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Originally Posted by Tbugs
Not that this has anything to do with this thread - Rubicon - but have you ever been a union member?
I know RichieLion was a member of the Teamster's union. Teamsters were very powerful in getting lots of concessions for their employees in terms of pay and hours and working conditions. They also were a mighty corrupt union. I worked across the street in Washington DC from AFL-CIO headquarters and also from United Mine Workers. United Auto Workers were also very powerful. Wages were really boosted for employees under all those unions.
I was in management so I never could be a union member.
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I was a Teamster and proud of it. Unions did more to enrich and grow the middle class than any other entity in this nation. Almost all the benefits expected from an employer had their origins with the unions; from the 40 hour work week, to the 2 week vacation to overtime pay, to a safe work environment. Was there corruption? There is in any large organization particularly the largest organization of them all, the federal government.
But I've always separated the public unions with the private unions. In public union contracts negotiations the employer is not at the table to negotiate the contract. That employer is the taxpayer. At the table with the public union to negotiate their contract are politicians who are negotiating a contract with the very people who finance their political careers. Unbelievable.
Private unions, as I belonged to, have to negotiate their contract with their actual employer. At the company I worked for the workers agreed to a 15% wage giveback and exempted the company from paying into the pension plan for 2 years in order to give the company a chance to rebuild and stay in business because of the downfalls it experienced in this new devolving economy. This is totally a foreign concept to the public unions who demand more and more no matter how the economy has changed.