Raises All Around!

“"We support these efforts because of the valuable, mutually beneficial partnership the government-run union offers and because of their commitment to assisting businesses in our growth and development in China,” said Kevin Gardner, a Wal-Mart spokesman.”

Hey, I’m all for that, Wal-Mart employees belonging to a ‘government-run union”, who has a ‘commitment to assisting businesses in growth”!!  A union that is a “mutually beneficial partnership”, instead of an “adversarial” union, like the SEIU or the UFCW!!  Too bad, we don’t have government-run unions in this country, (except the country itself), wonder when are they going to start one?  Everyone knows how well the government runs things, ask Alex in Ontario!!  Let’s see, National Healthcare, why not a government-run union, working in partnership with business, like the unions in China!!  Yep, sounds good!!

WMW should be careful about what they BRAG about!!

Too bad, we don’t have government-run unions in this country...

Why, RDS, you’re a closet Marxist.

While Chinese unions may be interested in business “growth and development” they have demonstrated they are also interested in improving the lot of Chinese workers.

Does taking that quote ‘out-of-context’ change the meaning?

Ken V: Do you ever wonder to what flag RDS pledges allegiance?

Ken V,

“Why, RDS, you’re a closet Marxist.”

And, I see you can’t spot sarcasm!!  I’m for LESS government interference in people’s lives, not more, remember, I’m for ‘personal responsibility’, not the government being responsible for those who refuse to take responsibility for their own lives!!  I think your side refers to that as ‘social responsibility’!!

“While Chinese unions may be interested in business “growth and development” they have demonstrated they are also interested in improving the lot of Chinese workers.”

That was my point, sorry you missed it!!  I’m all for the interests of workers, but, many of the unions today, don’t have an interest in a businesses ‘growth and development’, what good is helping the employees, if you kill the company they work for and they end up out of a job?

WMW seems to give the impression, that a Chinese union and a U.S. union are one in the same!!  They claim, because Wal-Mart employees are represented by a union in China, the employees here are somehow being deprived of the same benefit!!

Besides, isn’t it your side’s view, that we should say “Screw the Chinese, they are communists, so send them back to the rice paddies”?  So why do you care if the unions there are interested in their workers?

ddrb,

“Do you ever wonder to what flag RDS pledges allegiance?”

That’s easy, the one Screwedby hates to see people wave, “The Stars and Stripes”, “OLD GLORY”!!  Your problem is, you don’t know that there are different ways to ‘skin a cat’, you think there is only one way, YOURS!!

...many of the unions today, don’t have an interest in a businesses ‘growth and development’...

Since there’s “many” you shouldn’t have any problem giving us examples. I’m not particularly tuned into union activity but whenever I hear about unions on the news it’s stories about how they are making concessions to keep their respective companies alive.

Please give us a few instances where unions are killing their employers.

Ken V,

“Please give us a few instances where unions are killing their employers.”

It wouldn’t make any difference, you wouldn’t believe it anyhow, you would just say it was a management problem!!  And, you are right, many unions have been giving concessions, but, that is only because they priced their labor too high to begin with!!

Check this out:

Discussion On the Future Of the American Labor Movement

Labor Advocate Online

by Bill Onasch

Does Their Doom Have To Be Ours?
Organized labor, as present generations of active workers know it, is doomed.... They started out with more to give back, largely the result of past gains won by heroic struggles in the Thirties and Forties. Their concessions have been incremental...a little less time off here, a little less on cost-of-living there. The fittest local bureaucrats survived the plant closings through whip-sawing--offering various give-backs...to convince the employer to close some other UAW plant. The Solidarity House bureaucracy artfully maintained a greatly reduced base of relatively well compensated active members and retirees–until now.

The UAW officials have simply been the best case example of the American trade union bureaucracy. They proved to be less inept then many of their colleagues sitting astride other unions but, in the end, are about to meet a similar fate. They can no longer disguise how the same trends that have battered the labor movement as a whole–such as union density–have undermined them as well.

At the end of World War II the auto industry, including all of its major parts suppliers, was virtually one hundred percent organized. Today about forty percent of American made cars are built in nonunion transplants.

The UAW has failed in every one of its periodic attempts to organize assembly plants opened by Japanese, Korean, and German employers. Except for deals cut with spin-offs from the Big Three they have had little success in organizing restructured parts suppliers. The UAW wagons have had to constantly tighten their ever shrinking circle.

Now the entire American union bureaucracy knows there is a crisis–at least to the extent it affects them. Fewer dues payers undermine their employment security and deprive them of assets to offer in bartering with politicians.

Over the past year some of them have engaged in a “debate” about labor’s future. There was even a split among them with unions representing about forty percent of the membership leaving the AFL-CIO to establish a new federation–Change to Win. But this debate didn’t amount to a hill of beans. The class collaborationist strategy practiced by this bureaucracy needs to be replaced–not fragmented. If that’s not done today’s mainstream unions will become increasingly irrelevant and will eventually fade from the scene entirely.

While there is no reason to expect the present union bureaucracy, at least as a group, to reform itself there is still, in my opinion, an opportunity to reform our union institutions.

First of all, we should recognize there are some small unions that never completely succumbed to mainstream class collaboration such as the UE, California Nurses Association, and Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC). There are local unions here and there that have maintained militant, democratic practices that set them apart as well. They are worth supporting and can be useful, sometimes even inspiring examples for others.

(continued)

First of all, we should recognize there are some small unions that never completely succumbed to mainstream class collaboration such as the UE, California Nurses Association, and Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC). There are local unions here and there that have maintained militant, democratic practices that set them apart as well. They are worth supporting and can be useful, sometimes even inspiring examples for others.

American health care is not a public service but a commodity, dominated by private companies, with costs subject to what the marketplace will bear.

Such coverage is almost always tied to an employer–though employers are under no legal obligation to offer plans and forty percent of them don’t. Millions of other workers can’t afford to pay the required employee contribution where insurance is offered and they must go without. Add in the self-employed, ineligible for group plan rates, and you come up with a total of over 45 million working Americans without access to health care.

The union bureaucracy must share the blame for this disgrace. Private health insurance plans tied to an employer first arose on a major scale during the Second World War--as a way of getting around the wartime wage freeze. “Fringe benefits” such as health insurance were approved by government regulators as being outside the constraints on wages. Kaiser was among the first employers to embrace health care as a fringe, providing it to the tens of thousands of workers assembled in their California shipyards around the Permanente River. It worked so well they spun off today’s health care giant, Kaiser Permanente.

After the war, when working class parties in other countries were guaranteeing not only health care, but also pensions and vacations through legislation covering all workers, the leaders of the AFL and CIO decided to keep such fringes tied to contracts with the employer. These far-sighted labor statesmen thought this would make their unions more attractive. If workers wanted such benefits then they should join the union.

To be competitive in the labor market many nonunion employers started offering fringe plans of their own, undercutting their use as an organizing tool. Thanks to the union bureaucrats, union workers who lose their jobs lose their health insurance as well and often their pensions too. Whenever they change employers they have to start accumulating seniority based vacation time all over again.

Of course, these fringe benefits always came at a cost to workers–even when there was no money directly deducted from their paychecks. They were paid for with employer funds, costed out during negotiations, that could have otherwise gone to wages.

Ongoing costs of health care, and cumulative liabilities for pensions, have grown enormously in the post-war period. The cost of health care in the marketplace is beyond control of either the employer or the union. They can only bargain over how much the company will agree to pay toward this cost.

In light of this new, sharpened escalation of class war, it seems to me we should all at least be talking to one another and looking for ways to fight back where and how we can.

Their concessions have been incremental...a little less time off here, a little less on cost-of-living there.

Wow! After reading that I may be nauseous from the (((((spinning))))). Bill Onasch is right about one thing though. We can blame the current state of the US economy on bureucrats alright, just not labor bureaucrats but management bureaucrats! When the US auto industry led the world, they were unionized. That didn’t change. What changed was management got fat and lazy and the rest of the world ran them over.

All that aside, RDS, I’m still waiting on a few of the “many” unions that are actively killing their companies? Go ahead and give me some examples whether I believe them or not.

What’s good for Wal-Mart is BAD for America!

Ken V,

Guess you didn’t read close enough, the article mentioned the UAW and the AFL-CIO, that’s 2!!

And, it’s funny that you think this is ‘spinning’, as it was written by a Labor Advocate person and is PRO Labor!!  Guess, you will only believe things that are ‘rosey to your cause’, sometimes, the truth hurts and problems get ignored, because people don’t want to believe or deal with it, the Congress does it all the time!!  You are a ‘finger pointer’, yelling “it’s their fault” and failing to see that there is enough blame to go around for everybody!!  It has been said before, “We allowed this to happen”, so trying to push the blame off on someone else, is ignoring the real problems!!

trust me a union at wm wont get more money or better anything especially from the ufcw.take it from me being an ex ufcw union member and witnesing up close their poor tactics,laziness and refusal to fight hard for full time work and living wages for all grocery workers across america

..so trying to push the blame off on someone else, is ignoring the real problems!!

You don’t read very carefully either, RDS. Like I said..

The US auto industry was unionized when we led the world. Blaming the decline of the uto industry on unions is “trying to push the blame off on someone else, is ignoring the real problems!!”

I don’t like being put in a position of defending unions, so instead just think of my comments as objecting to your lies.

What’s good for Wal-Mart is BAD for America!

“so instead just think of my comments as objecting to your lies.”

So, I post comments from a LABOR ADVOCATE and you call the comments ‘my lies’, right?  I didn’t write them, so how can they be MY lies?  Oh, I see, if anything disagrees with YOUR views, it MUST be lies, even if it comes from the ‘horses mouth’!!

...so how can they be MY lies?

I don’t know Onasch well enough to call him a liar. On the other hand I know you quite well, RDS.

Wal-Mart is the exemplar of a form of corporate colonialism, which is to say, organizations from one place going into distant places and strip-mining them culturally and economically. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Ken V,

So, as I don’t know most of the people you quote or the ‘cut & paste’ people ddrb, posts, I therefore should then believe you and her to be liars!!

“Wal-Mart is the exemplar of a form of corporate colonialism, which is to say, organizations from one place going into distant places and strip-mining them culturally and economically.”

More of YOUR lies, right?  Who is James Howard Kunstler, I don’t know him, but, I know you!!