Poll shows 6 in 10 Americans don't care if they lose their job

Superfreak said:
Just out of curiosity, since Chap brought up an interesting point...

How many of you have worked for a union before? Or had your spouse/signficant other work for one?
Click to expand...


I don't find it all that interesting either, particularly in light of the fact that it is likely that his wife had a pension in the first place because she was in a unionized work environment. He seems to think that she had a pension out of the good graces of her employer and that nasty union took it away when the more likely scenario is that the union got her the pension in the first place and management decided it was unsustainable and insisted upon no pensions for new workers and the classification system to determine who is and who is not a new worker. In short, I understand why he is pissed, I'm just not so sure he is pissed at the right people.

Now, if the union has failed to represent his wife's interest properly and she followed the union contract for grievance purposes and the proper procedures were not followed, that's a legitimate beef and there are means to go about rectifying that.

To answer the question, I'm not in a union and neither is my wife but we both grew up in union households (UAW, IBEW, respectively).
 
cawacko said:
I know my job is in danger right now and I have no union backing me up.
Click to expand...

Cawacko, let me try and speak to you without my usual sarcasm. I know that until recently, you didn't have health care. So you are not quite in the elite that Chap, and I'd say especially SF who didn't qualify for the tax rebate (and boy is he ever sorry he mentioned that) and is single with no kids.

do you honestly mean to imply, that it would be good for this country, to drag others down, so that a certain percentage of otherwise privileged, mostly white males, who are just now starting to get a little bit nervous, can feel better?

how does decimating union wages, which, let's do the math here, we are already in a big pile of trouble because consumers have no money to spend...so how does dragging down wages for non-college educated workers, do this country , and anyone residing in it, (except maybe the ruling class) any good?
 
Darla said:
Cawacko, let me try and speak to you without my usual sarcasm. I know that until recently, you didn't have health care. So you are not quite in the elite that Chap, and I'd say especially SF who didn't qualify for the tax rebate (and boy is he ever sorry he mentioned that) and is single with no kids.

do you honestly mean to imply, that it would be good for this country, to drag others down, so that a certain percentage of otherwise privileged, mostly white males, who are just now starting to get a little bit nervous, can feel better?

how does decimating union wages, which, let's do the math here, we are already in a big pile of trouble because consumers have no money to spend...so how does dragging down wages for non-college educated workers, do this country , and anyone residing in it, (except maybe the ruling class) any good?
Click to expand...


I'm not anti-union per se but everything I've experienced in my work career has been hyper competitive the strong survive and advance type environment.

I understand the role unions have played in our past but short of government employees unions are having less and less of a role in our new 'information age' economy.
 
I have never been in a union. I held a blue collar job (working on towboats) for 4 and a half years, but they were not unionized. My dad has never worked in a union shop, nor did either of my grandfathers. I know the history of unions and I know that they have historically improved working conditions, wages, and pensions, but my question is; is it NOT true that the value of the car goes up 2000 dollars before it every leaves the assembly line? If it is true, then that does hurt the ability to compete with Japanese car companies. But so does astronomical salaries and bonuses and golden parachutes that CEO's get in the US compared to their counterparts in Japan.

I guess my real problem here is that the problems with the US auto manufacturers did not just pop up in the last year. They have been a long time coming. There should have been some concessions a long time ago by management and labor to insure that they were not breaking the bank 10 or 20 years down the road. Americans are short sighted, they think that a 5 years is a long time in the future. Studies almost never look 10 or 20 years down the road so that some realistic projections can be made. I think everyone involved in the manufacture of automobiles is responsible for the decline of the American Automotive Industry. When companies make bad decisions they go broke and they file bankruptcy. I know this first hand because our managing partner here has made some bad decisions and he is going to talk to a Bankruptcy attorney tomorrow. We are telling most of our staff that this week will be their last week here right now. But he spent too much trying make us look like a high flying law firm. I am glad I had the foresight not to buy into the firm in the first two years.

Anyway I digress. Bankruptcy is what happens, things get bought at a bargain and contracts get voided. Everyone at GM Ford and Chrysler bears some responsibility.
 
Socrtease said:
I have never been in a union. I held a blue collar job (working on towboats) for 4 and a half years, but they were not unionized. My dad has never worked in a union shop, nor did either of my grandfathers. I know the history of unions and I know that they have historically improved working conditions, wages, and pensions, but my question is; is it NOT true that the value of the car goes up 2000 dollars before it every leaves the assembly line? If it is true, then that does hurt the ability to compete with Japanese car companies. But so does astronomical salaries and bonuses and golden parachutes that CEO's get in the US compared to their counterparts in Japan.

I guess my real problem here is that the problems with the US auto manufacturers did not just pop up in the last year. They have been a long time coming. There should have been some concessions a long time ago by management and labor to insure that they were not breaking the bank 10 or 20 years down the road. Americans are short sighted, they think that a 5 years is a long time in the future. Studies almost never look 10 or 20 years down the road so that some realistic projections can be made. I think everyone involved in the manufacture of automobiles is responsible for the decline of the American Automotive Industry. When companies make bad decisions they go broke and they file bankruptcy. I know this first hand because our managing partner here has made some bad decisions and he is going to talk to a Bankruptcy attorney tomorrow. We are telling most of our staff that this week will be their last week here right now. But he spent too much trying make us look like a high flying law firm. I am glad I had the foresight not to buy into the firm in the first two years.

Anyway I digress. Bankruptcy is what happens, things get bought at a bargain and contracts get voided. Everyone at GM Ford and Chrysler bears some responsibility.
Click to expand...

In the US our healthcare costs are out of control. The employees and corporations in Japan DO pay for their healthcare through taxes - but if you total their taxes and private costs and compare them to our totaled taxes and private costs that goes towards healthcare they probably pay about half.
 
I have worked 2 different union jobs in my past. I grew up in eastern ky and know about unions and the coal miners. Without unions coal miners would be making minimum wage and no benefits and few safety regulations.

Never complain how much an underground miner makes till you have worked their job.
 
Darla said:
Yeah, I think you have it right.

I don't think the auto industry is going to get the bailout that wall street got anyway. They are going to try and use this to break the unions.
Click to expand...

Hardly. They had to kiss the unions collective asses to get concessions from them needed for the bailout.
 
Chapdog said:
when your so upsidown from the beginning on a car -2000 before it even hits the assembly line because you have to pay for health care of 3 retired GED's there is no way to compete in quality versus Toyota or Honda build down the street who don't have to pay any retired GED's

Solution. US governement picks up tab of the healthcare for the retired workers and no more free healthcare to any new employees.
Click to expand...


Or we could ban products from our market where the state subsidizes healthcare, thus keeping healthcare private globally. Im not sure externalizing healthcare costs onto the state is a good idea.
 
Darla said:
Cawacko, let me try and speak to you without my usual sarcasm. I know that until recently, you didn't have health care. So you are not quite in the elite that Chap, and I'd say especially SF who didn't qualify for the tax rebate (and boy is he ever sorry he mentioned that) and is single with no kids.

do you honestly mean to imply, that it would be good for this country, to drag others down, so that a certain percentage of otherwise privileged, mostly white males, who are just now starting to get a little bit nervous, can feel better?

how does decimating union wages, which, let's do the math here, we are already in a big pile of trouble because consumers have no money to spend...so how does dragging down wages for non-college educated workers, do this country , and anyone residing in it, (except maybe the ruling class) any good?
Click to expand...

Darla you seems to think that any white male that's successful is privileged. Why is that?
 
cawacko said:
I'm not anti-union per se but everything I've experienced in my work career has been hyper competitive the strong survive and advance type environment.

I understand the role unions have played in our past but short of government employees unions are having less and less of a role in our new 'information age' economy.
Click to expand...

I have no doubt. That's the kind of field you chose to go into. The payoff, should you succeed, is not, a living wage, health insurance, and job security.

I hope your job stays safe Cawacko. I know that a lot of people are in tenous positions right now. And I read Soc's post too. I lost my job once, at a really bad time, and I know how it feels. But the economy was not in the position it's in now, and we weren't in a jobs depression.

But none of this is the fault of the unions. They have been undermined and attacked and succesfully so by the corporate-funded right, since Reagan. This has hurt the worker in this country. And people like Chap, seething with resentment over a blue collar worker, who will never earn 250k, but who is earning a living wage and living a decent life, are irrelevant. That kind of attitude, which comes out of the same resentful, them against us, false narrative, that gave us poor whites hating black workers in a different century, is not useful.
 
Last edited:
Darla said:
I have no doubt. That's the kind of field you chose to go into. The payoff, should you succeed, is not, a living wage, health insurance, and job security.

I hope your job stays safe Cawacko. I know that a lot of people are in tenous positions right now. And I read Soc's post too. I lost my job once, at a really bad time, and I know how it feels. But the economy was not in the position it's in now, and we weren't in a jobs depression.

But none of this is the fault of the unions. They have been undermined and attacked and succesfully so by the corporate-funded right, since Reagan. This has hurt the worker in this country. And people like Chap, seething with resentment over a blue collar worker, who will never earn 250k, but who is earning a living wage and living a decent life, are irrelevant. That kind of attitude, which comes out of the same resentful, them against us, false narrative, that gave us poor whites hating black workers in a different century, is not useful.
Click to expand...

250k? Are you insane? The only professionals that make that much money are VP level people or sales people. Realistically an MBA makes around 100-120k. Then they have to put 20% off the top away because there is no pensions.

Example of union family:
Take my next door neighbors. A welder and a nurse.
She makes 130k a year working 40hours as a nurse (dont belive me link here: http://www.massnurses.org/News/2006/10/umass3.htm )

and hes making upwards of 100K as a welder and has Mondays off. They have a 2500sf house in the suburbs with me and a house on the cape paid in full. They have no need to save for retirement because the both have fat pensions. They sent there kids to 40k a year colleges paid in cash.


Id say its thats quite the privileged life.
 
Darla said:
It's not an interesting point. I couldn't believe he wrote it, but I figured it was some personal grievance bs. Meanwhile, every single person who has ever held a job has some grievance against some past, or present employer.

to anyone who knows social history in this country, it's meaningless drivel. I on't give a fuck if Damo's union called him needledick the bugfucker and made him wear pink panties, and I don't care if Chap's wife's union put a hit out on her.

We are talking about the standard of living in this country, and it's only the truly clueless, and the truly elite, who don't understand it. Now, as Krugman says, it's a difficult thing to get a man to understand something when his job depends on his not understanding it - and that explains one half of our problem. the rest of the people involved are clueless.
Click to expand...

translation: "no, I have never worked for a union"

Thanks for sharing.

The rest of your drivel is meaningless. Because to suggest that unions are the only way people recognize standard of living is simply idiotic.
 
Chapdog said:
250k? Are you insane? The only professionals that make that much money are VP level people or sales people. Realistically an MBA makes around 100-120k. Then they have to put 20% off the top away because there is no pensions.

Example of union family:
Take my next door neighbors. A welder and a nurse.
She makes 130k a year working 40hours as a nurse (dont belive me link here: http://www.massnurses.org/News/2006/10/umass3.htm )

and hes making upwards of 100K as a welder and has Mondays off. They have a 2500sf house in the suburbs with me and a house on the cape paid in full. They have no need to save for retirement because the both have fat pensions. They sent there kids to 40k a year colleges paid in cash.


Id say its thats quite the privileged life.
Click to expand...

Chap, don't call me crazy. I don't know who you think you are talking to, but I'm not some yahoo. I live in NY, and have all my life, whether it be, at different times, in Manhattan or LI. My long-time fiance made 350k, and I know a lot of people who are over 200, so stop acting like I'm crazy. You have already stated in the past that your household is pulling in more than 250. Give me a break.

Firstly, the auto unions aren't making upwards of 100k. Secondly, if your neighbor is, good for him. why do you hate him for it? You seem to have some sense of entitlement which tells you that anyone you look down upon socially, has no right to a comfortable life. While that may be fine for your personal viewpoint, it's no way to set national policy.
 
Superfreak said:
translation: "no, I have never worked for a union"

Thanks for sharing.

The rest of your drivel is meaningless. Because to suggest that unions are the only way people recognize standard of living is simply idiotic.
Click to expand...

Translation: I don't know how to respond so I'll say "meaningless drivel" and try and get out.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top