Labor Unions - Do we need them anymore?

[Motokid]

But you can't pick and choose where/who/what has Union representation.

It appears the main issue here is making sure the poorest people, and the jobs those people are "qualified" to do are the ones in question. The jobs most people do not want to do is what that boils down to isn't it?

So you unionise those, and they become more attractive to more people. So those with higher qualifications now come take those jobs, which leaves the poorer, less qualified people out of work....again....it's a vicious circle.

 

[Motokid]

And yes, I'll agree that luck has something to do with it. I did not pick who my parents were, and what opportunities those parents could afford for me....

but in the same breath, drive, determination, work ethic, personal goals, personal dreams, attitude and ability are also very important.

There are many success stories of people that are born into poverty and work thier way to remarkable success. There are plenty of stories of people that fall into money and end up with nothing. Humans are not something you can regulate. Some will succeed and some will fail. The best thing we can do is try to offer the best opportunities for the most people and hope that most seaze the opportunity and run with it.

 

[novella]

Moto, you're getting absolutely the wrong end of the stick here.

The government and corporate owners don't decide who's going to unionize and who's not. Neither do the general public. People unionize themselves out of need. It's a grassroots-driven phenomenon. That's why you see a movement happening in Wal-Mart now, along with all the strife that goes with it. Those people feel a real need.

The whole point is not that the government or taxpayers decide to hand anything to anyone and then raise taxes. The point is that powerless people come together to become powerful enough to force some of the most important issues. And my point is that this process is beginning to happen in service-sector employment because that's where most of the lowest paying corporate jobs are right now.

Also, nobody 'forces' the additional benefits onto employers. It's called negotiations Most established unions provide collective programs for healthcare, pensions, education, etc. for their members, which come out of members dues. The same way I get reduced healthcare through my local chamber of commerce--little businesses banding together to bargain on the cost.

 

[novella]

And yes, I'll agree that luck has something to do with it. I did not pick who my parents were, and what opportunities those parents could afford for me....

but in the same breath, drive, determination, work ethic, personal goals, personal dreams, attitude and ability are also very important.

There are many success stories of people that are born into poverty and work thier way to remarkable success. There are plenty of stories of people that fall into money and end up with nothing. Humans are not something you can regulate. Some will succeed and some will fail. The best thing we can do is try to offer the best opportunities for the most people and hope that most seaze the opportunity and run with it.

You seem to only be seeing half the world. There are so many jobs that, by nature, don't have a career path. They just are what they are.

Police, teachers, firemen, electricians, plumbers, truck drivers . . . these are all necessary jobs that require skill and training, but that don't offer a huge career path to management. They are what they are, and that's why the need the power to protect themselves over time. It's not a question of 'succeeding or failing.' These are people who, even if they do the best job possible, are still vulnerable to low pay over time, poverty in old age, early disability, and loads of other risks.

 

[Motokid]

Nice to see you around novella....missed you lately....

I understand most of what you say novella, but there's the flip side too. I know a guy who just joined a Union not long ago. He was happier than shit with his wages and benefits because where he came from he had less. Then, in less than 6 months after being hired, he was faced with the possibility of being forced to go on strike because the Union thought they needed higher wages and better benefits. My buddy was in shock, and quite fearful for many good reasons. The lost pay would have been a deep hardship, and he did not feel comfortable speaking his mind, which was "Hey assholes, take a look at what most people have outside of this Union, we've got it made right now and you can't see it because you have your head buried in the sand...."
He thought life was great as things stood, but many other long time union members wanted more. So he would have had to strike regardless of whether he wanted to or not.

Many Unions I know of are based around skilled trades, like carpenters, plumbers, pipefitters.....many of these Unions are very difficult to get into unless you know somebody or already have the education. So they are not doing the majority of the lowest level of wage earning Americans any good.

 

[Motokid]

even if they do the best job possible, are still vulnerable to low pay over time, poverty in old age, early disability, and loads of other risks.

That could/can be said for many many jobs.....are you syaing that everybody should have lifetime security and comfort in knowing they'll never want or need for anything? Just because you have a degree in Chemical Engineering does not mean you have lifetime security.

There's no security for the future for anyone unless each individual person strives to have that....whose job is it to plan for your future....yours, or mine?

 

[Robert]

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree about this one Robert. I can remember my Mother working her arse off holding down two jobs to keep a roof over our heads during the 70's and never having a penny left over to spend on herself, and to be honest in all the times I saw her fall asleep in the chair at night out of sheer exhaustion I never once had the impression she lacked a desire for a better life. I'm gunna take a guess that there are people in America like that too.

Nobody ever said it was easy. I did 3/4 time at college while holding down a full time job. And I know for a fact that grants are easy to come by for low income students.

 

[Motokid]

If the goal is to provide people with long term security and retirement, the entire educational system of America needs to be revisied. American's do not save money, they spend it. You give most people more money the first thing they do is buy new cars, or bigger houses, or boats, or clothes or whatever. The problems we will face with retirement will result entirely from the inability for the average American to be able to do without. We are a society of material possessions. Nobody thinks about retirement until it's usually to late.

How many people earning well over the average salary are neck deep in debt and just managing to survive from paycheck to paycheck? American's do not understand how to prepair for the future and their own retirement. I don't think additional unions will solve that issue.....

 

[Robert]

Labor unions are one of the last social-political supports available to blue collar workers in the US. Their function is not just in collective bargaining—they also provide formal trade apprenticeship, education plans, scholarships for family members, health benefits, pensions. They guarantee that a worker can sit down with corporate ownership and negotiate a living wage. (Minimum wage in the US is not a living wage.)

When a union worker has personal problems, like disability, mental illness, trouble at home, they turn to the union first, not the federal welfare system. More than 20% of US workers are in unions.

Unions these days are prone to corruption and have been weakened by the government. In particular, the ability of American workers to organize has been steadily eroded since 1947, when the government felt its power threatened by labor organizations and began to amend the Wagner Act to prohibit certain types of organization strategies (hello anti-Communism).

That said, the polarization of wealth in America is worse than ever, and the only way for the huge, powerless service-sector workforce (restaurant workers, hotel workers, Wal-Mart employees, other retail workers) to work a full-time week for a living wage and health benefits is to organize, which has not even BEGUN to happen.

Talking about the function of the union in the US manufacturing sector is silly when industrial production is being outsourced to cheap labor markets. Who cares about the effectiveness of the ILGWU when the entire country is buying clothes made in Southeast Asia for pennies an hour? The same is true for agricultural workers, tool and die shops, steel manufacturing—all outsourcing to cheap labor markets. If you want to argue that that's the US unions' fault for asking for 'too much' consider what the corporations profit margins are even now.

It's a workers market out there, novella. The last thing workers need is social political support. Many of the best paying jobs in the nation don't require unions because benefits are driven by the market. Any good company must play competitive salary and benefits to keep quality workers. There is no longer any need in the US for unions that do little more then suck up workers hard earned cash.

 

[Robert]

Strategies of Non-Union Shops to Cut Costs and Tame Employees

--Fire workers with tenure who earn more and hire young newbies who earn less.
--Hire as many part-time workers as possible, so that you don't have to pay for health benefits.
--Hire illegal nondocumented, nontaxpaying laborers whenever it is convenient.
--'Mob' those workers you do not want to employ any longer (if you don't know this term, you should look it up.)
--Foster a corporate culture of 'higher pay for harder work,' which is the typical anti-union line that people fall for, until they find themselves either disabled, older than the desirable age, or merely disliked by their boss.
--Implicitly threaten to fire anyone who doesn't cooperate with these strategies.

I've worked in non-union shops for years and have never seen any of this. Isn't NY a union state? Ever worked in a non-union shop?

 

[Robert]

Unions are not dying institutions. They were, if you like, victims of attempted murder in the 80s by Reagan, Thatcher and Neo Liberalism. They are not, however, dead or dying. But take the worst case scenario, suppose they were dead. Unionisation had to begin somewhere, it was not always in existence. If they are dead, it is always possible to revive them. Maybe you are trying to convince yourself it is not worth trying to organise? If this is true, I believe it is a very big mistake to make. But they are not dead, recent history in US and UK has shown this. I would suggest you look at Seattle November/December 1999 as a starting point to the regeneration of trade union activity. That is of course, only one example, there are countless numbers of others.
Have you fallen asleep yet? OK I will get off my soapbox!!

They are in the US, linda. Even now, many workers that work in union shops are not members of the union.

 

[novella]

I've worked in non-union shops for years and have never seen any of this. Isn't NY a union state? Ever worked in a non-union shop?

Retail employment illustrates exactly what I'm talking about, and all of these strategies I've cited are absolutely standard for a place like Wal-Mart, which is why their employees are now struggling to unionize.

 

[Motokid]

So the Wal-mart employees Unionize...forcing Wal-mart to pay higher wages, or/and offer benefits, or whatever...the prices of the Wal-mart products then go up, which means they lose the competitive advantage they once had, and stores start closing...which means people go from low paying jobs with no benefits to no jobs at all.....which is worse?

I know that's a generalization but it may not be far off from the truth.

If you don't want to work for peanuts at Wal-mart then don't work there. If people refuse to work there for peanuts Wal-mart won't be able to operate, and they'll have to figure out a way to entice people to work for them. It's supply and demand, and free enterprise isn't it?

 

[Kenny Shovel]

How many people earning well over the average salary are neck deep in debt and just managing to survive from paycheck to paycheck? American's do not understand how to prepair for the future and their own retirement. I don't think additional unions will solve that issue.....

I don't think that people earning well over the average salary are the ones who need a union, it's the one who earn well below average.

 

[novella]

So the Wal-mart employees Unionize...forcing Wal-mart to pay higher wages, or/and offer benefits, or whatever...the prices of the Wal-mart products then go up, which means they lose the competitive advantage they once had, and stores start closing...which means people go from low paying jobs with no benefits to no jobs at all.....which is worse?

I know that's a generalization but it may not be far off from the truth.

If you don't want to work for peanuts at Wal-mart then don't work there. If people refuse to work there for peanuts Wal-mart won't be able to operate, and they'll have to figure out a way to entice people to work for them. It's supply and demand, and free enterprise isn't it?

Frankly, I don't think this scenario would be a bad thing. Five or so of the Waltons are among the top 10 richest people in the US. Wal-Mart's profit margins can stand a little stress. Aside from that, by undercutting other retailers and outsourcing production to low-wage countries, they've put many many Americans out of work already. It would be great for them to be forced to pay fair wages and benefits to their American workers. You portray the choices of people who work in such crap jobs as though they have some huge smorgasbord of other jobs to choose from. That's simply not true. The disparity between what the Walton children own and make and what their typical employees own and make is obscene.

 

[Kenny Shovel]

So the Wal-mart employees Unionize...forcing Wal-mart to pay higher wages, or/and offer benefits, or whatever...the prices of the Wal-mart products then go up, which means they lose the competitive advantage they once had, and stores start closing...which means people go from low paying jobs with no benefits to no jobs at all.....which is worse?

This is a fair enough argument, assuming of course that we live in a world were companies don't exploit their employees to maintain high profit margins. Do we live in such a world?

If you don't want to work for peanuts at Wal-mart then don't work there. If people refuse to work there for peanuts Wal-mart won't be able to operate, and they'll have to figure out a way to entice people to work for them. It's supply and demand, and free enterprise isn't it?

I think there is a difference here between how much choice you believe workers have at the lowest end of the pay scale, and how much I and others believe they have. Your argument here seems to suggest that people are working for Wal-mart because they want to; I wonder what percentage of their employees would agree with that?

To be honest this is a subject with quite a lot of personal resonance for me, and I suspect if I stay in this thread much longer I’ll say something that gets me banned; so I’ll just make one last statement.
There will always be a need for people to be doing un-skilled work. I don’t expect these people to be paid similar salaries to those who have the ability to undertake more highly skilled work. But I’m not comfortable with the thought that products I buy are partly subsidised by wages for workers that keep them trapped in poverty. We don’t need a society were everyone is paid the same, there is no incentive, but I do want those who are at the bottom to have the opportunity for their children to have a decent enough start in life that if they have drive, and ability, and all the other aspects that make up success, they can achieve that. I have a limited understanding of “the American Dream” but I would have imagined that that fits into it somehow.

 

[Halo]

Frankly, I don't think this scenario would be a bad thing. Five or so of the Waltons are among the top 10 richest people in the US. Wal-Mart's profit margins can stand a little stress. Aside from that, by undercutting other retailers and outsourcing production to low-wage countries, they've put many many Americans out of work already. It would be great for them to be forced to pay fair wages and benefits to their American workers. You portray the choices of people who work in such crap jobs as though they have some huge smorgasbord of other jobs to choose from. That's simply not true. The disparity between what the Walton children own and make and what their typical employees own and make is obscene.

I agree wholeheartedly with this.

 

[Motokid]

But who made Wal-mart so successful? Who shops there? Why is it so successful? The very reasons why Wal-mart has become so huge is the very reason why people now complain about it.

If Wal-mart is so bad for America, we should all stop shopping there. (Just as a side note, I don't shop there...I hate the place.....only been in two, and will never go back)

 

[novella]

Nice to see you around novella....missed you lately....

I understand most of what you say novella, but there's the flip side too. I know a guy who just joined a Union not long ago. He was happier than shit with his wages and benefits because where he came from he had less. Then, in less than 6 months after being hired, he was faced with the possibility of being forced to go on strike because the Union thought they needed higher wages and better benefits. My buddy was in shock, and quite fearful for many good reasons. The lost pay would have been a deep hardship, and he did not feel comfortable speaking his mind, which was "Hey assholes, take a look at what most people have outside of this Union, we've got it made right now and you can't see it because you have your head buried in the sand...."
He thought life was great as things stood, but many other long time union members wanted more. So he would have had to strike regardless of whether he wanted to or not.

Many Unions I know of are based around skilled trades, like carpenters, plumbers, pipefitters.....many of these Unions are very difficult to get into unless you know somebody or already have the education. So they are not doing the majority of the lowest level of wage earning Americans any good.

Thanks Moto. I wrote a reply to this but got hung up and lost it.

Anyway, going along with the union vote is part of the bargain. Your buddy can always opt out, choose not to join the union.

I'm reading what you and Robert say, and you both seem to feel (I might have this wrong) that unions are not good for their members nor for the general public. If that were true, then unions wouldn't exist. As it is, they serve the important function of bringing their members financial, educational, and health benefits that they would otherwise not have and not have the power to get. If so many people were willing to work without these fairly ordinary humane provisions, then unions would not be able to form. The coal miners would all have stayed independent, each individually at the mercy of the corporation, just as retail workers are today.

 

[Motokid]

Most of the people I know, and see where I live, do not now, nor have they ever worked for a union, and they have benefits, retirement packages, decent wages, health care options.....people do not need unions to have these things. My company has education reimbursement (spelling?)....We have well over 3000 employees worldwide and none of them are Union.
Dupont is, for the most part, not Union and they employ 10's of thousands...