union jobs

[las000005]

I work in a union job and I think it is much better than non union. You have way more rights. People that have never worked union jobs that I have talked to say they would never want to and they bash unions. Do you think this is because they have never had the opportunity to work union and are jealous or what?

 

[B_Nick4444]

indoctrinated to be anti-union by the capitalist ruling class

anti-unionism is also considered chic by the ideologues of liberalism as part of their ant-Americanism

pity -- had unions been strong and viable, we would not have seen outsourcing or immigration visas enabling the taking of American jobs by foreigners

 

[D_Doewell Dadong]

I don't really know enough about the american unions to comment on those. But the unions over here took a huge kicking when thatcher was in charge. And never really recovered. I still think it pays to be part of a union though.

 

[midlifebear]

My father was a member of the railroad workers union and then, after 20 years of working as a railroad engineer to keep his farm alive, he retired and took a job with USS Steel, Geneva Works, where he worked as a rail yard master and became a leader in the steel worker's union. Sure, the unions were great for those who could get into them. But becoming a member of a union was a catch 22. You couldn't get a union job unless you already had one. So, of course the majority of union jobs went to members of the same families for generations. Nepotism tends to be a big part of being a union worker.

For a short time even I was a member of a sub union related to the Teamsters: The Stage Workers Union. You started at the bottom of the list and waited for the union boss to call you to come in for work. It was kind of like working in a restaurant where you started with washing dishes, then busing dishes, then setting tables, and eventually becoming a waiter or bartender of whatever was considered the top paying job. I still have friends from those days who are just now almost paying off their mortgages -- maybe in two more years? Sometimes you wouldn't be offered a job by the union job manager for one or two months. Still, you had to pay your monthly dues on time or be fined. And if you were fined, the guy who collected union dues usually just pocketed your fine for himself.

Yeah, there's some job security in being a member of a union. But there are a lot of well-documented abuses where unions allowed themselves to get out of control. A good example: auto workers wanting more benefits but in return not offering improved work performance.

My dad retired from USS Steel because the Geneva plant was having one of its many bust economic downturns. A year later he was asked to return at his same pay rate, because of all the union members who had willingly taken early retirement, my dad was one of the few who had kept abreast of the then new technology of driving locomotives remotely from a control box he carried around his neck (rather that actually operate the locomotives from inside the cab). He decided to return and was amazed that, even though he had once been president of his local, none of the younger guys wanted him around because they had decided he should start from the bottom all over again (at 64 years-old with more than 20 years of experience?). They didn't like it a bit that he returned after a year of retirement back at his regular pay rate. But there wasn't much they could do -- except call my mother in the middle of the night for months and make death threats, gang up on my dad one morning after a graveyard shift and try to break his legs, and destroy all the windows in his pickup truck parked in a security parking lot four of five different times. Yeah, his union brothers were a swell bunch. Teamsters have an even worse reputation, having been long ago been bought off by organized crime. Anyone who believes that organized crime has been ferreted out of the Teamsters probably still believes that Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny are real.

I quickly left the stage hand's union and concentrated on college and learning more challenging skills. I've done much better, financially, than any of my old friends still toiling away folding up teasers, hanging lights, putting up and tearing down scaffolding, laying down dance stages, sweeping them, and then tearing them down after a three-day run of a visiting ballet company, opera company, theatre company, etc. And I paid off the only mortgage I ever had before I was 30. Since then it's been cash up front and no need to finance a damn thing; whereas my old union buddies are slogging away the majority of them still hoping to pay off their first mortgages before they turn 58 years-old? They might have semi-secure jobs, but they never made as much as they could doing something else that might have required them to think for a living.

And any retired old Teamster with a double-digit IQ knows that Jimmy Hoffa was ground up and used to whip up a batch of old Presto Logs. In fact, I think I may still have one.

 

[midlifebear]

indoctrinated to be anti-union by the capitalist ruling class

anti-unionism is also considered chic by the ideologues of liberalism as part of their ant-Americanism

pity -- had unions been strong and viable, we would not have seen outsourcing or immigration visas enabling the taking of American jobs by foreigners

Just a correction: Nick4444 is full of shit, as usual. Liberals have historically been the champions of unions in US history. It's the conservative right that has historically occupied the board rooms of USA manufacturing companies and have done anything -- including murder -- to prevent unions and trying their best to break them up. And as you might surmise from my first post, I'm not pro-union and I'm far too opinionated to be regarded a liberal or a conservative.

It's truly amazing how ill informed Nick4444 is on everything he can't see in his bathroom mirror. Definitely a child left behind.

 

[B_Nick4444]

the "liberals" who championed unions and workers rights during, say, the "pink decade" (the 1930's) would not accept today's libs, and conversely, would be considered conservatives by today's libs who subscribe to an ideology that had its genesis during the 1960's that consists of a melding of a distinct anti-Americanism and intellectual eltism (stylistically Marxist) that fuels its messianic imperatives

cited by the previous poster are a number of arguments raised by the doctrinaire capitalist ruling class, taught in our universities, and accepted without question by most Americans. Arguments that consist principally of the unions implicit adverse economic impact, but also cite, with the usual hyperbole, the known corruption

a lot of which is also true of the larger unions, the teamsters being one of the premier examples

there is, however, no denying that the impact the unions had earlier in the twentieth century was positive and important, and enhanced democracy and economic growth

so, I repeat, had the unions remained strong and viable, a lot of our current problems would have been avoided.

 

[kalipygian]

I was attending University of Alaska Fairbanks in the early 70's when construction of the Trans Alaska Pipeline was gearing up. All of the work was union, many of the students and faculty signed up on the union lists to work for the summer, then decided to keep working for the duration. I am still a member.