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How many here belong a union in the public or private sector? Why? or Why not?

How many here belong to a union?


  • Total voters
    67
  • Poll closed .
Well that's just nonsense. If everyone had a college degree or two years in trade school we would still need burger flippers and janitors. Someone has to work for a living, we can't all be at the top.
I agree with that. There will always be burger flippers. The article if you read it talked about people who could should. Though it helps, one does not need a college degree, like you said a good trade school will do wonders.

As you probably already know, the workers who settle for minimum wage tend to young people or people who are unable to improve him/herself. A very great man once said, the poor will always be with us, and while I believe we should help those who can't help themselves, blaming the 1% is about as useful as the proverbial mammary glands on a boar hog.

You are also probably aware, that without the rich, there would be less investment, fewer jobs and the overall prosperity of the US would not be as good.
 
I agree with that. There will always be burger flippers. The article if you read it talked about people who could should. Though it helps, one does not need a college degree, like you said a good trade school will do wonders.

As you probably already know, the workers who settle for minimum wage tend to young people or people who are unable to improve him/herself. A very great man once said, the poor will always be with us, and while I believe we should help those who can't help themselves, blaming the 1% is about as useful as the proverbial mammary glands on a boar hog.
I didn't realize I was "blaming" the 1%. If that's the way I've come across then I apologize. I have no problem with the 1% being the 1% as long as they've earned that privilege.


You are also probably aware, that without the rich, there would be less investment, fewer jobs and the overall prosperity of the US would not be as good.
I disagree. There are other ways wealth can be managed as a block besides individual wealth. Mutual funds are a prime example.
 
I didn't realize I was "blaming" the 1%. If that's the way I've come across then I apologize. I have no problem with the 1% being the 1% as long as they've earned that privilege.


I disagree. There are other ways wealth can be managed as a block besides individual wealth. Mutual funds are a prime example.
When you come up with one of those ways please post it so we can all see it. As far as I am concerned, if there is no way for a person to become one of the 1% such that I could invest and help the prosperity of the whole society then what is the point?
 
DANG…it appears the current administration was covertly trying to destroy the unions too…not just the ‘right-wingers’…go figure???
Labor unions enthusiastically backed the Obama administration’s health-care overhaul when it was up for debate. Now that the law is rolling out, some are turning sour.

Union leaders say many of the law’s requirements will drive up the costs for their health-care plans and make unionized workers less competitive. Among other things, the law eliminates the caps on medical benefits and prescription drugs used as cost-containment measures in many health-care plans. It also allows children to stay on their parents’ plans until they turn 26.

To offset that, the nation’s largest labor groups want their lower-paid members to be able to get federal insurance subsidies while remaining on their plans. In the law, these subsidies were designed only for low-income workers without employer coverage as a way to help them buy private insurance.

In early talks, the Obama administration dismissed the idea of applying the subsidies to people in union-sponsored plans, according to officials from the trade group, the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans, that represents these insurance plans.

…Top officers at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the AFL-CIO and other large labor groups plan to keep pressing the Obama administration to expand the federal subsidies, warning that unionized employers may otherwise drop coverage…

…A handful of unions say they already have examined whether it makes sense to shift workers off their current plans and onto private coverage subsidized by the government. But dropping insurance altogether would undermine a central point of joining a union, labor leaders say

…“We are going back to the administration to say that this is not acceptable,” said Ken Hall, general secretary-treasurer for the Teamsters…

“I heard him say, ‘If you like your health plan, you can keep it,’” said John Wilhelm, chairman of Unite Here Health, the insurance plan for 260,000 union workers. “If I’m wrong, and the president does not intend to keep his word, I would have severe second thoughts about the law.”

Some Unions Grow Wary of Health Law They Backed - WSJ.com

OOPS!...:lamo
 
You should not be handed a "good living" at all, but we - as a society - should provide enough to live poorly yet safely and quit insisting that "everyone can be rich if they work hard enough". What nonsense! Certainly wealth can come from any social class (always easier the higher up you start, though) but that doesn't mean we're all going to get rich even if we study and work our asses off for 50 years. If everyone managed a college degree or a good 2-year trade school we'd still need janitors and burger flippers for society to function. That isn't going to change anytime soon and making those people into pariahs and insisting they must keep up with the Jones's doesn't do a damn thing except lead to discontent because not everyone has the ability to become rich or keep up with the Jones's.

Sorry, low-wage jobs are the perview of the young and uneducated, who have few expenses and need to acquire work experience so they can advance beyond that level. They are not something that a person ought to ever expect they can live on by themselves and certainly not something they can raise a family on. That's just not what low-wage jobs are meant to do!
 
Well that's just nonsense. If everyone had a college degree or two years in trade school we would still need burger flippers and janitors. Someone has to work for a living, we can't all be at the top.

Everyone works for a living, no matter what you and your ilk seem to think. See, the burger flippers and the janitors are supposed to be the unskilled, the young, the kids in high school who are doing it for money on the side, whose majority expenses are covered by their parents. They work while they are going to school and they learn a work ethic. By the time they turn 18 and graduate from high school, they can either go to college, or move up the corporate ladder into management and open up another spot beneath them for another young worker.

You seem to think that people who are stupid or lazy or don't want to work ought to get the same benefits as everyone who does. No, they don't deserve them, they haven't EARNED them!
 
Everyone works for a living, no matter what you and your ilk seem to think. See, the burger flippers and the janitors are supposed to be the unskilled, the young, the kids in high school who are doing it for money on the side, whose majority expenses are covered by their parents. They work while they are going to school and they learn a work ethic. By the time they turn 18 and graduate from high school, they can either go to college, or move up the corporate ladder into management and open up another spot beneath them for another young worker.

You seem to think that people who are stupid or lazy or don't want to work ought to get the same benefits as everyone who does. No, they don't deserve them, they haven't EARNED them!

spot on. If you are 35 y/o and still working some minimum wage job...you are either mentally deficient (in which case you have my sympathy and you deserve help) or you are just unmotivated and haven't earned anything more.
 
If you move up the ladder then it's a different job, not the same one. You continue to misunderstand my position.

:shrug: if you want to call it something else that's fine. Fine: Most Americans Move Up The Ladder by increasing their compensation or level of responsibility over time as they change from one job to the other. The immobile labor force where Dad Worked At The Plant For 40 Years Doing The Same Thing is no longer a common reality. Now Dad starts off doing grunt work for one employer, and ends up doing better work for someone else, and then does the same thing three or four more times.

No, you made direct reference to my "unabl(ity) to self-improve to the point where you are able to command superior levels of compensation.", which not only assumes I didn't self-improve but also assumes I didn't command superior levels of compensation - by which I assume you mean more pay.

no, pay is part of compensation. If you believe that American workers are held down and immobile despite the overwhelming evidence that indicates the opposite :shrug:.

You have obviously never looked at how employers pay for group health insurance, though it's possible there have been radical changes in the last four years since my semi-retirement.

Do you wish to make the argument that health insurance for a 60 year old costs less than health insurance for a 25 year old? :) Because that is what we would have to see for your claim that Americans do not increase their net compensation to be accurate.

I see. So when you took your current job you didn't have these skills.

Or my current level of education. I took the job in order to get the skills, the experience, and the education, and now thanks to it I can move upwards and onwards to a new position where I will get new skills and experience and education and move onwards and upwards from there. Just like most Americans.

Do you honestly believe without these additional skills you could "command superior levels of compensation"?

Strictly off of education, yes. But not to the same degree, no.

My guess to your answer is "no". Keep making my point and we'll eventually get there.

We are making my point. Americans improve themselves and thus climb the ladder as they age, indicating that in fact a mobile workforce is full of people who are constantly improving themselves and their position, meaning that labor does, in fact, have negotiating power with employers.

So you believe each field has eight levels of hierarchy? I supposed that's possible but it seems pretty top-heavy compared to reality.

Well, my current employer has 24. One potential future employer has 15, with about 10 subsets for increased pay within each of those 15. That's probably rather higher than average - but the point remains that since people are continually moving up the ladder, the idea that each job change means a job creation is ignorant.

Instead of showing statistics on what people expect to do, why don't you show statistics on what people did last year and see if the two are even close?

:doh that is what I showed you, Mo. Do you have difficulty reading charts? As People Age, Their Pay Increases. Social Security, for example, figures that the average American get's an average of a 2% raise every year, annualized.
 
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It was Bush and the bankers that put us here. You're trying to blame the current administration for having to clean up that mountain of crap left-overs.

Ronnie had a mountain of crap to clean up, too, from the oil embargo/rising oil prices and the long-term aftermath of Vietnam. He also spend money like crazy. Would you like to slam him, too?

He didn't spend 4 or 8 years pissing and moaning about Carter. That's the difference. He also succeeded, another difference.
 
I would never join a union operating in the mode most usual now in America. The relentless push for wage and pension increases proudces short-term, illusionary gains (wage increases without increases in productvity are inflationary). In many cases, unions act as a major force opposing social mobility from the lowest strata and immgration, to say nothing about development of international trade. And forcing people who do not want to join pay dues is simply thuggery. (Don't even start me on political activity by the unions of supposed public servants - that is a pathology).

Having said that, I do not see unions as inherently evil. There's nothing wrong with people organizing to help each other, negotiate collectively, set up mutual funds, provide training opportunities, etc. The short-sighted perpetual extortion needs not to be the only mode of operation.
 
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Do you wish to make the argument that health insurance for a 60 year old costs less than health insurance for a 25 year old? :) Because that is what we would have to see for your claim that Americans do not increase their net compensation to be accurate.
MOST people get their health insurance through work so, yes, it's the same. The twenty year old janitor pays the same monthly amount for medical as I do, and the company pays as much for his participation as it pays for my participation.
 
:shrug: if you want to call it something else that's fine. Fine: Most Americans Move Up The Ladder by increasing their compensation or level of responsibility over time as they change from one job to the other. The immobile labor force where Dad Worked At The Plant For 40 Years Doing The Same Thing is no longer a common reality. Now Dad starts off doing grunt work for one employer, and ends up doing better work for someone else, and then does the same thing three or four more times.
The upsurge in that life-style started with my generation - don't kid yourself.

no, pay is part of compensation. If you believe that American workers are held down and immobile despite the overwhelming evidence that indicates the opposite :shrug:.
The argument has been waged many times on this forum and always with the same result. On average I'm stick in my parents economic class just as my kids are stuck in my economic class. Now, if you want to quibble about degrees of poverty be my guest.

Or my current level of education. I took the job in order to get the skills, the experience, and the education, and now thanks to it I can move upwards and onwards to a new position where I will get new skills and experience and education and move onwards and upwards from there. Just like most Americans.
Including me. :shrug:

Strictly off of education, yes. But not to the same degree, no.
There may be minor modifications to compensation based off experience - if and only if experience is applicable to the job. An "experienced" burger flipper isn't going to get much extra compensation compared to the rookie even he spends his entire life flipping burgers.

We are making my point. Americans improve themselves and thus climb the ladder as they age, indicating that in fact a mobile workforce is full of people who are constantly improving themselves and their position, meaning that labor does, in fact, have negotiating power with employers.
:lamo
Unless you manage to get into the top 2% of the workforce (or are part of a union) you have no negotiating power. One has only to look at the compensation of most American engineers and doctors to see that - and those jobs actually DO have some minute level of real demand.

:doh that is what I showed you, Mo. Do you have difficulty reading charts? As People Age, Their Pay Increases. Social Security, for example, figures that the average American get's an average of a 2% raise every year, annualized.
Your chart doesn't show pay, it shows income. As I've pointed out for the third time, now, your chart is useless for any evidence of increased pay.
 
Well, my current employer has 24. One potential future employer has 15, with about 10 subsets for increased pay within each of those 15. That's probably rather higher than average - but the point remains that since people are continually moving up the ladder, the idea that each job change means a job creation is ignorant.
You must have a pretty broad definition of "field". In general engineers have four, maybe five if you count the first step of management. I suspect doctors are the same but they may have fewer since they're more specialized.
 
I suspect part of our impasse is in definition. "Experience" to me means time in the same or similar job. It has nothing to do with learning skills beyond those needed for the job at hand. That's education, not experience. As I noted before, a fifty year old, life-long janitor makes the same as a twenty year old janitor that's been on the job a couple of years. Once you've picked up all the skills needed for a job, pay increases pretty much stop - except for the often insufficient increases to compensate for inflation. I have no doubt that more education leads to different jobs with more responsibility and the subsequent increase in compensation for assuming those responsibilities.

Your whole argument seems to rest on the idea that people will increase their education, which is not always the case. Many have never been taught how to learn so virtually everything they do is by rote. It's a sad fact of life that half the workforce has an IQ below 100. For those that can't (and the few that won't) learn, they are stuck - or rather WE are stuck since society pays for it's own ignorance in ignoring the problem for so many decades. Keep spending less on education and trying to relieve poverty and things will only get worse. It's much more difficult to learn if you're already doing all you can just to feed your family.

I agree the Welfare State sucks, but I can also see from decades of keeping my eyes open that we have done little to resolve the problems that create poverty, lack of education and little concern - even disdain - for the poor. Every grimace of disgust and every upturned nose only increase our costs down the road. That kind of negative reinforcement only makes the problem worse.
 
Everyone works for a living, no matter what you and your ilk seem to think. See, the burger flippers and the janitors are supposed to be the unskilled, the young, the kids in high school who are doing it for money on the side, whose majority expenses are covered by their parents. They work while they are going to school and they learn a work ethic. By the time they turn 18 and graduate from high school, they can either go to college, or move up the corporate ladder into management and open up another spot beneath them for another young worker.
20% of the jobs pay less that $10 an hour. Show me that 20% of the workforce is under 21 and we can agree. I won't hold my breath but I'll admit I haven't researched it lately so you may be right.


You seem to think that people who are stupid or lazy or don't want to work ought to get the same benefits as everyone who does. No, they don't deserve them, they haven't EARNED them!
As I've just pointed out to cp - half the workforce IS "stupid" with an IQ of <100. You can't take your own experience and those in your personal little social group as an indication of the world as a whole.


For those that actually ARE "lazy" or "don't want to work" - and I know a few of those - that's the path they've been put on and I have no reason to believe any amount of help will change them, now. Maybe when they were younger but not now.
 
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He didn't spend 4 or 8 years pissing and moaning about Carter. That's the difference. He also succeeded, another difference.
I have no doubt your "proper response" to the oil embargo would have been an invasion of Saudi Arabia. :lamo



Early 80's was nothing compared to the load of crap that came down in 2008. I saw both - but you can look at just about any economic chart and it'll show the same.
 
WOW! Zombie Thread!!! :)


MOST people get their health insurance through work so, yes, it's the same. The twenty year old janitor pays the same monthly amount for medical as I do, and the company pays as much for his participation as it pays for my participation.

:) Except that was not the point, now, was it. Rather it was that the health insurance for that sixty year old costs more for the employer than it does for the twenty year old young buck. Since the employer is paying more in benefits and paycheck, as folks get older, the fact remains that Americans compensation increases as they age and move from job to job.
 
WOW! Zombie Thread!!! :)


:) Except that was not the point, now, was it. Rather it was that the health insurance for that sixty year old costs more for the employer than it does for the twenty year old young buck. Since the employer is paying more in benefits and paycheck, as folks get older, the fact remains that Americans compensation increases as they age and move from job to job.
I've been gone awhile ... :shrug:

Insurance providers give a total cost (per person) to insure the group, they do not break it down into "it's $XXX for your young employees and $YYY for your older employees".
 
The upsurge in that life-style started with my generation - don't kid yourself.

On the contrary, it's as old as the nation and as American as apple Pie.

Abraham Lincoln said:
"The prudent, penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land, for himself; then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This, say its advocates, is free labor---the just and generous, and prosperous system, which opens the way for all---gives hope to all, and energy, and progress, and improvement of condition to all."

What started with your generation was spending more than you made, and thus destroying yourself with debt because ya'll (collectively speaking, of the boomers) are a bunch of narcissistic wannabe philosophers with no discipline or sense of personal responsibility.

The argument has been waged many times on this forum and always with the same result. On average I'm stick in my parents economic class just as my kids are stuck in my economic class.

While it is true that often levels of success relative to others replicate throughout generations, this is because of how people are taught and raised to live. However, fortunately, on average, you are also wrong. People make more than their parents did today, on average. They just also spend more - lots more. From the liberal-leaning Brookings Institute:

...Adults who were children in 1968—those who were in their 30s and 40s at the end of the century—tend to have more income than did their parents’ generation at the same age. Median family income rose by 29 percent between the two generations, from $55,600 in inflation-adjusted dollars to $71,900.1 Mean or average family incomes, which are more strongly influenced by incomes at the top of the income distribution, grew even more rapidly, from $61,600 to $88,000 (a 43 percent increase). Income growth occurred not only at the median but throughout the income distribution, as shown in Figure 1. When parents and children are each ranked by family income and divided into quintiles, the dividing lines between groups are always higher for the children’s generation than the parents’ generation...

:)

There is also this neat little nugget:

...Children born to parents in the bottom fifth are more likely to surpass their parents’ income than are children from any other background..

Which is pleasing enough. Generally, only a minority of people in the bottom fifth and a minority of people in the top fifth are people who match the relative experience of their parents. Although there are indeed effects due to superior social and formal education, in no income quintile do a majority of parents produce children who replicate their relative results.

Relative Family Income.jpg

There may be minor modifications to compensation based off experience - if and only if experience is applicable to the job. An "experienced" burger flipper isn't going to get much extra compensation compared to the rookie even he spends his entire life flipping burgers.

Most companies include pay raises by time, however, within the field of burger flipping, experienced burger flippers typically become lead burger flippers and then assistant managers of burger flipping.

Unless you manage to get into the top 2% of the workforce (or are part of a union) you have no negotiating power.

not at all, you have negotiating power relative to the need for the labor you can provide. As you increase in experience and knowledge, so does your negotiating power. If you have always simply taken whatever was offered, then I'm sorry to be able to tell you this so late, but you have missed out. Nor does a union give you bargaining power - in fact, it takes away your bargaining power by legally banning you from negotiating at all. You are instead required to simply "trust" others to negotiate on your behalf as well as you would, and that your labor (and therefore deserved compensation) is "about average" to the worth of everyone else's.

One has only to look at the compensation of most American engineers and doctors to see that - and those jobs actually DO have some minute level of real demand.

every job has a level of demand. otherwise it wouldn't be there.

Your chart doesn't show pay, it shows income. As I've pointed out for the third time, now, your chart is useless for any evidence of increased pay.

:doh This is getting hard to bear with. You cannot be this obtuse.

household-income-by-age-bracket-median-real.gif


That is income. It is pay. Not Compensation. That is strictly the money that flows from the employer to the employee. The paychecks of Americans get bigger relative to the median income as they get older.
 
You must have a pretty broad definition of "field".

My current field is "Marine". If you want to go by Enlisted ranks only, then we currently have 10. However, one can skip ahead from any rank to officer ranks by going through OCS, which has another 9 possible ranks. Or, if you like, you can go warrant officer (5).
 
On the contrary, it's as old as the nation and as American as apple Pie.
As opposed to my parent's generation you so neatly skewered. Most boomers don't/didn't work 40 years at the same place whereas many of our parents did.
 
I suspect part of our impasse is in definition. "Experience" to me means time in the same or similar job. It has nothing to do with learning skills beyond those needed for the job at hand. That's education, not experience. As I noted before, a fifty year old, life-long janitor makes the same as a twenty year old janitor that's been on the job a couple of years. Once you've picked up all the skills needed for a job, pay increases pretty much stop - except for the often insufficient increases to compensate for inflation. I have no doubt that more education leads to different jobs with more responsibility and the subsequent increase in compensation for assuming those responsibilities.

Not at all - experience counts as well. Doctors, for example. Or, my field (analysis) for another. Someone who has performed 1,000 open-heart-surgeries is simply able to charge more for the 1,001st than someone who has done 3, because their experience means that they are bringing a superior product to the table. Someone who has devised six successful major advertising campaigns for large multinationals before is more valuable and able to charge more for his seventh than he was for his first - because the product he is bringing to bear (his mind and abilities) is superior.

Your whole argument seems to rest on the idea that people will increase their education, which is not always the case.

My argument rests upon the idea that people tend to increase in experience and abilities and knowledge; which, except for our perennially unemployed, generally is the case. Formal education is a nice-add-on (and necessary in some job fields), but not required for the broad populace.

It's a sad fact of life that half the workforce has an IQ below 100.

That is technically not true - remember that the low-ends of the bell curve tend not to have jobs, but rather have disability payments. Or, their spouse works and they stay at home.

For those that can't (and the few that won't) learn, they are stuck - or rather WE are stuck since society pays for it's own ignorance in ignoring the problem for so many decades. Keep spending less on education and trying to relieve poverty and things will only get worse. It's much more difficult to learn if you're already doing all you can just to feed your family.

we spend large sums on education. we get middling to poor results because we pump the money through a wasteful, sclerotic, bloated, union monster that serves it's own ends and ****'s over our children.

I agree the Welfare State sucks, but I can also see from decades of keeping my eyes open that we have done little to resolve the problems that create poverty, lack of education and little concern - even disdain - for the poor.

Forgive me, but according to the logic you have presented, your decades of observation have not improved your ability to make a judgement call, and therefore your argument here is moot. :)

Every grimace of disgust and every upturned nose only increase our costs down the road. That kind of negative reinforcement only makes the problem worse.

I will simply quote my avatar here, another proponent from America's beginning of the wonderful manner in which this nation offers self-improvement:

Benjamin Franklin said:
I am for doing good to the poor, but...I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed...that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

:)
 
My current field is "Marine". If you want to go by Enlisted ranks only, then we currently have 10. However, one can skip ahead from any rank to officer ranks by going through OCS, which has another 9 possible ranks. Or, if you like, you can go warrant officer (5).
Every rule has an exception and the military has always been overly redundant - not that I disagree with that philosophy - for them. But I was under the impression platoon leader was a different job than battalion commander. Guess it's all the same. :shrug: LOL!

Like engineers, once you hit manage (officers) you're no longer an engineer. Isn't "I work for a living" still a common saying among NCO's?
 
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As opposed to my parent's generation you so neatly skewered. Most boomers don't/didn't work 40 years at the same place whereas many of our parents did.

:thinking and yet they were able to live beneath their means and retire in relative comfort, whereas the boomers appear to have wasted more wealth than any generation in human history.....
 
And here I though all Marines were soldiers. LOL!

Okay, I've been polite to you so far. But you say that again and I am reaching through this screen and knife-handing you :mrgreen:


Marines consider that an insult. We run towards the sound of gunfire, not the sight of the chowhall. ;)
 
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