Quote:
Originally Posted by bkcunningham1
Richie, are you satisfied with the representation that Jimmy Hoffa, Andrew Stern, Rich Trumka, Ron Carey et al have given you? It isn't a loaded question. It is asked with all due respect to you and your union brothers and sisters. And, another question I'd like to ask you Richie, how does unionizing help FexEx become more competitive? I do believe people in private labor have every right to unionize when done within the appropriate legal guidelines. But they'd better know what they are getting into is all I can say and don't ask me to bail you out when you don't keep up with what your union reps are doing in Washington.
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No BK, I'm not satisfied with present Teamsters Union leadership because I think it has left the worker laboring under the NMFC (National Master Freight Contract) in the lurch. Instead of increasing the scope of freight company organizing and clamping down on carriers who buy or created non-union companies to compete with their own "organized company", the National Board has dropped the ball and gone after easier to organize jobs, for example Hospital employees where you have a contained workforce.
Your question, to me, is reversed. Organizing FedEx, which many many of their employees want because they feel it'll improve their wages and benefits and security, will make UPS more competitive. UPS is the largest Union Company in the U.S., and it's employees have great pay and benefits and a good contract that enables an employee to work with dignity and not be subject to the whims of an overly greedy or capricious management. Now UPS is a money making company, but does not have the advantages of a non-union company like FedEx who can abuse part-time employees; require crazy and changing starting times for employment and generally run rough shod over an employee, if it wants, with no regard for seniority.
Nearly all the benefits the average worker has in the U.S., such as the 8 hour work day; the 40 hour workweek, paid vacation, workplace safety standards and health-care are all the product of years and years of sweat and blood given by the early organizers of our National Unions.
Now I've heard it said that the need for Unions are past and Unions are not necessary anymore. OK, so I guess the businessmen are kinder and more generous and less greedy and more interested in the welfare of the workers who labor for and make a company successful that they were in the past. Do you believe that? All the workers in a non-union company who compete with a unionized company have to thank the Union for being there, because the only reason they make anything close to Union-wages is because of the fear their Employers have of their workers organizing. If the Unions ever disappear, expect the quick downward-slide of the wages of the laborer.