Speakeasy forum: You talk about greedy corporations?

BUT....

YOU HAVE a problem with greedy Unions?

Examples, please........just so I'll know what you are actually talking about and not having to guess for a change.

advocated that everyone.....repeat EVERYONE......should pay their fair share, not target only the wealthy who have risked personally to get where they are today. So, if that means increasing or having people at the lower end also pay something, then yes.......

greedy, they just want to keep their jobs exactly as they are now. On this point, I find myself agreeing with you, except insofar as greedy Corporations deal in vastly larger sums of money, which all goes to the top management, not everybody. the Untion desire is that everyone at work should share in money now at risk

There's no point in celebrating more job loss, particularly well paid ones.

rob

Then they'll rise against us and can you argue against machine? SKYNET! it'll become "self-aware".

http://media.soundonsound.com/images/forum/graemlins/beamup.gif

I'll be back. Keep the unions, at least you can fire them, right. -----Willy

the best I can figure is that they get a guaranteed salary plus a bonus if they have to actually do work.

I see something about 32 bucks an hour guaranteed plus "royalty" which is paid either by container or tonnage moved. If there are no ships to unload or their day is short, they get the hourly guarantee for a full day's work. I'm not disputing the hourly pay. If they're required to show up even if it's slow, they should get paid. I don't know how the bonus or royalty works and that's what I noted in my post. Can you explain it and why it's justly deserved? I know that in some sales jobs, the salesmen get a "draw" and commission on what they sell. The draw is a guaranteed salary as long as they are retained. It's not a large sum. A salesman who doesn't do well, is not retained. He will lose his job in a big hurry if he doesn't produce.

There's no doubt that automation has shifted the available work but it sounds like the longshoreman's union's objective was to preserve things as they were so far as compensation is concerned. Here's what I could find about this particular event and issue.

http://www.telegram.com/article/20121229/NEWS/112299997/1002/BUSINESS

It would seem that what management is offering is just in that it will not affect current workers. They will continue to be paid as before. It will affect future hiring cycles which should bring things in line with modern work practices and job reality. What's wrong with that? We sometimes need to move on, I'd think. If the new policy doesn't attract enough workers and compensation is the issue, adjustments can be made to accommodate the requirements of that newer work force. They are the ones who will be affected. You and I won't other than that we could possibly see some reduction in the price of overseas goods. Of course we don't want overseas goods, do we? So maybe we should triple the pay of the longshoreman and drive up the prices to encourage USA made products? You tell me.

but what else is new? Romney gave away his entire inheritance that he got from his father and started from scratch. If I remember Bill Gates' history correctly, he quit college. If you read Bush's autobiography, he also began at the bottom, but had friends while growing up that were helpful to him in getting investors for his ventures. If you look back at the 'Men Who Built America" (John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan), only one or two actually had money to begin with. The rest had the ability to look at a situation or invention and realize immediately how it could be made better, found investors, and forged ahead. You don't like hearing about how people actually have the ability to use their brain to get ahead and not just use it to read a book.......add to that brain capacity, the willingness to work your butt off to achieve your goal, and you have a new entrepreneur who measures his success on whether he's happy with stopping there or wanting to go further and branch out. Usually branching out means reinvesting in that successful company and expanding it......which also means hiring people to help with that......which also means feeding into the economy.

Not everybody makes it to the top 1%.....but not everybody even WANTS to, Rob......unfortunately, with this administration, ANY success is something they see as money in the government's pocket to spend with no effort put into helping that company become successful. The incentive to succeed dries up when you have a greedy government who sees nothing but opportunities for taxes.....and when the incentive to go further is gone, you end up with millions on foodstamps and the government controls their lives at every level.

Some history......my uncle was a longshoreman when the Cleveland docks were pretty busy back in the 50's. A large crated cargo box was being hoisted on a chain to swing to the dock off a ship and it broke...the box fell on my uncle, paralyzing him for life. My aunt personally kept him at home until he past away in the early 80's and cared for him every day......without ever a visit from any of his union reps or buddies and no offers of help. Insurance wouldn't pay for a nursing home (great benefits, right?) so she was his nurse. He was too young for his 'retirement' benefits and/or pension, so in addition to Social Security Disability checks for all those years, he got a small $100 check from the union every month. He died in early 1980.....she applied for his pension and widow's benefits......and died one week after he did...their daughters had her buried with him. Nobody ever collected his benefits, because their daughters were adults by then and his contract refused to pay out the pension saying that the way it was written only his wife would have been entitled to it. BTW....the contract also for the entire time he was disabled called for his dues and health insurance to continue to be paid for, which was why he only got that $100 a month........those 'bills' were deducted before they cut that check.

I saw something on tv last night that indicated that NY and another port (possibly NJ) ALONE at one time had nearly triple the total of longshoremen that are at the heart of ALL of the ports now from Maine to Texas. That's how far down the union has gone with losing membership due to automation for shipyards. It's hard to believe that a mere 16,000 longshoremen could actually shut down the entire East Coast AND the Gulf and pretty much destroy not only the economy single-handedly but thousands of lives along with it. We have another 30 days to see if they call the strike or if BO grows a pair and stands up to them and uses the Taft-Hartley Act to rein them in.

They want the power and rights of ownership without actually owning it. Didn't they use to call that "racketeering"?

by saying "Pretty please".