If you get a paycheck (or used to) then you need a union

I don't care what you do. If you work for someone else - or even for yourself - you need a union.

Maybe this battle in the War On Labor can turn into a recruiting drive. Unionize EVERYTHING.

It is possible. The climate is right.

However, many in my field (engineering) are a little...hostile...to unions.

who say, "how come the union won't come and organize meeeeeeeee?"

People need to stand up for themselves, and I hope that you're right that the time is now for people to see that.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4634200

More recs than replies.

Which is it?

thanks for playing anyway.

:dunce:

Because *they* are organized!

It is a class war - they do want to own you.

why it is that somebody like Mitch McConnell would be so passionately against unions.

i am a member of AGMA, music guild and it may not be the best one, but they are there to make sure we get paid well and we get our damn brakes because the companies would run is into the ground if they could. people need to remember that they would not have their lunch breaks, paid leave, holidays without the unions. this makes me just want to scream UNION UNION UNION!!!

the unions were born out of bad economic times. If the GOP is really thinking they can kill the unions by crashing the economy (and they might be thinking that), I think they will be in for a surprise.

Too bad they may succeed in crashing the economy along the way, though. The fuckers.

every job was unionized. It would be a disaster.

For some companies and types of jobs unions are important and needed. For many others they're nothing but a detriment and completely unnecessary.

overtime, breaks, lunch -- also unnecessary? The only reason any of that is written into law is UNIONS.

Nowhere did I claim that Unions haven't been important nor helped in a lot of ways. Nowhere did I state I thought they shouldn't exist. Your argument is a ridiculous strawman.

What I did say is that I was thankful as hell to get out of the piece of shit teamster union I was in and don't ever want any part of any union again. Furthermore, it would be an economic disaster if every industry and every job was unionized.

That union was one of the leaders in getting everything I mentioned. My uncles all have good retirement and health care because of the teamsters. You can't attack one union without attacking all of them. They may not be perfect, but compared to the alternative, being Alabama, I'll go with the union. None of these foreign auto makers would pay anything if it weren't for the benefits unions had fought for before they got here.

shit that is.

Every local union is of it's own merit, and I'm free to criticize or condone any individual union I want.

The union at my place is a farce, with a bunch of lazy ass harassing scumbags that take advantage of every loophole they can. They are a detriment to the company and I look forward to the day the union here is broken.

There's a difference between working to change conditions in a local union and going on an anti-union tirade. The people around here who buy into the idea that they will be treated fairly just because they're so wonderful, tools. That's all.

If all jobs were unionized it would be a monumental disaster for our economy. And yes, some unions are necessary and others are just simply vessels for really lazy and unmotivated workers to be able to continue underperforming. Some unions leaders are quite corrupt as well. There is no all or nothing mentality in reality as it relates to unions, and I've always laughed a bit at the whole 'solidarity' crap. Each union within each company to be judged on its own merits. Some are valuable, some do their members a great service while having a membership that actually cares and works, some are necessary due to industries/companies that don't give a fuck about their workers thereby making it a necessity for those workers to have Union protection, but also there are unions that merely take advantage of companies and enable lazy ass people to keep their jobs and hurt the company. Not all unions are equal, and each is individual based on the company they are in. Some just flat out suck, such as the one in mine.

when it comes to the bottom line. The worker will take the hit first, every single solitary time. I don't care how many business owners chime in about missing a paycheck - not one of them lived in the street or fed their kids ramen in order to pay the employees. You either stand with workers or all workers get fucked. That's why this country has gone on a downhill slide since the 70s, stupid fucking people who think they're the same as the top 1% of the country.

Many companies absolutely do. That doesn't mean that sometimes hard decisions don't have to be made though. That's life.

But I can say with certainty that my company absolutely gives a fuck about their workers. You're bitter and biased.

It must be the end of the world. :rofl:

for them. The unions have won. It is hard to convince people of this fact unless they have witnessed it like I have.

Corporations are REQUIRED to care about one thing and one thing only: PROFIT. If a CEO tried to be altruistic and give a damn about the workers the shareholders would sue his ass for not "maximizing profit". As long as our economies are controlled by entities that are required by law to act like sociopaths unions are 100% necessary in every field.

and by small I mean he never employed more than five hundred people. He paid extremely well. Employee turnover was small. He paid for employees to further their educations. Full medical and dental. He was an early practitioner of environmental practices. Hardly the story of the evil capitalist. Oh yeah, and he was a liberal dem.

The ones the SCOTUS declared to be sociopathic persons 100 years ago.

I worked for a Fortune 500 company for over 2 decades. Good pay, good benefits. We didn't always make money, and the shareholders didn't 'sue our ass'. Completely non-unionized, and in my 2+ decades I never heard a single person voice a desire for Union representation.

The company I work for now is much smaller, and not publicly held. Money is a little better, benefits a little worse. Again, non-union, and nobody calling for one.

Don't get me wrong, I believe that Unions are absolutely necessary in some fields. Just not every field. And people who believe otherwise are profoundly naive.

"with a bunch of lazy ass harassing scumbags that take advantage of every loophole they can. They are a detriment to the company and I look forward to the day the union here is broken."
just curious if it is isolated to your immediate store or do you believe it is state or nation wide for the particular union you speak of.
Sounds like you were promoted to management and are now throwing your fellow workers under the bus.

Not a store, we're a manufacturing site. I also was never promoted to management. Furthermore, if you've read my previous posts, you would've undoubtedly seen my repeated assertions that each union is to be judged on its own merit. Based on that, how could I possibly infer that the issue is state or nation wide when I'm only familiar with this specific one?

I've heard stories throughout my life of other unions that were even worse and many filled with a bunch of lazy people who take advantage of the system, and have also heard stories of unions that were a godsend to their members. Each union on its own merits. Does it really need to be explained more than that?

As far as being thrown under the bus goes, I never threw them under the bus. In fact, in the facility I'm at now, I was never in the union with them. I was in the union in our other facility (same union, same contract). Back then, it was THEM who threw ME under the bus simply because I was a hard worker who had pride in what he did. My first day without even trying all that hard (and without even being aware of it) I broke the daily personal production record. As soon as word broke after the next few days one by one I had the union scumbags come approach me and advise me to slow down and that I was making them look bad. Since I have absolutely no respect for such a lazy minded sentiment I looked them in the eyes (each one as each came) and would state "That's a bunch of bullshit. All I can do is make myself look good. Only you can make yourself look bad". They didn't like that much. They would start to threaten etc but it never budged me. I became the best performing compounder easily and my output on average daily was about 4 times that of any other union compounder. They put me through hell by making up lies, reporting me to HR repeatedly for flawed reason, and would gang up however they could. Bullies and bitter that I was actually doing a good job. I mean, how dare I!

Now I'm in our manufacturing facility and the union is as lazy as ever. They take advantage of every loophole they can and perform easily at 40% of what a real worker could do without feeling like they were abused. They are lazy and do the bare minimum necessary to get by for the most part. I just can't respect that for a second.

What union are you referring to? Most if not all unions are affiliated with a larger one. I come from a long family history of union members and organizers and was always taught to put in a fair days work for a fair days pay.
I am curious as to what union is so bad that you would claim every member was lazy or a bully if you out worked them.

the answer.

where you named the teamsters. So I'm betting you don't really care to know that your case might be isolated because they are an international organization and the corner stone to establishing workers rights.
I'm still not buying that you were the only worker who did their job with pride at your company.
The teamsters are the first to back smaller struggling unions and will not cross a picket line period. I know they didn't cross ours.

Your making an opinion based on ignorance (since you neither work for my company or have any knowledge as to the union members within it) so your opinion or whether or not you buy it carries no relevance whatsoever.

Yes, I was the only one that worked with pride and attempted to even begin to do a good day's work. The rest were lazy and did as little as they could to get by. That turned out to be the same experience once I moved to the other facility. They do as little as possible while making sure they do just enough to not get fired. I have no respect for such a mindset.

And no, it isn't isolated. I hear stories about the exact same type of behavior with other union groups all of the time. But that doesn't make it a rule nor an exception, since many unions are good and filled with hard workers. It just means that some are beneficial and some aren't. That's why each is to be judged on its own merits. Regardless, having every occupation and position unionized would be an economic disaster. There are many many people who don't want anything to do with joining a union, and I'm one of them.

People think I'm over the top and just nuts. But I stand up for what I believe, and I usually laugh because I think you want people to think you're a clown, but that statement is just over the top.


A day without a Union is a day with poverty.

Are you saying the union in my company is filled with hard workers who don't take advantage of loopholes? How can you call my statement outrageous when you know nothing about the union I'm talking about?

All I said was each union, each union contract, and each group of union members should be judged on their own merits since they are their own entity. What is so outrageous about that?

:hi:

I'm amused that the actions of unions today are justified by weekends, holidays, and overtime that was accomplished 50 years ago. Those bumper sticker slogans are ridiculous. If current actions were always justified by early actions and gains, there'd be a lot of evil leaders being praised today. Sorry folks, this ain't the 60's. Labor camps aren't being set on fire. When I was growing up (I'm in my 20's), it was the UNION that was scaring me, not the bosses. My Dad had no interest in joining the union at his plant and his reward was threatening midnight phone calls and 4am knocks on the door.

Won't see many here own up to that though. But the intimidation tactics used on people from their union peers is staggering sometimes, depending on the union. That's why I say each union and need for a union should be judged on its own merits.

My 18-year-old cousin works for a company where many of the workers are on strike. I know union workers call this person a "scab." Same tactics: bullying, throwing things, late night phone calls and visitors at the door. Same question: why does someone else have to suffer because YOU joined a union and decided to strike? It was YOUR decision.

:eyes:

Why should he be punished for THEIR decision? That makes no sense.

chump change and no benefits...no insurance, no pension, no holidays. Why should your cousin benefit while others are sticking up for his rights?

What I care about is that joining a union doesn't give you the right to INTIMIDATE someone who doesn't. It was your choice, live with it. Other workers aren't threatening you because you JOINED, so why should you be able to threaten them because they DIDN'T.

This is not concerning the current situation; I'm not ignorant enough to blame them for the executives decisions. But I don't agree with the actions of a lot of union officials.

I spent over four months on a strike line a few years back. Those that crossed the line and worked would yell very nasty names, I was constantly told to go get a job. What they could not understand was I had a job and they were working it.
They were also the first ones to complain because we lost benefits and pay for new hires (they were considered new hires when the strike was over) under the new contract. They refused to believe us when we would tell them that the pay rate they were earning during the strike would drop drastically if we should settle for the contract offered by the company. Most of them quit because they found that they could not live on what they were making after the strike was over.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/05/10/state/n134934D62.DTL&tsp=1

Substandard Housing Persists
http://www.bakersfield.com/102/story/447241.html

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE5DA173CF936A15750C0A964958260
CA Rancher fined $1.5 million in Enslavement Case

Thai workers enslaved in El Monte
http://www.pjalliance.org/article.aspx?ID=168&CID=20

It goes on and on. The Utah mine collapse. Workers being required to wear diapers or use urinal bags. Drivers constantly cheated on wages.

This is what happens when workers have no representation. It happens every day in this country.

It is no strawman.

There's never been a union for us.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4634200

If you want a union .... start one. What is stopping you?

Because computer techs had been some of the highest paid workers recently, without realizing if they had had a union they wouldn't have watched the insourcing and wage deflation with absolutely no ability to do anything about it or even negotiate for few visas. Short-sighted.

laws are because of unions! minimum wage, child labor,safe working conditions,all because of unions and enjoyed by ALL not just union members.

I don't dislike them, I've just never directly been represented by one.

You know, mere women taking care of children. Those are the most under appreciated and oppressed workers imo.

I have friends who have been poor all their lives because they enjoy taking care of children.

There's too much diversity of experience and qualifications in my line of work, and too many small employers who appear and disappear rapidly, for a union to be able to adequately represent us. It'd be more trouble than it was worth, and most companies would simply ignore the union, were it to exist in the first place.

I am a business **owner** and in an organization that represents my interests. It isn't a union, per se, but it is union-like.

There is a union or professional association for everyone.

represents a great diversity of skill sets, those who employ us range from the largest Corps in the world to companies that are created for a one time project. My Union brothers and sisters are all over the income map, from barely making it to richer than God.
The fact that you have many employers is the prime reason to Unionize, not a reason you should not. Hard to imagine what line of work you are in where folks are both highly quailified and utterly replacable. Glad it is not my profession. Without my Unions, I'd be up the creek without a bus pass.

and others wrote songs about it . . .

Union Maid
by Woody Guthrie

There once was a union maid, she never was afraid
Of goons and ginks and company finks and the deputy sheriffs who made the raid.
She went to the union hall when a meeting it was called,
And when the Legion boys come 'round
She always stood her ground.

Chorus
Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union, I'm sticking to the union.
Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union 'til the day I die.

This union maid was wise to the tricks of company spies,
She couldn't be fooled by a company stool, she'd always organize the guys.
She always got her way when she struck for better pay.
She'd show her card to the National Guard
And this is what she'd say.

Chorus

You gals who want to be free, just take a tip from me,
Get you a man who's a union man and join the ladies' auxiliary.
Married life ain't hard when you got a union card,
A union man has a happy life when he's got a union wife.

Chorus

I recognize the importance of unions in many lines of work.

I won't cross a picket line.

But 'Unionize EVERYTHING'? Wow. Take the meritocracy out of high-tech, and replace it with tenure? That would be the death-knell for high-tech IMHO.

:rofl: :rofl:

I've been working in my industry for 25 years. People who perform well get promotions. People who don't perform well don't get promoted, and if they keep under-performing they get fired.

That's called 'meritocracy', and it works well.

Good luck with your hysteria. :eyes:

I've (very occasionally) worked those kinds of hours. And I'm paid time-and-a-half for my hours past 40 in a week, and double time for more than 12 hours work in a single day. One year I made about about 25% over my normal wages because of all the overtime I put in. That benefited both my wallet and my performance review that year.

Is there a problem with that? :shrug:

In almost 20 years of working in high-tech industries, I have only had a single job that involved overtime pay.

Count your blessings, and realize that the rest of us would like it so good. Why can't you understand that a Tech Workers Union would aim to do just that?

Contract jobs obviously don't count.

Was in the course of a consulting contract. :shrug:

Regardless, I'm sure you can ask around among your peer group and quickly discover that OT for high-tech workers is exceedingly rare. It varies by state, industry, and technical work category, of course, but the overwhelming majority of high-tech workers don't receive overtime pay.

I have no problems with anyone wanting to improve their own situations, including unionization if that is what it takes.

What are the advantages to people that work for companies that do right by their employees? I've worked for two different companies in the past 25 years. The first had over 20,000 employees, my current employer around 6,000. In all of that time, I've NEVER heard ONE person calling for unionization.

Why can't you understand that there are businesses in the world in which Unions are not needed?

The most casual bit of research into IT salaries online, for example, will show that a ridiculously small fraction of IT workers make overtime of any kind.

This has been demonstrated repeatedly by IT salary surveys. Hell, it's even discussed in IT management magazines/forums...albeit not in a sympathetic light.

I don't need a ramp to enter most businesses, but hey, guess what? Some people in wheelchairs just might. How is that hard to understand?

Edit: I should note that I've been in the management/exempt category for over 10 years, so I'm unlikely to ever see overtime again in my life. But I worry greatly about all of the young, bright-eyed IT workers that are chewed up by the 80-hours-a-week lifestyle.

ME: "I have no problems with anyone wanting to improve their own situations, including unionization if that is what it takes."

Do you think that companies in which the employees are perfectly happy with management should be forced to Unionize?

But I do think that positive reinforcement via branding (think: "Buy XYZ brand computers! Union made in the USA!") and negative reinforcement via strikes/slowdowns/boycotts would eventually expand the scope of tech unions to cover most of the industry.

The hardest step is the first one: Forming the union and making it work at one high-tech fortune 500 company. But once that is done, why would you work at ABC company for lower wages, fewer benefits, and longer hours when you can work at XYZ company which is unionized?

No one's ever going to force anyone to join a union. I'm honestly not sure how you arrived at that point from my assertion that the vast majority of tech workers aren't paid overtime. :shrug: Care to explain?

I don't believe that a Unionized high-tech firm that values seniority over merit can compete in the long term with companies that pay a fair wage and benefits, and have a robust meritocracy system in place.

Did you read the OP? "Unionize EVERYTHING." That is what I was referring to. The OP stated that all jobs should be Unionized, which is the point that I vehemently disagree with.

We can agree to disagree on the outcome, but I felt the need to respond to your mischaracterization of high-tech jobs as OT-friendly jobs. The data just isn't there to support that anecdote.

Also, I disagree with your idealization of high-tech jobs as having a "robust meritocracy system in place." That's certainly true in some areas--mainframe banking systems come to mind--but those are the exception, not the rule.

Filling high-tech positions has become a race to the bottom of the salary spectrum over the past 10 years, and highly talented--often senior--high-tech workers are being more often replaced by cheaper H1-B visa hires. Why keep one old, smart techie on staff when you can replace him with 10 young, cheap techies? :shrug:

You say:


What I said was:


I work in a group that designs specialized memory solution semiconductors. Every single company that I've had dealings with in this industry has paid well, and has good benefits. None of them are unionized. Oh, and none of the people that I work with have H1-B visas, either.

As Xithras said in a posting upthread, in this industry, you keep increasing your skill set, or you quickly find yourself behind the curve and unable to compete. Can you imagine what would happen if a seniority system went into place, and once you had a job you could just float along doing the same thing you always did? The company wouldn't stay competitive very long, you'd start losing customers, and the business would die. That's what would happen if the companies that I've worked for in the past turned into a Union shop.

Hell, you can just look at the California Teachers Union as an example. My wife, and both of my in-laws are now or have been in the past career teachers. The CTU is a joke, and certainly isn't helping the kids! How does keeping lousy teachers around just because they've been lousy teachers for a long time help? Clue, it doesn't! http://www.statestats.com/edrank06.htm California in 2006-2007 ranked 47th in the Country! :grr: Oh yeah, Unions have really helped there! :sarcasm:

I'm a member of creative Unions. No one is given any form of seniority at all. What you reduce to 'merit' , is how it works from job one to the day you stop working. The Unions help make sure we have equal access and get a fair share.
Not all Unions work the same way. Creative Unions do not function the same way as other Unions. I have never had a promise of work over any one else via a Union, not once. The Union members who rise to the top are paid insanely huge amounts of money, while the average person might just make a living. There is nothing stopping anyone from rising due to merit. It is in fact how it works. Of course 'merit' is not ever as pure a thing as we are pretending here. In a Union, merit has a greater chance of winning out. Without those protections, the boss's idea of 'merit' might involve certain physical attributes or personal favors, membership in the boss's church or club, etc.
Many of your assumptions are simply not accurate. Facts being facts and all. If you had a Union, it would not be like the teacher's Union, or UAW, or like my Unions. It would be made to serve you and your industry.
Seniority is a word that has nothing to to with my Unions at all. An alien priciple.

It's the law period.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=367x15258#15261

The problem is not knowing your history and how these laws came about, which risk us all having to repeat the lesson with you.

The repugs have been trying since Raygun to take away the forty hour work week and break organized labor.

http://www.workinglife.org/wiki/Republicans+Taking+Aim+at+the+40-Hour+Work+Week+(May+23,+2001

"People who perform well get promotions. People who don't perform well don't get promoted, and if they keep under-performing they get fired."

:eyes:

Well I've been in the same industry for just as long, and in my experience, promotion and raises are related more to political capital and negotiation skills than performance.

-Hoot

The companies that I've worked for don't 'negotiate' wages. And as I'm an anti-social curmudgeon who doesn't brown nose anybody, I don't have much in the way of political capital.

there wouldn't be a comic strip called "Dilbert."

Next.

Unions aren't much help when dealing with dumbass co-workers and bosses too stupid to tie their own shoelaces.

HahahahahaHaha1hahahaB

H....ahahaha

1....ahahaha

B....hahahaha

Please enlighten me on why I should be in a union.

I don't work with anybody that has one.

Is that all you've got? :shrug:

...working in the techie field...I agree with you.

Some jobs needs unions and some do not. Specialized tech jobs do not.

A CCDP and an MCSE will get me paid more and quicker than a union coming in. That is why I worked and studied hard to get them. Sometimes you have to do the heavy lifting yourself.

That said...I 100% support unions and appreciate all that they have done.

This mindset of 'everyone MUST unionize for their own good' is driving me nuts.

the concept that all jobs should have a union is a bad idea. I've never worked at a union shop, my parents didn't, my grandparents didn't, their parents didn't. All of them had weekends, 40 hr weeks (occasional exception) and a decent living.

It's time for people to face the fact that the US will not be a manufacturing powerhouse in the future because companies are built on the concept of making a profit and if they make a profit by shipping the labor elsewhere they will. That doesn't mean there aren't jobs here or that jobs can't be created, just means you have to prepare yourself accordingly and just b/c your dad made a great living working the line at a plant and now has full health/retirement doesn't mean you are entitled to it.

some unions are exactly what OCM was describing as a complete waste of time and money.

There IS a technology union, by the way. WashTech has been working for the past decade to unionize tech work, with only a few successes. I was actually IN a company-wide union once before, and found them to be kind of a pain in the ass (ex: many of the software developers wanted to telecommute...we had the technology to do it, we got buy-in from management, but the union quashed it...they thought it was unfair to the other workers and that it undermined their ability to have a steward watching our work environment).

The problem with unionizing tech is that the job requirements itself are so fluid. It's not like a normal job where you get to learn skill X or Y and do that for your career. In tech, the skills you learn today will be useless 10 years from now, and the skills you need in 10 years won't even be decided upon for another 5. Tech requires constant training and updating of knowledge skills, which is where the meritocracy comes in.

15 years ago I was one of the most skilled Borland programmers you'd have ever met, and job offers were everywhere. Today, those skills wouldn't even get me an interview. Those technologies have been supplanted by newer technologies. Unions often protect employees by seniority, which typically favors older workers with dated and less relevant skillsets at the expense of younger workers with more recent and updated training.

I own a small consulting firm today and have interviewed many older out-of-work programmers. I'm consistently shocked at the number of them who still list COBOL, Delphi, or VAX experience on their resumes, and who consider their "updated skillset" to be something like C++. They simply have no chance against younger workers who walk in with resumes brimming with Java and C# experience. The problem is, those old technologies offer no value anymore, and the thought of unions keeping those outdated employees in their jobs because of seniority is frightening.

Like it or not, technology IS a merit based field. It's a field where the modernity of your skills are FAR more important than your overall experience. It's a field where a single shift in technology can cause a developer with 30 years experience to be less useful than a newly minted grad with only 30 days on the job. We get that, and understand that it's a fundamental part of the entire technology field, but unions DON'T get it. That's why unions have such a hard time getting a foothold here. They want to apply a 100 year old labor template to a field that just doesn't fit the template.

A GOOD tech union wouldn't worry about things like seniority, and would focus more on things like getting employers to help update employee tech skills, encouraging lifestyle improving advances like telecommuting, or pushing for downtime periods after project crunches (you'll never get rid of those 14 hour workdays as projects wrap up, but more companies should provide leave afterward so people can recover). NONE of the unions that I have EVER encountered have had any interest in helping tech workers accomplish any of those things. All I hear is the same old "job security+seniority protections+improved pay" lines. Those don't sell well in tech.

Thank you Xithras, for a very well stated outline of the high tech industry. Spot on.

We need to hire someone to lobby our Representatives for us, over the competition of corporate lobbyists.

I'm serious. We should unionize ourselves to lobby "our own government." It could also help us negotiate our salaries and benefits.

Not just because it's the only way to bribe our own representatives. It's just that we'll never be allowed to have public campaign funding. And even if we do have public funded campaigns, they'll still take bribes.

We should at least give ourselves a chance.

unions work in the trades and manuf. but those with tech skills needs a different structure.

So are professional associations.

Think about an organization like BMI ..... http://www.bmi.com/

"Unions" are not limited to organizations like the AFL-CIO or Teamsters.

that I can contact?

And the OP is right.

Like that will ever happen.

"A Government of the people, by the people, and for the people"

It does not say:

"A Government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations"

to counter-balance the corporatocracy.

and was summarily fired.

They can all die as far as I'm concerned.

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Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

And FU, too.

People in the democratic party have the right to oppose unions, just like republicans have the right to support them. If we only allow people who agree with us 100% of the time to be democrats then we'd be a very small and narrow minded party that would always be in the minority, because you're never going to get a majority of the nation to agree with you 100% of the time, even in the best of times for your party.

I tend to oppose unions more often then not nowadays, but I do agree that there are cases where unions are very necessary, and they were necessary in the past in America.

Just because I don't support unions doesn't mean I'm not a democrat however. I'm an economic moderate who leans only very slightly conservative on economic issues, a fiscal conservative for higher taxes, but I'm also a VERY strong social liberal, and that's why I'm a democrat and don't see myself ever changing parties.

on the critical economic issues we're facing as a country. Great! You're the reason that working people have been crapped on for so long! So-called moderate Democrats (in other words DINOs) are responsible for where we're at as a party and a country!

you get flack for regressive statements.

So many cheap labor Cons, so little time.

great, or maybe I should say, it use to be great. Do you want to be treated like the workers in China ? IMHO everyone should be in a union.

The jealousy here is amusing.

*laughing & laughing & laughing*

There are millions of decent people who own businesses who treat their employees with respect, pay good wages, provide decent benefits and a good work environment. They also have good people working for them who know they can come to the boss and talk about problems or issues and get them resolved without a fuss.

To advocate for unions at every level of employment is so wrong-headed I cannot even wrap my head around it. Mind-boggling.

:thumbsup:

I'm shocked by the amount of anti-union bullshit that's allowed to remain on a message board for Democrats.

on edit: I mean, seriously, scabs are being defended upthread.

I would basically be paying someone money who is going to do nothing, it's not like they can demand that my customers pay me better or treat me better. I would be all for them enforcing an 8 hour work day instead of the 12-16 I currently work and a 5 day work week instead of the 6 I put in, I would also like for them to demand that I get guaranteed hourly wages instead of just getting paid for a quarter of the time I put in. And don't forget health care, I would love that my customers foot the bill for my health care without dipping into the salary that would be great.

Unions serve a purpose but for the self employed I don't think it works.

I teach in a university and I'm proud to be a member of the NEA. Like someone said upthread there are all kinds of unions for all kinds of workers and right now we need more of them not less. This is a time to begin re-growing the labor movement in this country! It's one of the few hopes we have for regaining quality of life and some level of prosperity. If we don't do this, I fear for our children's potential to ever achieve a "middle-class life".

left.. serving... making money in those jobs would have kept things up for a while longer... Now, everyone's broke and the service jobs are going to be falling off the grid too.