Is the Tacoma union made?

No bias from 'ole Blue Street...

 

What The Fuck?!?!

I WAS actually looking forward to people's input in this thread...

I guess IBTL...

 

Blame Molly...

 

Not sure why everyone wants the thread to be locked so bad.

 

Or the **** ****** who had to make a political statement.

To bad the thread gets locked instead of him/her/it being banned or restricted from posting in this thread.

 

He's mad

 

I hope it stays non Union made so the prices stay "low"

 

Only marginally...

It wouldn't be an issue if the cat trying to fuck the thread was just locked out but, you know how this shit goes. Agree with him or not his post is one of the faster ways to get a thread locked and unless he's a total fucking idiot, he knows it.

 

People keep talking about union wages not being a problem, but what most people don't realize is that it is the benefits and pension payouts that are the real problem. The argument is: "Hey the company signed the contract so it's not our fault" - yeah well, they had a gun to their head when they signed...

 

The public sector union pensions are bankrupting many municipalities.

 

Legacy cost & benefits. Not uncommon to essentially be equal to hourly the hourly rate or be half the overall compensation cost. I was wondering when that would come up....

I disagree with the "gun to the head" thought because ultimately management knows the cost issue has to be addressed. If they don't they shouldn't be in their positions IMO. Again, I've never been union, I'm hourly now, have been a manager and was self employed, with several employees for years.

 

It's about the same as the Colorado which is from a union company.

Well, it's still open. Acknowledging their post only brings more attention to it and validates it.

That's quite a stretch. Almost every company was offering pensions in the 50s-80s regardless of union status. It's not until mass amounts of people started retiring that they found out it was an unsustainable business model and is part of what ushered in the 401k. Alot of the major corps offer tiny pensions compared to what they once we're and company matching to 401k.

If I work with my current company for 40 years, my pension would only be something like 500k total which when you divide by 30 years comes out to 16k per year before taxes. That's nothing compared to pensions where workers were guaranteed 50-100% of their yearly income for the rest of their lives.

Figuring there's 3% inflation per year on average, that 16k per years value is more than halved by the end of a 30 year retirement. So I'd need to make 38k a year to have the same purchasing power.

 

Our company is union in one province and not in another. Honestly, I've been a part of a few unions here with other companies and none of them did anything but collect higher and higher dues from the same paycheck I would of received anywhere else. I have no problem with union workers or the concept of a union. Nor to I harbor any favoritism towards them. However modern union bureaucracies are not something I support and, in my limited and recent experience, far too common now.

 

The company I work for falls under rules & regs of the rail labor act and for a Union to get on the property it must be voted in across the system. Our single largest competitor does not & as such it's easier for the competitors employees to unionize.

Are all businesses in Canada able to be unionized in the same way as your company...that is some of the same class & craft can be Union while others may not?

 

I think the fear of employees unionizing is about the same as having a union in that they need ensure that employees are being treated fairly. And in this system there's no union leadership to take a piece of the employee's check. Sounds like the best of both worlds.

 

Ours was sort of a special case. Our company, which was not unionized, bought a unionized company. So basically the part of the company that was in the province that had a union already kept it and our side did not. Then they changed a few things to make our wages similar in every way, rather than just on paper, and there hasn't been much of a fuss about it.

Basically, pay wise, the union company was paid a slightly higher salary plus overtime and a small bonus. Our company paid a slightly smaller salary but with a much bigger bonus opportunity. At the end of the day the average worker on each side over 10 years made the same amount of money. Maybe the union helped drive that so I can't fault them at all.

I think it goes province by province and I'm not sure what sort of percentage you need to vote in a union here.

The last job I had that was unionized I quit due to stress. When I complained about management demanding excessive OT and not giving adequate rest periods I received token email replies back from my representative. So I quit. All the union did for me was leave me a few dollars short of what a non union worker would of made. I'm not bitter about it, but it has tempered my opinion of unions.

At my wifes work they were trying to change from 8's to 12' because it would be better for most people that worked there. They are unionized. The union said it had to be passed by a vote. They didn't set a certain level or say it would be a simple majority but, out of a department of over a dozen people, a single person said that they didn't want to change. The union "protected" them by not allowing a change that 90% of the workforce would of benefited from and one worker would of been slightly inconvenienced by... again I'm not bitter about it, but it has tempered my opinion of unions.

 

That's what I'm talking about. Non-union companies have had the ability to reform their pensions and benefits packages (reduce them mainly) in order to stay competitive and healthy. The auto companies have had a very hard time getting the unions to agree to any meaningful concessions in this area. What was sustainable in 1960 isn't today. The Union leadership would rather see jobs lost and factories closed (as long as it isn't their own job), than lose a battle against the "evil" people that employ them and face the wrath of their entitled membership. They'd rather see a plant closed and then blame NAFTA and their political enemies.

 

My company sponsored pension changed after new funding percentage laws/rules were pushed through during the late 2000s economic downturn and several companies defaulted on their retirement planes. While the company I work for wasn't having issues with meeting the new funding requirements, it took the opportunity to change most (not all) work groups to a "potable plan" (not to be confused or mixed with our 401 plan with a company match). So now, the company funds it on a quarterly basis and no longer needs to be concerned about its legacy pension expense. Needless to say, after running several different scenarios, that portion of my retirement has shrank.

 

Man, you don't even want to know what I'm paying carps up here to frame my house. Supply and demand, skilled trades are extremely thin in the Vancouver area. You could charge $35-40 an hour without any union having your back!

No one hires union work here, tons of private companies doing high end work. It's damn near impossible to find a reliable trade, I'm pretty lucky to know a great GC who's running the show! Still going to cost me $250+ per square foot to finish my house.