Saturday, December 08, 2007
Support the Writer's Guild Strike. Here's why
The American middle class has received no real average wage increase after the Republican war on Unions, set into high gear when Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers, started rolling. While the war on unions goes on, the small number of millionaires and the extremely wealthy (almost all of whom inherited their wealth and have had their jobs handed to them, like Bush) have grown and found themselves paying less in taxes so that they could pay for the scissors they need to clip coupons.
Support the middle class. Support unions. And bring back the inheritance tax.
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2 comments:
I am working middle class. We have five children. I can't stand the unions! Know why? When members of unions demand higher wages and benefits, when they are already making more and getting more than people with college educations, the costs of everything they make goes up.
Same thing happens when the minimum wage goes up. Those of us in the middle class see the cost of our living go up. Within six months all of the wage increases those people recieved have them right back where they were before getting them.
But the rest of us? We're doing worse because now food and clothing and everything else costs more. AND WE DIDN'T GET AN UNDESERVED PAY RAISE.
Do you people really think that the companies that have to spend more out of pocket just eat that cost? No! They pass it on.
Why shouldn't the union workers get raises based upon individual MERIT like everyone else in this country? Too afraid to actually compete? or just not ambitious enough? or maybe they just lack the drive.
I also have family and friends in unions and they hate the union! But the unions strong arm these people forcing them to be members. Where is the good in that?! The only people who really benefit from unions are the union bosses.
Unions take away choices from it's (forced) members. They set pay scales that are set whether a person is so-so or excells at their jobs. Big union around here. I listen to them talk. I know the ones who do the bare minimum and still get pay. I know the ones who work their tales off and can't get compensation.
Truth is, there was a time and place for unions. That time is over in this country. Want a pay raise? Make yourself valuable to your employer.
Unless of course you're work isn't that great and you'd not have a job if it weren't guaranteed in the first place.
Congratulations. You have totally bought the corporate line.
Every time the unions get a raise or fair benefits the non union workers get it also. An organized union raises the cap on wages that the owners apply to keep ALL wages, even merit raises, down. You say you didn't get an undeserved pay raise? You haven't gotten you deserved ones, either. No matter how profitable your company has been, your wages have barely gone up with inflation. Only your top management has gotten real wage increases.
Also, when you get shafted by your boss or the human resources department, how do you appeal it effectively without a union? The answer is, you don't.
The primary way that businesses hold down wages is my shafting some workers, usually the average workers, by forcing unpaid overtime and making them do other work for which they are not compensated. At the same time, those same business owners pay high wages to cronies who do little real work. Look at George Bush's work history, for example. He was always hired for who his father was rather than for his own contributions.
Anytime an organization has workers who do the dead minimum to stay at work, then the managers are not doing their jobs. That's true whether there is a union or not. But when managers fail to do their jobs and there is a problem, they then promptly blame a worker or two and fire them. The real problem - management failure - is never addressed and a worker or two got shafted for the manager's failures. An effective and fair union appeal process, working in conjunction with management, will identify the real problem and improve the company. Managers prefer to hire a consultant to identify those problems, but that's because no consultant who wants to get future business will ever identify the corporate managers as the source of the problems. So a good union appeals process strengthens the company by identifying the real source of problems and working for a solution, while saving the corporation money that would otherwise go for consultants. Only poor managers find a union appeals process bad. It identifies their inability to do their jobs. [And if you want to see people who do the dead minimum of work just to get by, look at middle management. They are the worst offenders.]
Union workers have been proved to, on average, be more productive that non-union workers.
If you want to see why you are doing worse economically, look at the proxy statement for your corporation where the SEC requires the pay to your CEO to be reported. The top corporate managers are letting inflation lower the real wages of the workers (in spite of merit or productivity) while they raid the corporations for their own unearned gain. Most of them do very little effective work to earn the multi-million dollar pay checks, and unlike their employees, they face no penalty for what they do wrong.
There is also an unacceptable social cost to eliminating unions. Without unions the middle class disappears and the society ends up like those of Latin America - A few very wealthy people and a mass of people struggling to, at best, be less poor. That's what you and your wealth CEO friends whose argument you are making want America to look like. Latin America.
Anti-union conservatives love the Latin American model. They all think they'll be part of the small rich segment. Most aren't and won't be.
You've got five children. What happens to you and them if you get hurt on the job or get ill and can't work. I have a hardworking friend here in Texas who suffered a back injury on the job. He got one year of workman's compensation with medical care and physical therapy, but was recovering slowly. But Workman's comp ran out at the end of the year. The company offered him his job back, he was in too much pain to do it, and they fired him three days after the WC ran out. Because of Tort reform, no lawyer will take his case, since he can't pay them himself and they can't get a share of the judgment. A union could help him. He has moved to East Texas and moved in with his in-laws. Texas has the highest rate of on the job accidents in the U.S. because we have a right-to-work law that eliminates unions and employers are not penalized for firing union organizers. The result is that it is not worth the money that employers need to spend to make working safer. Have an on-the-job accident and the company fires you instead of helping you. That is such a low cost option that worker safety is too expensive to spend money on.
You work in an office? The same people who made the formaldahyde-laced trailers for FEMA also make office furniture.
But you have bought into the YoYo philosophy of work - You're On Your Own. The companies love the way so many of the costs of problems of production like accidents and such can be shifted from the company to the workers. As their bottom line gets larger, so do the CEO and top management pay. The money is being shifted from the worthless low-class workers to the high-class college educated managers, most of whom not only don't do anything to earn it except be The-Right-Kind-of-People.
Remember that when your next "merit" raise barely covers the increase in the cost of living, if that.
To your employer, you're not a productive human being, you're just (an easily disposable) variable cost of production. Your employers don't "like" you and recognize your worth any more than they do the latest labor-saving piece of capital equipment, and they won't ask either you or the piece of equipment to their parties. They really don't like you, you know.
Without a union, you are nothing. You either haven't recognized when you needed a union, or you've skated by on luck and good looks.
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