General Music Chat

Phil you keep blaming the company.Would you stop for one minute and think why it changed hands so many times.
Its because govt has made it unprofitable,and the smart owners bailed out.
Your wife is unlucky because she has the golden handcuffs on,no matter how many times that corp changes hands,She is stuck taking that pay check.

As usual I'm swimming against the tide.

I didn't want to hire anyone in my business for a few reasons. Even though I could have used help at times.

#! the gov regulations were just too anti small business.
#2 the gov was telling me who I could hire and who I couldn't.
#3 unions support some of the very things political & social that I despise. I have no say how or where my hard earned monies go.
#4 I hate unions. Don't get yer panties in a bunch over that statement

I worked as a lab tech for Zenith radio. The union made sure that the contract came up just before Christmas. And even when we were making good bucks, they would blackmail Zenith at the busiest time of the year. Extortion or blackmail by any other name?

Where the hell do people get the idea that an employer who starts a company, sweats over it for years, and then finally gets big enough to hire people should pay their way on everything?. Why should an employer pay for your family's insurance? Isn't that your responsibility? Why should an employer get blackmailed with workers demands? Why should you get a vacation because you knock up yer ol lady?

It wasn't always that way. Look how many jobs were lost because of unions high demands. None?? Is that what anyone thinks?
It's my friggin company, it's my friggin capital invested. It's my brainchild. Yet you demand dental care, big juicy retirement packages, medical for the whole family. HEY!! The guy didn't hire your family. He didn't marry your wife. He didn't father your kids.

Why not demand that your employer clothe your family and go to the store for you and purchase all your groceries. That is about all unions haven't demanded from employers.

Who the f*&K are you to tell me how I have to run my business when I am being fair? (Not referring to any of you} Your hiring was an agreement between two people. You and the company. If you don't like it, just leave and let someone else have the job who wants it.

You hire on. You agree to the wages. Greed sets in. You have union power to beat me into the ground if you want to. Because you can't manage your finances you demand more more more. More this, more that. Pretty soon I can't afford to do business because my product is going in the hole because of high labor. Now why the hell wouldn't anyone who owns a business and actually has a brain sign on to that ?

Companies did take advantage of workers in the past. Today the pendulum has swung too far the other way, as it usually does, and now unions are raping the companies. Do you actually think it is cheap to move a whole company? They are going where they can make money. Remember, that is why you started your business and literally dedicated your life and finances to it. As a business owner, it is your money that is at risk.

You and your wife are walking towards your car. Some guy with a gun says. "Give me your money or I'll shoot your wife.

You and your company (More of a wife than a wife to some business men) are doing your thing. A thug comes up to you and says "Give me your money or I'll Kill your business"

I have a real hard time seeing any difference in what the thief is saying.

Just playing Devils advocate here.

Phil you keep blaming the company.Would you stop for one minute and think why it changed hands so many times.
Its because govt has made it unprofitable,and the smart owners bailed out.
Your wife is unlucky because she has the golden handcuffs on,no matter how many times that corp changes hands,She is stuck taking that pay check.

Once again, Glen, your logic is flawed from your very first premise

How could they sell the co if it is under so much gov't control that it makes no profit? Who would buy it?

Your basic beliefs are not reality based.

They sell the co for big money, which they can invest elsewhere, or live thier lives out on, whatever. They can sell it because it IS a profitable venture.

Big co's buy out others to make more money, not to lose it. They see this co is making good profits, so they bid on it until it gets sold to them, & then they proceed to do everything they can to reap even higher profits than the co's ever seen before, by stripping the employees of thier bennies, by laying large numbers of ppl off & dumping thier workload onto existing personnel, & by failing to fulfill the promises made in the co name to its employees. Then they hire new ppl of the street at lower wages, train them to do the jobs that the present ppl are doing. Finally, they reward the ppl who haves stayed in the co throughout all of this by laying them off, cuz they make too much money, & they have the new ppl ready to take thier places.

Unfortunately, this leads to some prob's, in that the new ppl are too new, & the new mgmt doesn't really know that much about the biz, nor do they have all the contacts they need. So the co starts to flounder.

The easiest solution at this point is to sell it again, before the losses start to show. That's what has happened at many co's in this country.

The gov't had NOTHING to do with the co's inability to do its job iin the marketplace. The gov't also had nothing to do with the loss of sales for the co, or the replacement of mid-level competant mgmt with new incompetant ppl. The gov't had nothing to do with the loss of the customer base.

Once again, I am forced to remind you that this doesn't happen to the small businessman. Yes, he gets overtaxed & over-regulated. No, this happens in large corp's, & the blame for thier success or failure, & the misuse & abuse of thier employees, rests completely with them, NOT the employee base. Thier own greed has prompted them to show thier disloyalty to the competant worker by laying him off & replacing him with some 1/2way trained person, who now needs to do the job of 2 ppl because of cutbacks, for a less return for his work.

SG says that today's unions are raping the co. Nothing could ne further from the truth. Unions have lost thier bite. They haven't a quarter of the power they had in the past. If it weren't for unions, this country would never have a middle class to begin with. Keep that in mind when you're flaming them. They set the standards that made co's who didn't even have unions would have to meet. Today's union has made consession after consession to appease the necessities of the marketplace, something that mgmt & investors have repeatedly refused to do. In the end, it's the woirkers who get it in the end.

I guess that just shows you how stupid all workers are, if they keep taking it in the end.That is following your logic.
Remember it is my property, you have just been invited as a guest.
Or does that follow you other logic that it is OK to steal!

My grampa use to say "everything in moderation, my boy".

You can't have a society without a strong middle class, it just doesn't work. Even Henry Ford knew that, and raised the wages of his workers so they could buy his cars. The days of treating your employees like a person and paying them a wage that they can live on seem to be gone. Now employees are a number and treat as such. There's no balance anymore.

We are in a race to the bottom .... and in that race the only winners are the rich. ... and your not in that group Glenn.

Unions have not lost their bite yet. They still exert a lot of exert a lot of economic and at times terrorist threat power on American elections particularly in the east. The unions still are big money and the strong arm for the Democratic party.
But the strong will of the American voters both Dems Repubs and the Indies is waking up to the greed and influence pedaling.
We are going to kick the teeth out of their bite. And I hope they choke and die on them.

Ok.

Union example for you. A teacher, I believe, paid into her retirement fund 100,000 over her lifetime. Her retirement pay is 3 + million dollars. Documented on a transcript of the Rush show, complete with everything to back it up.

My question to you union guys is this. How many union people can a company, or even the government sustain with retirement packages like that being awarded.? That is just obscene in my opinion.

Another fact. President Obummer gave billions in stimulus money to bolster union retirement packages. That is not creating jobs. That comes out of non union tax payers pockets.

Unions were excluded from paying the high taxes on Cadillac health care plans. Everyone non union has to pay those taxes and try to make up the difference.

So far the union government jobs have been the only jobs created under this new stimulus. Those jobs only drain funds. They do not create.

What that says to me is that Jimmy Hoffa and the mob have now been put in charge of our government and are filling their pockets.

Obummer gave car companies to union members. Who, by the way, are clueless as to how to run them profitably. Now who are union thugs going to blackmail to get raises? Looks like that one may backfire.

Home daycare was unionized with a vote of about 125 people out of 5,000 who ran daycare in their homes. All the rest have to pay union dues now, with no say so in the matter.

I could use a ton of expletives every time I hear about that one. Union greed like the examples above are what killed a lot of our job market. Not corporate greed. Although corporate greed has also done it's fair share.

You can tell me otherwise but it will fall on deaf ears. I have seen and heard too many examples. I was a union member.

Maybe life shouldn't be fair for union members either. It sure isn't for the rest of us. Yeah. Big business is also corrupted. But wouldn't they have to be when they are paying union retirement retirement packages that they are? Just how much can you sell a car for when someones exorbitant retirement package has to be tacked on to the price of it?

Yes, Glen, the average worker is rather stupid, cuz they don't all go out & start up thier own co's like you keep telling us all to do.

Anti-union rhetoric has been very popular in this country for a long time, with ppl bewailing how the unions ruin everything. Most of those ppl have never been in a union, yet they still reaped the benefits that unions produced.

Anyone wanting to kick out thier teeth to remove thier bite is only working for "the man," at this point, since you seem to want me to put it that way. The union is there to protect the worker. Nothing more or less. Yes, there have been many instances of mismanagement & outright theft of monies, etc, in unions, but they have also helped to create & maintain the middle class.

The unions have worked very hard to assure that ppl's retirements cannot be yanked out from under them to satisfy corp greed. They have worked to make things safe on the job. They were at the forefront in the fight for racial & sexual equality on the job.

"Terrorist threat power" in elections? HAH! How about WalMart having mandatory "business meetings" to hit thier employees with thier political agenda. FORCING them to sit through campaign commercials for those candidates that will further the cause of the supercorporation?

There have been ridiculous stunts on both sides, whether you're mgmt or union member, but to simply say that unions are evil & should be wiped out is kinda naive, at the very least it is as naive as sayiong that all co's are evil.

Glen, you aren't even in the running as a corporation that has any pull at all. You treat your employees fairly, you won't need a union. It ain't all about you.

Remember that when you hire someone, it is your responsibility to make sure that that employee is properly trained to do his job, that he has a safe working environment, that any & all agreements you make with him are met, that he gets paid for the job that he does on time.

Ppl stealing our jobs overseas miss out on any number of those requirements, so their work can be bought for pennies to your dollars, & the products they make cost the consumer just as much as they would if Americans made them, while the Americans go without work.

You just go ahead & try to tell everyone that this is a GOOD thing for the ppl of this country, that my views are socialist by nature, that the super corp's are the wave of the future that will SAVE US ALL, but it's all untrue.

SG, you don't seem to uderstand how the non-union member has so many advantages directly due to the union's intervention on his behalf even before he is hired to do a job.

From wages to benefit packages to retirement funds to work safety, it has been the union that pushed these things through.

In a closed shop, everyone pays the dues, whether they want to join or not. Well, they ARE benefitting from the efforts of the union even if they don't want to be a member.

When your banks are gambling away your retirement accounts, what else could Obama do, but replace them as part of the stimulus package? It was the unions who had the safeguards in place to cover thier butts if & when the banks failed, I imagine. Otherwise, they had the power behind them to make sure thier ppl were not gonna do without. I have no problem with that. That means they did the jopb they were paid to do.

I dunno the ins & outs of the fantastic retirement package the teacher got, but you know what? Ppl are gonna try to abuse any system. All the unions do is see that agreements are followed.

philbymon,

No. I do understand. I agree with you on a lot of what you say I am just pointing out that what once was good for the worker now is hurting the worker. The pendulum has swung too far the other way so to speak. Companies should never have agreed to the unrealistic demands some unions made. It will put them out of business in the long run when an economy downturns. They should have thought of that.

But on the other hand, I do think extortion is no different than robbing a man with a gun. Forcing someone to give you money just ain't moral. If a man offers to work for someone he knows what the job pays. If he doesn't like it, he should go find another job. If someone else wants the job at that pay, let them have it. I think union thuggery is as bad as any other kind of criminal activity.

If the crooks in Washington kept all illegals out there would be jobs that companies couldn't fill unless they raised their wages. That bullshit line about they only take the jobs American workers don't want, is just political speak to gain votes. Actually the whole mess sucks because it has gotten so out of hand.

I am a worker. I benefited from unions to a point. But unions always ask for way more than they really need. And that is not the union members who are so demanding. It the thugs who are at the top, in my opinion.

Giving any group of people power over your life without an avenue of direct recourse is just freaking stupid.

In God I trust......................... and damn few others !!!

I will certainly agree that the unions, esp the UAW, went overboard right up until the 80's, when Reagan busted them all with his (illegal) actions against the airport tower personnel. However, since then, the unions have made a whole hell of a lot of concessions to keep Americans working, & to help the economy. Even recently, thier health package has been cut rather drastically.

What sacrifices has mgmt made, hmmm? How much did the recently fired CEO of GM walk away with in HIS retirement package? How much is his replacement making?

Looks to me like ALL the drastic cutting is being done at the hourly employee level, while the administrators of these large co's are the ones "raping the system."

Top-most mgmt is being shown time & again in our news that they are ripping off customers, ripping off employees, & ripping off investors. Our country's experience with corp's like ENRON, Adelphia, GM, Chrysler, etc show that there need to be safeguards in place to keep Americans working, to assure that the promise of thier retirement investments are there when they need them, & to stop upper level mgmt from getting away with the theft they've been able to get away with for so long.

You guys seem to think that unions cost more than they're worth. I'd say that, in the big corp's esp, upper level mgmt is costing this country far far more than any union ever did, with bad decisions, by putting Americans out of work for foreign labor, by overpaying themselves, & by outright theft. THESE have brought America to its knees, not the unions. Not the American worker. Not the average citizen borrowing beyond his means.

SLACKER, even more,SANS,,,AMEN!!!!!
If you don't like where you live ,,,,,MOVE!
If you don't like your job ,,GET A NEW ONE!
If you don't like your friends ,GET RID OF THEM!
If you don't like your situation ,CHANGE IT!
If you don't like burning your hand,TAKE IF OFF THE STOVE!
IF you want to make ANYTHING better in your life,,,,,

WELCOME TO AMERICA.

PHIL this all comes down to overspending and over taxing and you keep arguing to have your ass kicked.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35504954/ns ... ork_times/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35501495/ns ... d_economy/

REALLY, Glen? You really think so?

I'd say that the upper mgmt of these super-corp's have been overpaid & have overspent for themselves & have been undertaxed, esp considering thier impact on our economy. It will take several years of hard work to restore our economy to the working model, while our gov't continues to borrow from China & elsewhere just to keep us in food & shelter.

How are you gonna restore an economy when you keep shipping off the work?

Millions, Glen, millions are out of work, & millions more are underemployed. You speak as if we're still in the boomy 80's. "You don't like your job, get another one!" HAH!!!! WHERE????

There a few million of us Americans that would like an answer to that question. GIMME!