Quote
Originally posted by: DonDiego
Nonetheless, DonDiego did observe the effects of the United Steelworkers (USW) union firsthand.
Many workers did consider "the Steel" to be the enemy of their union. Minor vandalism to Company property was common....
facturing processes could not be modernized because of union opposition. Antiquated work rules led to outrageous and unnecessary expenses; some jobs which could safely be done by one man "required" three men under the old rules, and the union prohibited any change....
above comments are not intended to be hateful or "anti-union", . . . just accurate first-hand observations. There is no question that the USW raised costs for Bethlehem Steel. Why, heckfire, poor young DonDiego's laborer wages helped put him through college.]
Reminds me of similar practice but within coal mining. We had a mechanic come work for us who had been laid off from a union mine that was the next mountain over and he told me a few stories about how things worked over there. He said it was pretty common for the men to "break" their equipment once and a while for a break. It was union rule that a man had to stick with (ie sit or stand) by his machine while it was being repaired regardless if there was another piece of equipment that was sitting idle and wasn't permitted to do anything else. Even if a part took several days or a week to get there, he had to stick with his equipment til it was fixed.
I've pretty much felt the need for unions had long since passed but I'm kinda changing my tune a little(with emphasis on a little). I think it's reasonable to expect some sort of minimal pay and benefits for a job you've performed at for fair amount of time and are expected to work at indefinitely
IF ( a big if) the co. is showing a sustainable healthy profit and pay and benefits aren't equivalent to industry avg. and the co. refuses to at least keep up with the avg.
The problems with unions arise when wages and benes have "matured" for lack of a better word and coal, auto and steel are prime examples of how a union shop can kill an industry. Auto for example, year after year they keep demanding more even after the point had been reached that was well beyond fair and reasonable. Simple COLA increases weren;t enough, they always pushed for something new every time. The co. really didn;t have much choice but to go along every time. I suppose the union leaders had to keep up the appearance of always doing something to justify them being around, self-preservation?
All just one observation with an opinion thrown in.
BTW I'll second RM's rec. for dumbest post
RM ,you really should try and edit instead of a bunch of one line posts
