Is the Tacoma union made?

Management—bad management—crippled the auto industry’s Big Three, not the UAW

Saying the unions, by raising wages and benefits irresponsibly, caused the downfall of the GM, Ford and Chrysler is false history.

Autoworker wages didn’t make the Big Three uncompetitive by driving prices up; poor value drove prices down. As prices and quality fell together, consumers fled. The UAW’s contracts were almost irrelevant.



http://www.epi.org/blog/bad-management-crippled-auto-industry-big-three/

 

If a company takes care of its employees, they will take care of its customers. And when its employees take care of their customers, that will take care of the shareholders.

 

Opinion piece.

 

Union carpenters earn about $35.00 an hour.
Less then 20% of carpenters in the country are Union. And nearly all are employed on government funded projects.

 

Not being a dick at all man really but it sounds like that might be something to explore... ???

 

I had my chance at a young age to go Mid Atlantic carpenters Union. No regrets.
I'm a state certified contractor now down here in Florida. And have had a rewarding professional life.
I've been self employed most of my adult life. Currently in a decent salary gig with a large developer.
I'll probably go back to home building before they bury me.

 

Ill say it anyway. Back in the 1970's the ATC

Hey just trying to teach all you youngins a history lesson. Okay 81 was still bleed over from the 70s. As they say if you remember the 70's you werent really there lol.
Forgot to mention one story trying to deliver 1 600 lb crate (hobart bakery mixer) to the docks in San Francisco. My boss only gave me 2 stops when I usually got a dozen or more. Long story short I sat on the dock for 6 hours, before they unloaded me. I took it off the back of the truck and a longshoreman made me put it back on the truck and wait for the union forklift came to unload it for $35. If I didnt like it hell send a couple guys out to break my knees.
I got even with them, I had about a dozen empty junk pallets in the truck, I set them on the back of the box and took off and dumped them all over their loading zone as I drove out the gate. Longshoreman are the crookedest of them all.
When I asked him why I only had 2 stops, he said I knew youd be there all day.

 

In 1981 the AT Controllers went on strike even though they had a no strike agreement under the advice of their union leaders.
Reagan ordered them back to work or be replaced. They stayed on strike and he made good on his word.
I was on our honeymoon in Maui during that time and was not sure if our flight would get back as scheduled.
I'm a retired IBEW member and agreed 100% with his actions then and now.

 

When you say choose to, do you mean keep your current job and not be union or seek another job?

My job I spoke of I had to be in the union

My father is in 2 unions at the MBTA. He started as a driver and then got a promotion which is now a separate union. He could leave the first one but if he ever started driving again he would lose his seniority among other things

 

I've got to say, this thread had the potential to get pretty nasty and it has stayed surprisingly civil.

I'm impressed. Not that you care...

 

When you say choose to, do you mean keep your current job and not be union or seek another job?

My job I spoke of I had to be in the union

My father is in 2 unions at the MBTA. He started as a driver and then got a promotion which is now a separate union. He could leave the first one but if he ever started driving again he would lose his seniority among other things

 

The whole situation of the ATC in 1981 was pretty unique. ATC are considered public servants (FAA employees), and the laws for unions in public service are different from private employment.

Public servants cannot for instance negotiate salary since that is set by elected officials, they can negotiate benefits to a limited extent. The caveat is that they're input for actual expenditures comes from voting and not from negotiating as per how democracy works. The other key factor is that public unions have to be officially recognized by the elected officials in order to unionize. At any time the executive, or legislative branch, is able to revoke that recognition.

The other key is that public workers are limited based on their position if they have the right to "walk-out", and this is determined if their occupation represents a critical need that must be fulfilled, and that of course is always a bit of a grey area. An example would be a police officer, say a town has 30, and 25 of them strike - do you need all 30? Do you need 15 to complete the critical needs... where is that line?

While it was pretty obvious ATC were required (having air travel is a critical service in 1981 as opposed to say 1932), it was pretty obvious they were required. The conditions they operated in at the time were actually very unsafe, and the whole strike just ended up delaying the issue until recently when the conditions still had not been addressed. Another factor was the pay, but as I said that is essentially a request/suggestion, but since they are public workers it cannot be a demand or part of a negotiated contract.

Reagan deemed them critical (probably correct), and then said return to work or face the consequences (probably correct), they didn't (mixed opinions here), Reagan fired them all (from an executive stand-point, probably the right decision), and then replaced them with the military. He then placed a lifetime ban on hiring them as ATC, which seems a little over the top - are people not allowed to recognize their mistakes, what about a few out of 11,000 people?

I digress, ATC had miserable wages compared to the stress they put up with, the long hours, and the high demand for perfection - something that causes most jobs to pay considerably better than what they make compared to the median. His decision to fire them and replace them fixed a short term problem (keep airlines moving), but kicked another problem down the road when the union lost recognition. Later on another administration had to deal with the result of that decision when working conditions were never addressed and workers were falling asleep due to fatigue.

In this instance, I'd honestly argue that the unions had a very valid point to bring up the working conditions which is a fine example of what they exist for. The administration wasn't aware of the situation, or didn't care, that these workers were expected to perform with perfection but set in an environment that made it harder or impossible to achieve, or at least encouraged mistakes without safety measures in place to counter those mistakes. The wage disparity I'm going to avoid since that is much more subjective, but I'd rather be safe in the air - just because the military is doing it doesn't mean the conditions changed or that the military was inherently more motivated to do the job or guaranteed to do it any better (don't make those assumptions!) - after all the cause was never corrected, just the effect by Reagan.

 

Reaganomics killed America’s middle class.
This country's fate was sealed when our government slashed taxes on the rich back in 1980.

 

that nirvana just ended...

 

This has been a fun thread to sit back and enjoy!

There are all kinds of things wrong with a union, and all kinds of things right.

For my entire life I've lived paycheck to paycheck, working hard, not bitching (usually), climbing the ladder with empathy and the Golden Rule paramount (which means I've pretty much stayed put). When the opportunity came around to accept a better paying job for doing the same sort of factory work, I naturally jumped on it. It's not a coincidence that I got another 5 bucks an hour and free health care at the union factory.

Am I disgusted by some - even many - of the members? Absolutely. Is the union dues/money driven? Youbetcha. Are the people "running" the show some of the most ambitious, articulate, no-nonsense sort of people you'd imagine at the helm of the thousands of employees they represent? Not hardly.

But you know what? Every other place I've ever worked has had the same set of problems: incompetence, greed, laziness, etc. I'll take the security, the wages, and the underlying sentiment that "were all in this together, like me/it or not" over the alternative any day.

Other than allegedly causing the collapse of major global companies like GM and Ford - I've yet to read any posts that i think are all out wrong about unions on this thread. Being in the UAW doesn't give me the right to speculate about the workers' at the big 3 automakers, but like myself I'd suspect that what they're paid in wages accounts for a very small percentage of the cost of a car - in my case, it's about 5% of the machines we build, as I've already stated.

If John Deere needed a government bailout this year, rest assured the blame would be cast on the union by some, but for large, global compaines there is NO WAY to need that kind of assistance - from anywhere or anything - because the workers just "have it too good for doing too little." That's absolutely absurd.

Unions are the lesser of 2 evils IMO, but different strokes for different folks! Good debate all!

/unsubbed.

 

Not even close to being accurate...

 

looks like a seasoned expert...

 

Molly is a high school English teacher in Scottsdale, Arizona. She received her B.A. in English and her M.Ed. in Secondary Education, both from Arizona State University. She completed 70 credit hours of coursework towards her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology through Fielding University, but has taken a sabbatical from the program to launch and develop the Blue Street Journal. She currently maintains the website and Facebook page full-time.

 

Grant is a 5th grade teacher in Phoenix, Arizona. He is currently working on his M.Ed. in Elementary Education through Arizona State University. Grant is a prominent LGBT activist in Phoenix where he organized Arizona’s largest-ever march for marriage equality and led HRC Arizona’s candlelight vigil during the Supreme Court hearings on Prop 8 and DOMA. His continued activism is one of the reasons Arizona is quickly moving towards equality for all individuals.

 

Ryan is the founder and operator of , a grassroots page on Facebook that promotes Democratic ideas and passions. In his free time, he enjoys writing opinions and articles on today’s current events in Washington D.C and beyond. A lifelong progressive, he works to empower other progressives across the country to stand up and make their voices heard. He lives in Scottsdale, Arizona.