Discussing unions on radio tomorrow

Sounds interesting. I hate to miss it. But, at that time of day I will be listing to Sean Hannity on WIMA. I would probley agree with you Tom, when it comes to the Unions. I don't think we should bail them out.

Can't seem to get a live feed but (Militarymum) I have downloaded and listened to the podcasts at a later date.

Sorry...Militarymom.

This should be interesting, Tom, since it appears someone must have tacked your column up on the bulletin board in the breakroom over at Ford (judging from the new posters crawling out of the woodwork to beat you over the head for daring speak out against their precious unions.) I bet they'll let the whole line shut down tomorrow just to listen to the radio at 3:30...they'll probably fight over who gets to call in.

LOL@ Susan.
I like you!
I truley don't want to see Ford or any ohter US company go under. BUT, if the workers are not willing to help save their jobs, then I have no sympathy for them. If they won't give a little, why should I?
Trust me, if they were out of work, and came looking for something to eat, I would feed them. But I am damn tired of throwing good money after bad.

Exactly right, danimal. I've known a number of people who worked at Ford that I really liked, so I'm certainly not hoping they all lose their jobs. But like you said, the workers need to be willing to help save their own jobs. This is one of the big problems with unions, in my opinion, unions are very very powerful and at some places of employment, employees have no choice in whether or not they are in the union, and if they do have a choice, there is extreme pressure to be in the union whether they want to or not. When the union decides they are going to stick it to the bosses for all they can get, the employees who really do have the right idea and want to help the company as a whole have very little say in the matter.

Susan, etal
Yes union shops are most often 'closed shops'. You have to join and pay huge initiation fees, I have heard of them as high as $400, for the honor of joining. Then they take, on average, about 2-3 hours of your pay per month for dues, and can raise them at will.
Many places now have 'casual' workers who are not in full time status but do work 40-60 hours per week. They are not union 'members' but are still required to pay on average, one half of the dues, with NO REPRESNTATION. Laughable.
I have spoken to as many of my friends I could that work at Honda, and their supplier plants, and low and behold, I can find none that have any horor stories about how they are abused amd made to do sweatshop work, get fired for no reason, etc. Infact all say they like the job, and managment is fair. Seems funny that the unions tout "protecting the workers" as their main reason for being there, when it's been proven that a good company with good wages and benifits can get it done BETTER with no union.
And union 'brotherhood? Thats a joke. The only time these folks are brothers is when it's contract time and they threaten to bankrupt a company by striking if they don't get what they want. The rest of the time, they screw each other and have the every man for themself, I-me-mine attitude. Seen it. Belong to a union myself, and although a union 'could be a good thing', all I ever see is them trying to save workers that need to be tossed out and replaced with someone willing to come to work and do the job the agreed to when they got hired.

WELL said, danimal!

I saw someone say something about unions being needed to protect this country from things like child labor (who was it that mentioned 6year olds working in factories or something like that...). There are actually people under that extremely outdated misperception that unions are what's keeping fair labor practices in this country. Way back in the day, more than the 50 or 60 years ago that I've heard touted, yes, there were unfair labor practices. BUT, we have LAWS now that make it illegal to hire child labor as well as most other unfair labor practices. We did not have any of those laws back then, so the creation of unions did serve a very useful and important purpose. We don't NEED unions to protect us from all those things anymore.

What's to discuss. Unionism is the only legal form of extortion that exists.

Dr Doom,
What insight you have.
And to top it off, the unions want to take away the secret ballot in elections (union elections)....they want to know who voted for who and why. And Last I heard Obama supports that crap too. Gee, I wonder why they want to know?
But you are right, remember when (and still do) folks running buisnesses had to PAY someone (mafia maybe?) for protection? Sounds a lot like unions don't it?
If I can't sleep, I'll just go out to Ford and count the (blind) sheep as they change shifts!~

I'm listening intently. What a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that I'm listening to this radio show together with every Ford employee right this very minute from the comfort of my own living room.

Well, that was certainly interesting. Let's see, Tom had the Department of Labor figures as his source to back up his assertion and the most Jeff Rex could do was accuse Tom of fudging the numbers for some sort of shock value. When Tom disagreed with Rex and gave his information from the Dept. Of Labor, all Rex would come back with was the "You'll never convince me...." line. Sure wasn't much of a debate.

How does the Detroit three survive making smaller more fuel efficent cars when they were losing money selling big expensive vehicles. There cost structure will not allow them to be profitable in a small vehicle market. by the way, they will now be competing against comanies that have been building these type vehicles for decades.

William, I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're saying. But, with the price of gas so high (up until just a month ago), how could they possibly continue to be successful if they don't make smaller, more fuel efficient cars? The price of gas seems cheap to us right now, but I think it's fairly common knowledge that this is only a temporary reprieve. Yes, they will have to compete against companies that have already been building these smaller more efficient cars, but it seems to me they have no choice. They either have to compete or stay the same and suffer the consequences.

Well let's see, GM<FORD and Chrysler gave a lot of money away in the form of buy-outs to employees who already have a better pension than most people have. Needless to say them retirees are being paid more per hour to be retired than most people earn who still work. Now they want all the taxpayers to reimburse them for this action. If they would have made them people go to work instead of handing them this money my guess they woul have retired of old age just like the rest of us. I for one will never buy another new Union made car or truck from the BIG Three if I am forced to bail them out. I say let the the Big Three and the UAW solve their own problem, they created it.

Dockdabber,
I am with you on that!!!

I am an employee at the engine plant. Just looked at my total compensation package, this is everything for a year. Total benefits 28,000 dollars for everything Pension,life insurance, health care etc.. Figure it out Less than 14 dollars an hour. Add that to my base wage and we are on par with the transplants. If you listened, Tom wasn't real sure what his 70 dollar an hour figure meant. I am sure what my confidential personal compensation report says. In todays paper, anti union chief Jim Jordan used the same amount as Tom. Could it be that there are folks out there that are willing to cost 300 million jobs in order to bust the unions. A whole bunch of those jobs aren't union so when Mr. Jordan talks about taking care of families, I question his intent.

Dilbert said, "todays paper, anti union chief Jim Jordan used the same amount as Tom. Could it be that there are folks out there that are willing to cost 300 million jobs in order to bust the unions. "

I don't want to see 300 million jobs go down the drain, but if you guys don't take concessions, the job losses are on your heads. You are over-paid, while most of us, including your vendors, are underpaid. You take the cuts first, then maybe we might reconsider.

Yeah, what she said.

Hey Dilbertpickle, How about you do one little thing for me.
Justify your wage by explaining EXACTLY what you do at work. ie: What is your exact piece of the assembly process.
And don't give me some crap about having to learn every job in the plant. That is a falsehood. Besides,I can pull a motor out of any car or truck on the planet, dissasemble, repair reassemble, and reinstall it by myself. So try to be objective and tell me what little chunk of plastic you screw in place. I bet they don't even hand drive the pistons into the block anymore. Or you just watch a robot all day long?

AND FURTHERMORE,
These behemoths, the big 3,...they want the $$$$ AND they want NO OVERSIGHT?
Like AIG etal? NO oversight or regulation?
BULLHOCKY....I want reciepts damn it. Every freekin dollar accounted for. An auditor, hired by the FED, (creates a job there) to oversee and count every $$$, and report who it went to and when, and what for. Even if it goes on Dillybars paycheck...I want to know.
So BIG 3....take some pay cuts, pay more for your own health care, and show me who got MY money. Not too much ta ask eh?

The Japanese and Korean companies got your money. We have been subsidizing them for the last 25 years. Do you have your line item report on them. 25 Billion is a drop in a bucket to the amount of tax money that we have abated for these companies. At one plant in Alabama it is estimated that the tax payers paid 170,000 dollars per job. And the profits go back to Japan.

Dillpickle,
And the wages (remember this is Alabama) go to buy fatback and chittlins to feed to wife and family...etc. At least they are jobs. The big 3 have spent the last 30 years shipping jobs to third world countries and Mexico, at the same time time, Japan, Korea etal have been investing and building here...ummm and which ones are winning the race? Those folks in Alabama, Marysville, Indiana...and on and on, are damn glad Toyota, Honda, Hayundai etc have seen that we, as Americans, have a good work force and bring jobs here while our own brands jump ship.
The one and ONLY reason the rank and file voted to let the companies in the big 3 outsource some jobs was because they saw a benifit in the way of better wages and healthcare for themselves. And no other reason. Again it was the greed of the rank and file . Nothing more, nothing less.
I have been in union contract meetings, I hear the same things from our people....
If you give up this, you will have a chance to get that.....
And for that matter, the Big 3 get their share of tax abatements too, on the city, state and federal level. So what is your point again?

So Dilbert, are you saying all the Honda, Toyota, etc plants in this country should close up and we should be OK with losing all those American jobs? Or do you think the American auto makers are going to hire on all the out of work people left behind when we boot out the foreign auto makers?

Actually, I welcome the transplant companies here because it does create jobs. The problem that I have is that the Japanese government does not support foriegn investment in the Japanese Auto industry. Nor does the Korean Gov. Just look at the number of vehicles imported from Korea and Japan compared to the number exported to these counties. Do you realize that there has never been a Toyota Prius made in the USA. If they did and GM, Ford and Chrystler had a presense in the Japaese and Korean Auto industry, I would not have an argument with you. Our leadership continues to call for "free trade" but unfortunately we are the only country that is inviting foriegn investment. If that ever happens, may the best companies win. Until then, it is a race to the bottom for US manufacturing. By the way, all of the transplants are doing business in third worl countries also. There has been a net loss in Automotive jobs in this country because the transplants do all of thier Research and Developement, testing, design etc., at home.I am not on here to argue, just to make sure that everybody hears both sides of the discussion before forming an opinion.

Dilbert,
One big problem. BY the time we make and ship American autos over there...they are even higher priced than they are here. Way over the others, for less economy. No wonder they don't buy as many.