Unions

Thanks, very good read.

 

Yes, unions will restore the middle class and make a Company much more competitive globally. For sure. Makes perfect sense.

 

in germany, it does, actually.

in the u.k., it did not, quite clearly.

as for the u.s....?

 

A western company can never be competitive globally till the time it is facing price competition based on 'slave wages' paid to the Chinese and Indian workers.

I think there is already a law that west would not buy any goods from the 'sweat shop' production lines. However, it needs to be implemented more intensely. There is horrendous degree of labor exploitation in Asia, Africa and South America.

Union or no Union, western firms will never be able to beat such cost structures.

 

I think it would be an interesting experiement to bring back sweat shops. I wonder if we'd get any takers.

There are NO jobs for kids, nothing for them to do. They fail school, no prospects of any income except theft and selling drugs.

While we in the US rally against foreign sweat shops, those workers will be idle, then what?

Is the alternative to a sweat shop a hand out,

If the alternative to a sweat shop is nothing, we better stick with nothing.

 

what we need is a fast food workers, c store workers, minimum wage workers union. Then it wouldn't be up to the bozos in Washington to decide what the minimum wage would be.

Try buying your egg Mc Muffin and gasoline in the morning to get to work when everybody that you laughed at for being a loser and not a winner like you is on strike.

You can't have it both ways. If I come up with an idea where we can all pool our money and move the market and beat the returns of each indivdual trader and the bank would you bitch about it? Would you claim that somehow that is not fair?

Maybe those folks don't have capital to pool, but they have labor, and labor is a commodity just like crude or corn. If somebody needs it, we can negotiate the price.

Can't do it by myself, but maybe I can if we organize.

 

you should differentiate between private unions and public unions. public unions sap the strength of the private sector by enforcing all kind of regulations at a very high cost to the tax payer and to the productive private sector.

 

In another poster's link, the difference between private and public unions was explained and I agree with you and the author of the link.

My point though is as detremential as public unions are in our current fiscal condition I'm begining to think if we bust the public unions we are busting what's left of the middle class and any savings to the taxpayer will be negligble.

I agree with a change/reform in pensions and health care but not in wages.

I have friends in the auto industry, when their unions jobs were eliminated and went on to be rehired elsewhere with a $15 an hour paycut, where's the benefit. Cars aren't any cheaper, where'd the money go, no one is realizing the savings in labor costs.

 

The problem with public sector unions is not the union itself, it's the corruption with the democratic party in which lavish benefits are handed out in return for votes and union money. It's one of the biggest frauds in our political system. And, remember public sector workers get paid much higher than private sector. Better benefits and bigger pensions, which the private sector has to pay via taxes. It's a racket and should be criminal.

 

My biggest problem are the legacy costs. I'm less troubled with the wages they make during their working years (and yes in many instances they are non-competitive with the private sector), but the fact that the taxpayers are responsible for the legacy costs of a broken pension system is the main issue. In many cases, there might be 3-4 people (when including legacy costs) doing the same job. This is an unsustainable burden that someone will have to address (either willingly or unwillingly) and very soon.