Calling In Sick?

[mweiss]

You got to benefit in salary and benefits because of Labor's fight for fair wage and affordable benefits in this country. The companies you work for have elevated salary and better benefits just to keep unions out. So, indirectly, YOU have benefited, but too proud to recognize this or admit it.

ROTFLMAO

The companies I was working for had elevated salaries and better benefits because there was more demand for the labor than supply. In 1998 I would have had my choice of employers at pretty much any price I wanted. I stayed where I was because things were mighty good there already. Unions weren't even remotely part of the equation.

Methinks you've been in Pittsburgh a little too long.

 

[mweiss]

What has happened to this company is mostly, I say again mostly, management’s doing. Most of management will walk away unscathed while the common folk will need to bow their heads and ask for food stamps, this is what drives my attitude because most people in upper management don't know what real hardships are, and never will in this life.

And that is, ultimately, exactly the point I've been trying to make in the past couple of pages on this thread. The unions didn't prevent it from happening, and it happened in a fashion that looks eerily similar to the way it happens in nonunion companies. So what did your union dues buy you in the end?

 

[cavalier]

My sister is a VP of a company who has three huge "call centers", San Francisco, San Antonio, and Scranton. She knows what to do in order to keep unions out. All she does is listen to the Friday messages from our CEO, and knows what not to say. She has been watching U, and knows how to treat her employees by doing the complete opposite of USAirways.

Her words to her managers.

Too add to that. My son is a graduate student and his business professor basically said the same thing: That everything U is doing, don't do!

 

[PITbull]

You heard that statement when you were starting out and it's true today only to a much greater degree. Here's my proof, where's yours?
The number of union members in the US today is roughly the same as in 1952 yet the nations workforce has more than doubled over the last 50 years to roughly 121 million. Organized labor accounted for 35.5% of the nonfarm payrolls in 1945 and in 2003 it was 12.9%. It was 13.3% in 2002. Look to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics and see for yourself if you dare look.
You come on here sticking your chest out thumping it like the great savior how you plan to stand up to the big bad robber barons yet you cower like a coward in the corner when it comes to standing up to the union leadership that is so lost and corrupt it can't find it's way from one end of a straight line to another with written directions. You harp about how the executives leave with millions yet you don't dare peep about how much money your union dues thieving leaders pad their pay with exhorbitant expense accounts. In case you're having trouble seeing the forest through the trees let me help you out...they're both wrong for doing what they're doing!!
You laugh at all the people you've given the label as self-righteous who work to make others rich but my question to you is what exactly are you doing? Do you own your own business and work at it making yourself rich or do you work for another? By your own admission you don't so don't go pointing fingers at those that at least had the courage to take a leap of faith and land on their own feet. If they fall they have only themselves to blame and that's why you don't do it because you'd have no one to blame for your own failures. You don't have the guts to do that or you would've already done it. It's easier to hide behind your union card and point fingers at others. Truth is you're jealous of those that have taken that leap and done well for themselves.
Then you go on to rewrite history and make it sound like organized labor has given us the freedoms we enjoy in this country. I hate to tell you Dr. Leftist it wasn't organized labor. It was the United States military and their members who gave us those freedoms. While many of them were union members it wasn't because of the unions that we have those freedoms today. I guess you're use to making an issue fit to your warped, twisted, leftist wacko view.

Mr. AeroMan,

Its is all about standing for what you believe is "right". Many on here don't get that, and I don't believe you would have been able to keep your food down if you had to fight in the Civil war, or the American Revelution. Just an observation.

Just my oinion on those who "coward" to the mangement types who many believe "rule the day", dictate YOUR destiny, whereby, dictate the realities.

 

[cavalier]

So what did your union dues buy you in the end?

Tax deductions?

 

[PITbull]

ROTFLMAO

The companies I was working for had elevated salaries and better benefits because there was more demand for the labor than supply. In 1998 I would have had my choice of employers at pretty much any price I wanted. I stayed where I was because things were mighty good there already. Unions weren't even remotely part of the equation.

Methinks you've been in Pittsburgh a little too long.

Hey, Charlie Brown,

methinks you've been sitting in college too long IN PITTSBURGH, for some strange reason, you obviously haven't been able to demand the salary you've been dreaming or spewing about on these boards!

PS: In 1998, we were all doing well and it was a "robust" economy. You heard no complaints from unionized workers either , thank you.

 

[Bear96]

Michael

I think it would be timely and fair to point out that the work world can be divided into two distinct groups for purposes of this discussion: the professional world where there traditionally have not been unions (i.e., the Silicon Valley IT example you brought up; and other professions such as doctors / lawyers / the finance world, etc.), and the "other half" consisting of front-line employees in traditionally unionized industries.

I would agree with you that with the former group, compensation is driven less by unionization pressure and more by basic supply-and-demand labor market forces. And I would agree with you that there are plenty of examples where organized labor has outlived its usefulness and in some cases can even be detrimental to its members.

But in general, in that latter group (the "other half" I referenced above), I think it is hard to deny the improvements labor unions have made for those workers, even if they are no longer 100% unionized, which has benefitted our society as a whole, both directly and indirectly.

 

[PITbull]

And that is, ultimately, exactly the point I've been trying to make in the past couple of pages on this thread. The unions didn't prevent it from happening, and it happened in a fashion that looks eerily similar to the way it happens in nonunion companies. So what did your union dues buy you in the end?

Unions have given us fair representation, defined pension, flexibility as workers, fair wage and affordable benefits, safe environment to work in.

It has also provided that for you.

You can thank us later

 

[mweiss]

...you obviously haven't been able to demand the salary you've been dreaming or spewing about on these boards!

Heh. I'm already ahead of you on that one. Six weeks to go before fulltime employment, at a nonunion employer. Not to mention the consulting work I've been doing along the way to help pay the bills.

In 1998, we were all doing well and it was a "robust" economy. You heard no complaints from unionized workers either , thank you.

Yup. So what? My point wasn't that one would have done worse in 1998 as a union employee. Rather, it's that one wouldn't have done any better.

 

[PITbull]

Why 6 weeks to go on full time employment? You have an employer that would be waiting for you to finish? How have you been consulting? You've been on these boards every single day, and don't know where you get the time to study or write any papers...unless your Houdini.

 

[mweiss]

I think it would be timely and fair to point out that the work world can be divided into two distinct groups for purposes of this discussion

To be truly accurate, we should be looking at the work world in more then two categories:
1) The professional world, which requires college degrees
2) The skilled labor world, which generally requires some form of certification
3) The "unskilled" white-collar labor world
4) The other "unskilled" labor

Into the first category would go the doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc.
Into the second would go the pilots (though many have college degrees, it's not a prerequisite for a pilot's license) and mechanics. Many IT professionals are in this group. Blue collar also sits here.
The third group has reservations agents, gate agents, clerical workers (briefly and unPC-like called "pink-collar"), etc.
In the last group go the people stocking shelves at Wal-Mart and flipping burgers at McDonalds.

Do FAs sit in the second or third group? How about rampers?

with the former group, compensation is driven less by unionization pressure and more by basic supply-and-demand labor market forces.

But when you subdivide, the distinctions are not quite so clear. Shouldn't pilots and mechanics, who necessarily go through years of intellectual training, be in a position similar to the white-collar workers?

But in general, in that latter group (the "other half" I referenced above), I think it is hard to deny the improvements labor unions have made for those workers

It seems that the farther down the list one goes, the more unions have the opportunity benefit the workers, provided there is some form of protective "umbrella."

That umbrella comes from having sufficient coverage over the labor market to prevent the work from simply shifting to nonunion shops. This is one of the reasons that CWA is in real trouble, since it is particularly easy now to pull from a nonunion labor pool far outside the US.

 

[cavalier]

Why 6 weeks to go on full time employment? You have an employer that would be waiting for you to finish? How have you been consulting? You've been on these boards every single day, and don't know where you get the time to study or write any papers...

Maybe his employer reads these boards to get his goods in his many posts.


Seriously. Knowing U may be in my past has mellowed me. I hope I didn’t make too many enemies on these boards. Working at U makes people into something they really aren’t.

A doctor I see once in a while who is located close to U’s facilities told me this: I see on average three U employees patients daily and they all have problems that are a direct result from working under all the uncertainly. This creates stress, which breeds health problems. When my patients either leave or get furloughed, their problems simply vanish. This is the cost paid by employees to work at U, their very health, and that is sad.

 

[mweiss]

Unions have given us fair representation, defined pension, flexibility as workers, fair wage and affordable benefits, safe environment to work in.

Seventy years ago. Yes, I'm glad they did. The organizations may still have the same names, but they no longer have the same function.

Why 6 weeks to go on full time employment? You have an employer that would be waiting for you to finish?

I'm worth waiting for. :bleh:

How have you been consulting? You've been on these boards every single day

Not really. I'm on when things slow down a bit for me, and I can type quickly. Plus, I'm still doing some research related to the airline industry, so the stuff I pick up on the board helps me out.

 

[Hawk]

My sister is a VP of a company who has three huge "call centers", San Francisco, San Antonio, and Scranton. She knows what to do in order to keep unions out.

I won’t disclose the company name but they recently announced the closing of their call center in VA later this year. 250+ employees in this economically depressed area will be out on the street as this company outsourced the jobs to India. These workers started out making $320 week plus monthly incentives that could average $500-1000 month for the top sellers. I am sure that these workers wished that they had union representation.

Don’t delude the readers of this board with your one-sided rhetoric.

 

[cavalier]

Boy Hawk, you're in for it now buddy....