Unions are bad, mmkay?
I’m really trying to get past this.
When shit hits the fan at my company, when a job is going south, I usually get called in. I tend to wade through bullshit and find the core of the problem, and fix it. It’s what I do, and I’m very, very good at it.
In the engineering circles I frequent, I have seen people have meetings to figure out who fucked up in an engineering project. Greeat. Let’s waste dozens of man hours so we can assign blame.
I walked into a runoff a couple of months ago where the equipment varied from what was quoted. Engineers ran out to explain what happened, telling me they’d get to the bottom of this, find out who fucked up.
I laughed.
And then, in less time than it would take to meet and assign blame, I fixed the problem, and moved on.
When people used unions just after the turn of the century to give them bargaining power against companies who used them like toilet paper, they picked up the only functional tool they had. period. There were other options, and many people tried them, (like walking away. Don’t hear too much about those people, because they probably starved to death) but none of them worked. None. No “market force’ was going to magically appear that would “fix” anything. period. As long as labor was plentiful and jobs were scarce, industry would have the oppressive upper hand.let me repeat that for clarity: As long as labor was plentiful and jobs were scarce, industry would have the oppressive upper hand. Did those people make a bad choice? did they let a constrictor into the granary to kill the mice that were eating the grain? it certainly seems as if this was the case. Has that constrictor now grown fat and bloated and is now more of a hazard than the mice ever were? That is almost certainly so. Is it the fault of tose people? who cares? they did the only thing they could do at the time. The only thing. Don’t like unions? well, you could spend a lot of time villifying decent, honest people whose backs were against a wall, and had no place to go, or you could(as mom still says) get off your halfmoons and do something yourself. I walked away from the union that fucked me around and sold me downriver in 1985. I have never looked back. I have left two jobs that threatened unionization. I was lucky, of course, because unlike those workers of the 20’s and 30’s, there were other jobs for me to get. There are simple solutions to problem unions too. Buy a Kia. Shop at Wal-Mart. Don’t buy products made in union plants. Of course, unless everyone does this, it will have little effect, just like one or a dozen or a thousand workers walking away from Forchevplymouth has zero effect.
And, of course, if Everyone does it, it’s called a “union”
What The State Hath Joined Together, Let No Man Put Asunder
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When GM files for bankruptcy, it will the union’s fault as well as the management’s.
Any company with more employees than the federal government is begging to be taken down a notch or two.
Also notice that I said when, not if. It will happen soon.
Now with all that said, I’ll still buy their (GM’s) products simply because they’re as well built as anybody else’s out there.
There is plenty of culpability to go around, god knows.
Work for a GM sub – you couldn’t pay me to buy a GM product.
Am with you on the union thing. That’s partially why I buy P&G products.
What I’m more with you on is blamestorming. I also am a problem solver and not a blamer. A big nastygram got sent to myself and two other operational managers from a project manager. She ripped us about something that was not clearly anyone’s fault, but was almost certainly not mine. So I wrote back that I aplogized for not doing the thing in question and I took full responsibility. Now let’s move on.
Shut them all up.
(*)>
Blamestorming. That’s my best chuckle today, thanks for that. And you’re right. Do something and move on.
If everyone does this by free choice, then it is just that.
If you HAVE to do it to live in a specific location or work at a specific job, then it is coercion, aka, a “union”.
I think the current distaste for unions is that they have (in many states) a government-granted monopoly on workers in a certain trade. If there could be multiple unions in the same trade competing for members perhaps the most egregious excesses would not occur.
Were unions necessary in the 20’s and 30’s? That is a subject for debate.
Are unions necessary now? It seems not, the health/safety issues have been moved into the government area. Union-demanded pensions and work rules have become the death-knell to unionized labor… When a Delco employee earning $29/hr (and doing a $10/hr job) has a fully loaded cost of $69/hr there is only one viable choice: Declare bankruptcy and re-write the contract into something economically viable, otherwise nobody has a job, paid healthcare, or a pension at all….
My brother-in-law manages a union shop so I got to see the union newspaper. It was a frightening throwback to the 20’s (Management aways referred to in uppercase, and always evil, grasping, and destructive). The union was aways pure of soul and spirit, and no member could ever be a lazy, inept, slipshod, or obstructive employee…..
RickT stated “the health/safety issues have been moved into the government area”. So, you think this is a good thing? Thank G-d I don’t have to depend on government to make my workplace safe. I’m glad I have my union, I just wish they (the bozos at the district and international level)had brains, acted responsibly, didn’t pander to idiot politicians, etc. Just as I wish management would treat guys like me with a modicum of the respect they tout in their “vision” statements instead of as chattel/commodity/slave and share some of the enormous profits the company I work for has made the past 6 or 7 years. I helped earn that profit. Thanks for letting me rant. This could go on for days. If corporations and management played fair, acted in good faith, etc. unions would disappear. I do NOT believe public (govt.) employees need a union, but that’s another rant.
I hear, you, Jim, and I don’t drink that kool-ade either. It has to be both ways, but it’s impossible to explain anything to anyone who has drnk the Ayn Rand beverage of choice. Also, to anyone who has never been there themselves.