TechnologyCoordinator :
Artificial trade barriers are falling. The adjustment is hurting the US economy.
I live in Detroit and this isn't a popular opinion:
Unions are crippling our automotive industry. They are causing US labor to be outrageously more expensive than labor in China. There are many people in the US willing to perform these jobs for less money. This would result in more competitive automotive companies. HOWEVER, the UAW is hurting its own membership by leeching the automotive companies.
Across the Pacific the people are paid less to make the same products. And even after the overhead of shipping them across an entire ocean the prices of the automobiles are still better than ones made right in the US.
The US automotive companies have been losing billions of dollars, it's time for the unions to wake up and realize that if the keep the demands up they'll all be out of jobs.
My father worked in a machine shop for 20 years. It was a union shop. My father ran a single lathe machine making a variety of military and aircraft parts. While his machine ran he'd play his guitar because he had nothing else to do.
The company approached the union asking them to concede to a demand to make workers operate two machines at once. The union refused. The owners shut down the shop, fired all the workers, and opened up down the road under a new name as a non-union shop.
My father now works in a non-union shop making less money running three machines at once. If the union had given in to the shop ownership he could have been much better off, but they insisted on trying to make the operation unprofitable, and instead of helping the members of their union, they all ended up without jobs.
Unions have made this country great. They stood up for workers. Improved conditions. But now, some unions may be driving businesses to unprofitability.
Couldn't agree more, TC.
Unions at one point were a necessity in a growing industrial USA, but now they are killing the industry that they helped foster in the first place. I've worked in two union jobs, and while the insane pay is nice, you have many, many more problems created than solved. Everyday mix-ups and accidents on a paycheck turn into year-long drawn out battles usually ending in expensive arbitration. The company you work for will likely try to screw you over at any turn they can, because the union will screw the company itself over when it can. This is a very unhealthy way to work. At the most extreme, you have unions literally leeching a company into the ground. They would rather see the company dead and themselves out of a job, because they didn't want to give up the yearly raises or whatever.
At my present employer, it just works like it should. If I get shorted on a paycheck or something, I just call the people in Payroll and tell them whats up. They have the amount direct deposited to my account within an hour. They don't act like I'm lying to them and trying to screw the company out of money, they just fix the mistake and go on. I don't have to hear the old "If you friggin guys don't work harder, we're going to unbolt these machines and take them to China!" speech once a week. And the best part, is that if I work hard enough, I can have any job in the company I want. I don't have to put in 35 friggin years behind some lazy, good-for-nothing jackass in order to move up the stupid seniority chain and get a job that I really want.
We all work very, very hard for the company. And the company rewards us very, very well. We have parties all the time, picnics, ice cream socials, bonuses all the time, and we go to meetings with the management where they just want to tell us we're doing a good job and to keep it up.
To summarize for the A.D.D. kids. . . unions are bad. If your daddy says they're a good thing, he's an idiot.
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