Damned Unions!
 

HOW UNIONS HELPED CREATE AMERICA

- Weekends
- All Breaks at Work, including your Lunch Breaks
- Paid Vacation
- FMLA
- Sick Leave
- Social Security
- Minimum Wage
- Civil Rights Act/Title VII (Prohibits Employer Discrimination)
- 8-Hour Work Day
- Overtime Pay
- Child Labor Laws
- Occupational Safety & Health Act (OSHA)
- 40 Hour Work Week
- Worker’s Compensation (Worker’s Comp)
- Unemployment Insurance
- Pensions
- Workplace Safety Standards and Regulations
- Employer Health Care Insurance
- Collective Bargaining Rights for Employees
- Wrongful Termination Laws
- Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967
- Whistleblower Protection Laws
- Employee Polygraph Protect Act (Prohibits Employer from using a lie detector test on an employee)
- Veteran’s Employment and Training Services (VETS)
- Compensation increases and Evaluations (Raises)
- Sexual Harassment Laws
- Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)
- Holiday Pay
- Employer Dental, Life, and Vision Insurance
- Privacy Rights
- Pregnancy and Parental Leave
- Military Leave
- The Right to Strike
- Public Education for Children
- Equal Pay Acts of 1963 & 2011 (Requires employers pay men and women equally for the same amount of work)
- Laws Ending Sweatshops in the United States

They have outlived their usefulness . . . . years ago.

The BULK of the list above certainly HAS NOT outlived its usefulness. A few items, maybe - but for the most part it is still a very sensible list of employee rights. Rights that the rich would love to eliminate, so their dominance over 98% of the populace can be total.

The BULK of the list is stuff you will get today, with or without a union.

you're voluntarily going to be giving up all these union-won rights?

Until you no longer get them...

all that shit goes away if there are no unions? how does that work?

better vote to find out

That was a sarcastic question, right?

i'm self-employed, sadly, none of that applies! :1orglaugh

of course, but the question still stands. yes, unions sorted a lot of shit out and good things came from them, but they are an antiquated notion in 2011.

I totally agree... :thumbsup:thumbsup

For someone that speaks English your reading comprehension really sucks.

Why would you no longer get them? Most are LAW now.

i would be more inclined to embrace unions if they did not artificially inflate wages and protect lazy/inept workers.

There are 3 dozen bullet points above.

Please point out which item(s) are now "antiquated".

Totally agree, they are just leeches now on the working man :2 cents:

How about point out the ones that are not protected by law now.

not sure how you gathered that. i said they served their purpose and those are nice things but they do not go away when unions are done away with.

what positive contributions have unions made in the last 5-10 years?

those are great benefits, if you work for a company who provides them or doesnt pay you as a 1099 :1orglaugh:1orglaugh

I think that people are more upset with public unions than private unions. The size and power several of the public unions have is just ridiculous. For anyone to deny that, is silly.

Quality of life issues shouldn't expire.

The EPA was formed in 1970, under Richard Nixon.

Using your logic, that's ancient history now, so why do we need the EPA any more? We don't need clean air and water anymore.. that was soooo yesterday.

I came her to damn some unicorns and now I'm totally bummed.
Being sick sucks! YOu start seeing unicorns everywhere.

no, using your analogy, under my logic there would be no richard nixon any more. :)

Laws change all the time. Once politicians have the ability to change laws without resistance, they will do so. Our government is no longer run by "the people" and no longer cares about most of us... it is bought and paid for by corporations, and big business hates unions. Killing off unions will only make our political system EVEN MORE unbalanced (as impossible as that may sound).

What does the EPA or Richard Nixon have to do with whether or not unions are still useful?

Programs and policies shut down all the time. They are shutting down the Congress page program, it no longer serves its purpose. Should Congress be shut down, too? Wait, that's kind of a loaded question...

only a multi-millionaire or a stupid person would think that.

Okay, you win! :1orglaugh

So you discredit what the unions brought all of us, by removing them? That's stupid.... what about the newly added points? What about future added points? What about the fact that it's still not all equal and they continue to fight for more today, for you, for all of us, for those that have no voice?


But that list is BECAUSE of unions.... and BULK doesn't mean all, so without a union, you clearly don't get all the benefits, and just like without, we probably wouldn't have much of the benefits we have today.


The question should be.. what goes away in the future without unions? If it took unions to build that list, what does the future hold for workers without the power in the future?

i'm open for answers to that.

Unions are horrible.

I worked at the local Telephone company in the 1990s - Pacific Bell. I worked in operator services, as a 411 operator. It was stunning. Any high school graduate could get a job there, and the amount of money they paid was obscene - $70k a year (and this was twenty years ago!).

The staff was mostly older people - protected by the unions. Get a job there, do the basic minimum, and you can work for the next twenty years without working all too hard. After a few years I began to transition into management and had to do employee reviews - and it was comical because 90% of the staff hit the basic minimum requirements, never did anything more, and when you looked over their stats you see that's exactly how they did since day one. Why bother to do more when the Union protects you?

:1orglaugh

actually not tryig to win here, i just don't see any reason for unions going forward. other than pointing back in time and showing what they did when labor laws were non-existent, weak, etc.. is there any proof that they will not create the negative consequences they are known for and also make a positive contribution?

i don't see it.

In canada we have the employment standards act that protects workers. All unions do is make sure all public workers are overpaid. The farce that ensues every time police have to renew their contracts is pathetic, just as one example. We have a union in our own family business and all it does it cost the workers money. Good old CAW.

just like torture is against the law?

I can answer it... many of the super corps would continue to push and fund new laws, that remove old laws, which allows them to work around current regs. Basically legal ways to screw us over. Exactly like what has been happening, and without the workers voice and power to say, hell no, we will continue to get walked all over.

Should I go into how the Steam Engine changed the world? That being said, we not longer need the steam engine any more than we need the Unions.

It's 2011, wake up and smell the Iced Latte.

Does every corp in Canada have a union? Of course not.... Unions don't form in corps that take care of employees.

So you held a $70K a year job in the 1990's, and decided to voluntarily leave?

I guess you did the right thing, as soon thereafter Pacific Bell was bought out by AT&T, who instantly cut the workforce by nearly half.

The big corporations... ummm, I mean. "the job creators" fixed the imbalance for you.

These were the days ...

http://www.mindserpent.com/American_...slavemark.jpeg

We dont need to arm the citizenry either. The king of england is not going to come slap us around, so it's useless antiquated notion. Please remove it, ty.

Seems we need them enough that another act on equal pay standards had to be put through... almost like, corps were still trying to fuck a person over due to gender... but yeah, it's 2011, corps are perfect today, they would never screw anyone over in the modern times.

:thumbsup :thumbsup :thumbsup

i see, makes sense except for you stating the problem is currently happening and we have unions.

example-

OP cited
but in truth, congress said nope.
http://www.aclu.org/womens-rights/se...ss-act-forward

unions had no impact.

see what i am getting at? they do not help against issues such as you mention, at the same time they increase wages/costs and protect less than average work effort.

Dyna mo, I am your father...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2637/...d3a16a9c2e.jpg

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

that explains a lot of why we disagree! :thumbsup

Uggg..... fine, unions all over every State have been putting in rights for gays and lesbians, because they HAVE BEEN discriminated against.

They help against issues none of us could dream of.

Once your corp has reached a level of needing a union, it's already too late. Unions don't come about when corps treat employees fairly, pay fairly, and overall respect the worker. And unions are still being formed today.... so clearly, they're needed.

http://www.tshirthell.com/shirts/products/a974/a974.gif


as an employee you love unions, as employer you hate them and being self-employed you don't bother - isn't it like that?

haha what a joke. They get their foot in one door in an industry, example: nursing homes, and then they basically strong arm their way into almost every business in that industry. It has nothing to do with companies not taking care of their employees. They come in, lie to them and tell them they can get them wages that are impossible to achieve, then once they are in and the employees realize they were lied to, it is impossible to get rid of them.

This is from first hand experience.

I was making a lot more than $70k a year when I left.

I worked there five years to the day. I was disgusted by what I saw. I was fresh out of the Marine Corps, highly motivated, and wanted to excel at everything. I worked there a year and was in charge of 250 people who had zero incentive to work harder. It drove me up the wall.

Pacific Bell didn't care much either. They were the local phone company and they were guaranteed to make money - If you wanted a phone, you had to have Pac Bell. The entire company had the same issue - why try harder because we are guaranteed money?

(The only upside to that job was that operator services was mostly staffed by chicks - I was one of five guys who worked at an office with 400 chicks in it!)

You seem to think unions just form out of thin air in businesses that must be mistreating employees. How do you then explain the CAW (Canadian Auto Workers) expanding to almost every nursing home in the province of Ontario, even taking over other unions that were already in place? What great knowledge they have with the nursing home industry, with all their experience in auto plants.

If you think this is about righting wrongs or protecting employees you are sadly mistaken. It is just another business, and the various unions will even fight amongst each other and try to force other unions out of an industry so they can line their pockets. Our employees actually had to take a cut in pay after the union came into place. What a joke. And that's not including the incredible amount of union dues they have to pay.

Does no good today, many employers do not follow that list at all anymore when a business is wage-subsidized by state/provincial and federal levels of government. Gone are the days of being able to spend time with family on same day your spouse is off. Gone are days of your job waiting for you after sick/maternity leave. You're likely put into a lesser position if not laid off upon return and gone are the days of a guarantee of not getting fired for calling in sick or refusing extra shifts.