Congrats to the NY union workers, who after going on strike for three days, getting 3 million dollars worth of fines, and instead of getting 3 days pay, will now be getting NOTHING, and losing SIX days of pay. HA! Thats what you get for being whiny babies, and thinking you are worth more than you really are. Most of these people get paid more than 45 THOUSAND DOLLARS! Give me a break. Anyway, just thought I would give my thoughts. Whats everyone else think?

 

haha pwn3d

 

Rofl.. ...

 

It shuts its mouth and does what its told.....b*****...lol

 

[QUOTE=madmatt]Most of these people get paid more than 45 THOUSAND DOLLARS! Give me a break. QUOTE]


That's about $20K/yr here in Nashville. Probably make that at Mickey D's.

But yea.. the strike was a mistake and made them look bad. I love the signs the bars hung in windows showing $1 more per beer if you work for Trans. lol.

 

Its just rediculous, I wouldve fired all of them, and then found people who want jobs, but cant get them because douchebags like those have them all...

 

The US is likely to be facing a major work-force crisis in the next couple of years and it is all going to stem directly from health care issues.

Healthcare expenses are up as much as 25% again this year and it is going to put this country at a serious disadvantage.

Unions are going to bankrupt this country by making negotiations that employers can not afford. GM and Ford are in a world of hurt for starters. Did you know that for every car GM sells, $2000 goes towards paying for health insurance for retirees and workers?

Our local schools were on strike for three weeks this year. My daughter has one day off for Christmas break. I work for a Fortune 500 company with excellent benefits and still pay $250 each month towards my medical insurance while the teachers pay nothing. The union wants me to pay more money in property taxes to cover the teachers that do not want to pay for insurance.

People with government and civil service type jobs need to face the music. Life is life and welcome to the real world. Most of you have jobs that are easy to replace. Stop paying your dam Union dues that allow idiots that don't care about you to get rich, and start taking personal responsibility and pay for your fair share of health insurance.

Everytime these groups strike, it is equivalent to a public relations dissaster.

Now, to play a bit of Devil's Advocate:
Personally, I think these unions are bringing a serious problem to light. In the end, they may only prove to be doing society a favor. Fact is, health insurance costs are up, but for a lot of dumb reasons. We need to pay for a insurance, but also bitch about why it is going up.

It will cost me and my employer $15,000+ to pay for medical insurance for my family this year. For some people, that is what they earn a year. The scary thing about our economic future is that it cost more money to insure a family then what most people can save each year. Think about it.

 

I agree 100% with you blake, some stuff like insurance costs have gotten rediculous, and things like that need to be addressed, and yes, unions will be the downfall of our society. Its a shame.

 

yeah, but the US economy is going to see a huge increase in outsourcing jobs to Asia. This is guna cause strikes to be less severe if non existent if people want to keep their jobs.Local unions sure yeah buses, but major companies like Ford and GM (aside fromthe downsizing) will be sending more jobs across the northern boarder to the land of less pay...The economy opperates on an "invisible Hand" system...ie just sit back relax and watch greedy and self interest steer the economy back into balance...

And while it is true Health Care is a major drag on the economy, it wouldn't change much if these companies didn't have to pay health care because the government would therefore have to pick up where these companies have left off...

Which in turn is a problem because any contract government affiliated is going to be costly. LoL, explain why certain branches of gov. spend 500$ on a new trash can or why products are always sold at the highest cost to the government. That just has to do with greedy people getting paid more. All in all blame the baby boomers, alota people are thinkin their medicare benifits are going to bankrupt America, think of all the money they will be throwing away in the the retirement arena. The gov. will get all that money back in taxes, and i'm sure someone in my generation will figure that out, tax the elderly and force them to pay for their own health care...lol

 

Do you have ANY idea how much training is involved?You can't just put someone behind the wheel of a bus and say"go drive this sumbitch!" Better yet do you have any idea how many people DO apply when these tests are given?Or how many people go in thinking its a bs cake job,last a month and say "screw this,you can't pay me enough"?I've been driving city transit in Denver for 11 years,most people can't take it.True it doesn't take a genius to do what I do.However it's not as simple as it looks.
Blame the union leaders.Those ****ers are evil.

 

Im sorry if I offended you. I know how hard it is to drive all those huge buses and stuff, I just dont know if they should be paid what the union in NY is wanting to charge. Yes, the Union leaders are the cause, but to me, its stupid to go on strike for 3 damn days, losing 6 days of pay, COMPLETELY screwing the city of new york as far as transportation, and getting absolutely nothing. My biggest issue was the fact that they blatently knew that there was no striking allowed, and instead of talking about it, they go on strike, and they want some rediculous amount of money. Its just not going to happen. Hope I didnt step on too many toes.

 

Say what you want about unions. We Americans enjoy the best standard of of living in the world. Health care costs are rising because our goverment refuses to address the real problems. (1) Millions of illegal immigrants and lazy people who do not pay into the system (only take from it) are bankrupting our social security system..... (2) Jury awards against people in the medical field are ridiculous and need to be brought under control....Last but not least and a little off subject.... We spend too much money coddling to the murderers and child molesters in prison....they are there for a reason and it costs a bunch of money to keep them there...I say KILL EM..........BTW...I can only take so much of this BS and when I run for president..can I have your vote?

 

Bravo! Mike you nailed it!

My biggest concern about unions in general though is that they are outdated and don't care about anythng but themselves...not the workers, not the business.

I work in heavy industry as a consultant and have been for 15 years. I have probably been in 100+ production facilities and regularly with dozens of them. I can tell you within three minutes after stepping foot on a property if a place is unionized or not.

Why?

People in union jobs tend to stay in those same jobs for years and years and years. Comared with a non-union plant, there is practically no upward mobility. Unions foster medocrity plane and simple. I know of not one single, great production facility that has a union. Most of them, just get by as management is hampered by the ability to make the best decisions for businesses.

The best companies are always non-union that I see by far.

We may need unions, just not the ones we have now. Unions needs to be focused on the success of the company, when this happens there are jobs galore and companies can pay larger salaries. To focus on the business properly, you need to think about the customer ALWAYS, not some stupid union.

Also, to clear a point based on fact, expect there to be a record amount of capital to be spent this year! There have already been a record amount of applications for credit and such being submitted by companies in the US for plant expansion and such. This si a very good sign for the economy and is proof that companies are re-investing in themselves and not moving oversees to the extent that was originally thought. Why? Stability!

The world has gorwn increasingly unstable, but not in the US. Compaines are starting to see that they would rather spend more money in the US than abroad for fear of loosing everything.

Expect to see a record breaking year this year for the stock-market.

 

You would be pissed off too if you were close to retirement age (55) and all of a sudden they wanna change the retirement age to 62! Unions CAN work, but everybody has to be in it together. Here at "The Sheriff's Office" we have just been allowed to unionize and I dont really know how it's gonna shake out. I know the deputies aren't gonna agree as a whole on any one issue and it has kinda hurt us in our last contract. To make a long story short it was all about $$ and when the Sheriff waved a few dollars in front of everybodies face the majority agreed to just take the money and run. the very senior guys really took it in the shorts, while some of us got a $2 an hour raise.

 

Yeah, unions are gonna bankrupt this country. I'm sure GM will go down the drain in a few years or so. They are sucking companies dry and all they are going to do is force companies like GM and Ford to declare themselves bankrupt so they can go to other contries open up new plants and not worry about all this union crap.

 

But the bigger question should be:

How does the public benefit? If they do, and the public sees it, the Union will succeed and so will the workers. Everyone wins. But I am sure that during neogotions and voting, the public's best interest were never brought up.

 

We were faced with that same situation a few months ago with BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and they are literally the highest paid transit workers in the country and they wanted more, and guess who that extra cost gets passed on to! The public! The two things that upset me was that the union didn't seem to care about passing the cost to the public, as long as they got what they wanted. The other thing was they didn't care the transit system has cut hundreds of millions of dollars over the past few years....so it's like they didn't care if the transit system was even further in the hole.

The thing that was really funny about the NY strike was that I heard on the news NY State was fining the union $1 million for each day they were on strike and that particular union only had $3 million in assets! ha ha ha....no wonder it didn't last very long....now their workers didn't get paid for a couple of days and the union is broke!

 

Yeah it seems like they make a lot of money.But look at the area of the country you're talking about.NYC and the surrounding metro area have a high cost of living.As for BART,that's San Fran and their cost of living is just as bad if not worse than NYC.As far as GM,they can't lay the blame completely on the UAW.IMHO,Gm makes a lousy product.I can think of only one vehicle,the Corvette,that I would even consider buying.If I wanted a family sedan,SUV,truck,van,etc.,the LAST place I would visit would be a GM showroom.Their vehicles are bland at best.