hours worked goes.
Are you saying you work more than 40 hours at straight time pay or no extra pay in a week? Some places utilize what is known as "comp time" I beleive where if you put in over 40 hours in one week you can then take those hours off paid another week.Is that what you do?
No. I'm scheduled 40 hours a week. If I work more than that, I'm supposed to get overtime, obviously. Well the company doesn't like to pay overtime, so if someone calls in sick, they are limited to the part timers and they never come in. So to help them out, I void my overtime, and get regular pay for the extra 8 hours, and they aren't under staffed. Everybody wins.
Sometimes I like to help out too. I don't take my paycheck or I send the landlord an extra $50. Just doin' my part!
?????
?????
1. Corporations and management do an incredibly fine job of that by themselves. That's not the unions fault. I've never seen or known anybody that worked for anything larger than a *** and pop shop where the place they worked for cared about them and had their best interest at heart. Having a union is there to give people a fighting chance and some leverage for once. Your talking about places that the ONLY thing they care about is the bottom line, and they will do whatever they think they can get away with to maximize it.
2. It's not the unions fault we live in a me first mercenary world that doesn't want to take care of each other thus ******* unions to make their employers fill the gap. Maybe if places like us had nationalized health care among other things for everybody GM would never had to worry about a lot of those cost in the first place. It's also not the employees fault that a lot of economic systems out there are influenced a lot more by the rich and elite and have ****** common laborers to compete against virtual slave labor. Yes, when you compete against virtual slaves your obviously not going to be them in cost because they don't want to have to sink to that level and they believe in human decency. I can't really blame workers in unions for that. None of that is even mentioning that those places usually don't care about environmental or safety concerns either thus adding something else they can save cost over people being treated decently.
3. This was never that big of a deal to me. For most everybody I can't see why they wouldn't want to be protected by the union if that is an option unless they are the among the most brainwashed capitalist and are doing because of pure ideology, and it makes sure all the workers are equal. (or at least are supposed to be equal) What really having the laws ******* people to have a "choice" does is put a method put in place to make it easier for corporations to bust unions or make it harder for them to form in the first place. It was never an issue where they deeply care about their workers choices and thought they were being infringed. They never gave a crap about that. Having free choice about whether to belong to the union is just a tactical thing for businesses to give them and advantage. It’s not because them or the politicians that want that care.
4. I agree on this in a lot of ways. A lot of unions and a lot of people that run them have become as corrupt as the corporations they try to protect people from. However that's not the fault of having unions as much as people are corruptible and others that should stop it get apathetic. Whenever people run things eventually you will get that.
5. I somewhat agree. Sometimes unions go too far in protecting workers that are lazy basterds and should be let go......on the other hand if corporations were always more fair and reasonable about punishing people in the first place the unions wouldn't have to fanatically protect people, even when the person probably deserves it. It's unfortunate but even that's party the businesses' fault.
6. See point number 6. You can't blame unions or the people that work in them because the businesses in our society throw morals, ethicalness, and decency to the side and have their people compete against virtual slave labor. Yet, pretty much all businesses will go along with it or at the very least turn a blind eye to it. I have yet to see any significantly large business talk bad about another one by hurting us by doing things like that.
Well all I will say is I wonder if your company realizes thats probably not legal to do.You can't work an hourly worker more than 40 hours and not pay overtime in any state as far as I know.
They should put you on salary if they want more than 40 with no OT. I have been on both sides of the fence, hourly worker and salaried.I reported a company once that was deducting the time(not paid) they gave for breaks (after I left them lol).I had told them while I worked there they were not allowed to do that,they said they knew the law,they didn't.You don't have to give breaks but if you do its the law they must be paid,lunches are different and can and are almost always unpaid.They had to go back 2 years and pay everyone what they had deducted.And as a manager I would have never allowed a worker to work more than their 40 and not get OT,it again is ******* and my company could have gotten in trouble for allowing it.
Yep help the rich get richer bro.
Similar threads
- Sticky
- Question
