cjan
Posts: 3513
Joined: 2/21/2008 Status: offline
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This in in response to a question thishereboi posed to me in this thread. I have owned and operated businesses that employed both union and non-union workers, not that I see how that is relevant to this topic. What may be more relevant is my experience with a demolition company that I once worked for. The company employed all union workers, from laborers to highly skilled heavy equipment operators. The demolition business is a highly competitive one. The union workers all made very good wages, due to their unions collective bargaining results. The man who owns the company decided, right fro it's inception, to give profit sharing to all employees from the bottom on up. The result was that, in a highly dangerous work environment, his employees gave 100% every day, were never late to work, very rarely called in sick and there was zero employee theft. Not only that, but there was virtually zero employee turn over and on a few occasions, that I witnessed, when a man was hurt on the job ( falls, broken bones, etc. ), after a trip to the ER, they returned to the job site and asked for a broom or some task that they could do in their condition. This business grew from a local one, started on a shoe string, into a now international one that does much more than just demolition. This experience convinced me that, if the American worker is treated with dignity, repect and economic justice he/she will respond by giving their all to the common good, i.e., in this case, making a company efficient, competitive and succesful. Granted, this is just one story, but I believe that the lesson learned can be widely applied with similar reults. What history has shown is that when employers try to build a business and/or wealth on the backs of and at the expense of workers, the results are social and economic injustice that fuel conflict in a society and, ultimately, fail. Those of you who have the luxury of working a 40 hour week for a living wage and work in a relatively safe environment should be ashamed for union bashing. It is unions who, at a great cost to those who were beaten and killed by strike breakers hired by robber barons, created this possibility for you. To say that times have changed and that collective bargaining is obsolete and counter-productive is ridiculous, especially given the fact that the middle class which enjoys the fruits of collective bargaining, is quickly disappearing. Isn't it ironic that in former communist countries, the so-called "workers paradise", THERE ARE NO UNIONS. In fact, conditions such as some of you union bashers advocate prevail there now.
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"I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A bird will fall ,frozen , dead, from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself."- D.H. L " When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks in to you"- Frank Nitti
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