Why aren't there riots?

dpvandy01

As stated before:

UNIONS!!!!

As a small business owner for the past 35+ years, in construction, I have had my share of Union experiences.

I have been non-union, union and non-union over that period of time. Employing as many as 30 people, seasonally, but keeping the better part of 18+ year round.

I did my very best to make sure my people were taken care of during the slack periods.

Never once did our Union come to my rescue during bad times.

My biggest problem with Unions is the fact that they dictate to me, as the Employer, how much money I should pay my employees.

NEVER is it taken in to account that these employees need to make me a profit so that I CAN keep them employed!

Since 1989, I have downsized and rid myself of all of my hourly and salaried workers and have sub-contracted all of my work out. Some of my sub-contractors are union and some are non-union. that is up to them to determine. My bids are let on the basis of performance, previous work and sufficient insurance. No more no less.

My Equation for work is as follows:

Cost of Job - Labor - Materials - Time = Profit/Overhead/Customer Satisfaction

So far it works.

Unions were once viable. They have outlasted there usefulness.

NO ONE IS GOING TO TELL ME HOW MUCH I HAVE TO PAY AN EMPLOYEE IF THIS EMPLOYEE DOES NOT MAKE ME A PROFIT!!!!!!

WHY SHOULD I, BE IN BUSINESS IF THAT IS WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN??


I will get off of my soapbox now and sit back and be prepared to get battered!!


As I stated prior:
NO ONE WILL DICTATE TO ME WHAT I HAVE TO PAY MY EMPLOYEES.

You want to be represented by a Union, fine.

But if you want to work for me you will have to compete with all other bidders.

That said I firmly believe that Police and Firefighter Unions are a somewhat necessary evil to protect them.

My biggest bone of contention is when supposedly 'union workers' submarine their own jobs and 24/48 workers or seasonal union workers compete against my full time profession.

This argument will never end.
Everyone has an opinion as it should be.
 
I had a firefighter build me a 2 story 3 flu brick chimney with a brick hearth that had a floor to ceiling brick wall behind it for $3,500 (Including materials) in my first house in 1997. He did it between shifts. I'll never forget the beauty, strength, and price of that addition to my home. Never had a worry about building code, backdrafts or CO.
 
dpt,

yup, and by the way,, that's a nice looking boat!


and I'll continue to enjoy mine on the 48 hours I'm off while only working 110 days per year and doing my level best to negotiate the best contract I can for the 5 other Lieutenants in my local (IAFF-L4268) while I quietly throw-up in my mouth as Shattenberger and the a-holes at the International continue their support for political ideologies that as I see are in direct opposition to the Constitution of this great Country...

Have a great night...
Ciao
 
Mike of the Julia Valentine

Glad to hear that.
Two Questions.
1. Was he a licensed contractor in your community/town/city?

2. Did he had Liability Insurance and if he had help, did he have Workman's Compensation Insurance.


If he, an employee or one of your family members sustained an injury on the job it could have been a legal nightmare.

Been there, seen it and adjusted it for insurance companies a few times.

Involved in a $150,000.00- $200,000.00+ insurance claim right now involving 3 Homeowners, 1 Building Insurer and 1 non-insured sub-contractor.

Can be non-union and still have insruance.
 
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JuliaValentine said:
Someone please explain to me how letting GM go into chapter 11 back in January would cause the company to "fail," but letting them go into chapter 11 in June after giving them billions to delay the filing would allow them to succeed? Am I missing something?

Here's my take on it. If they went into chapter 11 in January the outcome for the company would be the same. It will reorganize, spin off new companies, restructure, and downsize. GM will still be around in 50 years. The only difference in doing this sooner rather than later is that the taxpayers would have saved billions. Chapter 11 was the right thing for the company and it should have happened without any government involvement. The bailout was the worst economic mistake in US history. We'll never see that money paid back.

Promocop and Dave S, please help me understand the benefit of the billions of tax dollars that were spent on this company in the last 6 months. Thanks.

By the way, the American employees making BMWs in S. Carolina, Toyotas in Kentucky, and Nissans in Tennessee and Mississippi are doing much better supporting their families and local business than those in Detroit. VW is building a plant in Tennessee. I'm sure the residents in Chattanooga are thrilled and anxiously anticipating its opening like the Kia plant worker are about their plant in West Point Georgia. I have yet to see or read a negative interview of any factory worker for Toyota, Nissan, BMW. Buying a US car for the sake of patriotism is an outdated concept. What does it say about the American car buyer when they still can't recognize that their support over the years has resulted in this mess. Its like the battered woman's syndrome.

I'm going to make a prediction. The auto plants in Detroit will soon be bought and managed by foreign companies, which would be a good thing. Maybe Chinese?

Flame retarding suit is on.
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I havent read this whole thread yet but up to here I am with you all the way Mike!
 
ChuckW said:
There was a time and a place in this country for unions. That time and place is neither here nor now.

Why is it that anyone who supports unions always hides behind the "collective bargaining" and "fair pay and bennies" they bring you? This is capitalism. Unfortunately most employees don't understand their role in capitalism. They think its just to do the work. Well I have news for them, its a whole lot more, they bring skills to bear that will drive the labor markets up and down. Businesses must be profitable in order survive and keep paying employees (no brainer). If you think your boss isn't sharing the rewards equitably, then exercise your capitalist right and seek work for better pay with another employer. Use the market to your advantage, not some bureaucratic union official trying to disembowel a profitable company while living off your hard earned dollars. The only one benefitting from unions are the union officials and the bottom performing 20% of the workers who should shape up.

Business will respond. Its all supply and demand. If the business finds it hard to find qualified employees, they'll pay more. If the employee is productive and worth their salt, someone will pay them more then they expect. Capitalism works, regulation never has.
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"collective bargaining" is just a PC way to say "extortion"
GM gave in to this over and over again.... which helped them achieve their current level of success in the marketplace ;-)
now the unions an a leftist govenment own GM. the irony of this is amazing
the only way they will make a profit now is when Obama mandates that we buy what ever they make (this I am sure is coming soon)
along with gas taxes to make us buy 40mpg GM crappy cars
oh, did I forget the massive inflation? that figures into their plan too
 
Wow, lots of Union bashing - I was never in the union but worked at 2 of the big three's assembly plants and numerous transplant assembly plants for 15 years and had the seen the good and bad of the unions and difference between a asian plant and a big three plant. Its not the unions that killed GM its the management. The 70,s low quality coupled with a gas crisis that opened the door for the japanese and started the death spiral that left us were we are today. When these agreements were signed managements assumption always was that GM would have 60% market share and now at a share in the 20's it can no longer fund the retirements of its 60% market share work force dictated by contracts. When I left some 10 yrs ago the cost was $800 in labor/vehicle with 3000+ in retirements cost and rising exponetally with the out of control cost of medical. No measure of benefit reduction in the current agreements spread over so few workers/cars could keep pace with past retiree claims. The work force was all in its 40 to 60 range, contrast that to the transplants that don't have the legacy cost and the average age was 20-30. Add on the cost of environmental compliance, taxes etc to old facilities it was a huge burden.

There is also the historical burden of years of poor mgmt relationship with its employees that somehow always warrented that COLA. I think if the truth be told they wanted the best for there employees. The average retire in the early 80;s would collect 14 checks.

I find this all very said thinking back to walking through the design center in Warren and seeing all the beautiful vehicles that true "car guys" built from there hearts, I think GM departure makes it offical its an end of an era and now we can look forward to having a 30 something obama car czar to decide what we drive in the future. I guess I should take a step back and say I feel sad the about our country as my medical choice will soon disappear, what type of energy I use, choice schools, business to have etc.
 
Don Sr said:
I guess I should take a step back and say I feel sad the about our country as my medical choice will soon disappear, what type of energy I use, choice schools, business to have etc.
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I don't count out the patriotic Americans sitting on the sidelines. I think there is going to be a revolution. I see the inevitable destruction of the democratic party coming and a quick reversal of these handouts.
 
Somewhere around 1857 Lord Thomas B. Macaulay was said to have written:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

"Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage. Can we escape this fate?"

Looks like the answer is, "No." Even the data shows that.

"Slightly over half of all Americans – 52.6 percent – now receive significant income from government programs, according to an analysis by Gary Shilling, an economist in Springfield, NJ. That's up from 49.4 percent in 2000 and far above the 28.3 percent of Americans in 1950. If the trend continues, the percentage could rise within ten years to pass 55 percent, where it stood in 1980 on the eve of President's Reagan's move to scale back the size of government."

Sadly, I don't see another Ronald Reagan on the horizon.

Best regards,
Frank
 
fc3 said:
Somewhere around 1857 Lord Thomas B. Macaulay was said to have written:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

"Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage. Can we escape this fate?"

Looks like the answer is, "No." Even the data shows that.

"Slightly over half of all Americans – 52.6 percent – now receive significant income from government programs, according to an analysis by Gary Shilling, an economist in Springfield, NJ. That's up from 49.4 percent in 2000 and far above the 28.3 percent of Americans in 1950. If the trend continues, the percentage could rise within ten years to pass 55 percent, where it stood in 1980 on the eve of President's Reagan's move to scale back the size of government."

Sadly, I don't see another Ronald Reagan on the horizon.

Best regards,
Frank
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Right on the money...
 
WARNING: Cheap philosophy follows.

We the people. We individually give our power to a politician who says he'll help solve our problems. He can't and he doesn't, but we now have him to blame for the problems we caused through our own direct action, or by giving our power to someone else to act on our behalf. The best thing about the current political situation is the ability to blame someone else. It's the other guy. The other party. It's their fault.

Despite how things look outside the window, or on the TV, we are each of us responsible for our lives. Let's take a long look in the mirror.

That's the revolution that needs to happen. Change the world? Change yourself instead.
 
Jack F said:
I was in 2 unions, the 1st was chosen by the company I worked for so we could do union jobs, what a joke they just wanted the dues. the 2nd time was when another company I worked for was bought by a larger national company that was a union shop, we were forced to join the union, the funny thing about the 2nd stint in the union was that the company that bought us just wanted our customer base not the techs who averaged 20-25 yrs, part of joining the union was that our years at the company were grandfather and when the layoffs came they ended up having to let go their techs which they hadn't planed on because we averaged 10-15 more yrs in seniority, it got really ugly because all of the local managers and office people were I worked didn't want us around and got pissed every 1/4 when Corp came out with a head count reduction and they couldn't get to us. This lasted for 2 years of sitting around doing nothing all week and getting paid, which gets pretty boring and depressing knowing that every 1/4 they would have another lay off. Finally I couldn't take it anymore and just quit. I started my own company with 2 other co workers shortly after. I could have hung around and eventually collected my 25 weeks of severance pay when they finally got to me but it wasn't worth it.
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No comment, but just wondering, have you brought in a union to represent your employees yet?
 
fc3 said:
Somewhere around 1857 Lord Thomas B. Macaulay was said to have written:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

"Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage. Can we escape this fate?"

Looks like the answer is, "No." Even the data shows that.

"Slightly over half of all Americans – 52.6 percent – now receive significant income from government programs, according to an analysis by Gary Shilling, an economist in Springfield, NJ. That's up from 49.4 percent in 2000 and far above the 28.3 percent of Americans in 1950. If the trend continues, the percentage could rise within ten years to pass 55 percent, where it stood in 1980 on the eve of President's Reagan's move to scale back the size of government."

Sadly, I don't see another Ronald Reagan on the horizon.

Best regards,
Frank
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Thanks Frank, +1000 (well one thing is probably for certain "Change" is coming, just not what even the masses expect) that is what i have been trying to state all along in my on way on different occasions

In the last half of this post, I am going to keep what you posted
 
Asureyez said:
No comment, but just wondering, have you brought in a union to represent your employees yet?
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No, not sure what your point is, I’m guessing from my post you think I’m all for the unions.
 
Why aren't there riots?

Because Americans are way too busy trying to find out how much of these trillions being spent they are going to get, thats why.

Our nations root problem is Greed. How much can I get without doing anything much for it.

PT Barnum said it best:

"There is a sucker born every minute"

and my all time favorite,

"You can not cheat an honest man"

Now who is our modern day PT Barnum and who is the sucker?

My friends I was raised in a life and in a time that taught youth that seeking charity was most abhorrent condition to find one's self subjected. One did everything possible to avoid being dependant upon another including the state.

The question is, Is there enough honest men left to tell the politicos to stuff it and go home?

Today, charity, the dole and bail out are the rage, the solution of choice to every day life maladies and failures.

I'm not shocked that the unions, management and politicians are all pawing for their cut of the national wealth, I am shocked that they are so brazen, self righteous and smug about their actions.
 
Asureyez said:
No I don't know what you think today Jack, that was the purpose of the question.
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What I think today and what I thought 25 yrs ago hasn’t changed, I would rather not be in a union.
 
Pseudomind said:
Thanks Frank, +1000 (well one thing is probably for certain "Change" is coming, just not what even the masses expect) that is what i have been trying to state all along in my on way on different occasions

In the last half of this post, I am going to keep what you posted
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probably for certain... really? PROBABLY for CERTAIN? Not a very strong position huh? I'm just sayin'
 
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