Arbitrator imposes contract at Canadian Wal-Mart

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by rah
World wide unions would solve a lot of problems.
Not that it could ever happen.

Please check box 1 or box number 2

1. I think unions suck and we shouldn't have one.

2. I think we should be shot.

I wouldn't say "ever." China's had three decades of uninterrupted growth. On the whole, the country's very happy. However, once they hit a plateau or a recession, the locals are gong to get restless.

Corporate owners and managers will want a say in how the courtry's governed. Workers are going to want to protect their gains and will be unhappy when management tries to push the entire downturn onto their backs. Then you'll start seeing change: (a) more democratization and (b) unions being formed to protect the workers.

[rah]

Yes, it couldn't stay at rock bottom forever, but I doubt it will go back to where it was.

[rmsharpe]

If unions are the way for private sector workers to protect themselves from corporate greed, why has union membership been consistently declining in the last 50 years?

[rah]

Because management propaganda has been quite effective. But more importantly there are many people that are willing to work for less. A union is only really doable when you have close to a monopoly on the labor force. With skilled labor this is easier to control, but for unskilled labor it almost impossible. And with a lot of the skill positions being replaced by automation, your percentage of skilled workers is reduced.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by rmsharpe
If unions are the way for private sector workers to protect themselves from corporate greed, why has union membership been consistently declining in the last 50 years?

Lot of reasons. The biggest being:

Government protections have been eroding. Reagan himself broke the Patco strike. Management violations of labor laws are seldom prosecuted. Pro-Big-Business Republicans have been in control of the White House for most of the period from '80 to now and control of the Congress since 92 until 2004.

Outsourcing. The union's strength used to be in manfacturing. But most of our manufacturing base has been shipped off the China. Canada now manufactures more cars than Detroit does. As was pointed out above, organizing non-skilled workers in much harder than organizing skilled workers.

Workers have become apathtic. Unless layoffs or paycuts are imminent, it's very hard to even get workers to show up at meetings.

And then, because corporations have such a resevoir of cash assets, they can withstand a long strike, whereas the workers lose their savings, cars and homes.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Lancer
Controls on imports that drive up their prices is what we need. That would level the playing field for American workers. I heard a story once about the Japanese controls on car imports. The Japanese would completely disassemble every imported car to make sure it met specifiations, at the importers expense...

They do indeed do that. It's called a non tariff trade barrier and they do it specifically to stop foreign imports.

I'm generally pro-free trade but if there is an example of abuse, like China deliberately not letting their currency float, then I'm all for retaliatory trade barriers. In fact I'd say we're fast approaching a time when we will have to start a whole new trade regime for environmental reasons.

Global warming is a very real and growing problem and some countries absolutely refuse to do anything to curb their emissions while others, specifically the US and Australia, don't want to cripple their industries if countries like China and India won't take part in the reductions. The solution seems pretty straight forward. A new trade agreement between countries who do want to help fight global warming where those countries all enjoy free trade and any country which does not sign on gets slapped with a 10,000% tariff on everything. I believe that is the only way to force the cheaters to get on the bus. While we're at it we can force them to agree to environmental and worker rights legislation. If you don't comply then you don't get to take part in trade with the block.

You'd quickly get the entire 1st world to sign on and probably a fair bit of the middle income countries. Those who refused would see trade crash and their economies suffering horribly.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by rah
It doesn't need to but it's going to. Our cheap energy days are over. So unless we feel like taking over some oil rich country and actually take their oil, our standard of living will fall to pay for our lack of vision.

That's basically it. America has been lazy and complacent. We've been living in a fool's paradise where we thought we could consume 25% of the world's oil even though we only have 3% of it. Hell, 40% of our trade deficit is oil and right now we import 66% of our oil. Even if we drilled every last drop we could then we'd only maybe get it down to about 60%. We just don't have enough oil reserves to be self sufficient so we need to drastically cut consumption by raising CAFE standards up to at least 37mpg (to compare right now the EU countries get 37.5mpg and Japan gets 39 mpg while the US gets 24 mpg). Also 80% of the American population lives in cities but the vast majority don't have access to decent mass transit. If we won't to cut consumption we simply have to build light rail.

[Lancer]

Oerdin, I used to live back east and Rt 80 during the week would be bumper to bumper going to and from NY during rush hour. Why? Its not like they are manufacturing anything. Why not just stop all non manufacturing, non food producing/distributing work? That would cut our oil imports to zip, and all those folks could start doing something more real.

[Dinner]

No, simply raising the CAFE standards, increasing the tax on gasoline, and building decent mass transit will accomplish our goal of national energy independence or at least drastically slash our dependence. Yes, we should still drill where ever possible but we must realize that right wingers are lying when they say drilling will lower prices. Oil prices are set by world market demand and the US simply doesn't have enough oil left to drill to significantly effect world oil prices plus it would take a decade or two to build enough rigs and get them in place to produce significant amounts of oil.

As I said we should still do it as domestic production is preferable to national dependency on a critical item but we simply cannot drill our way to energy independence. Slashing consumption is the only real way to lessen our dependence and it sure wouldn't hurt if we ended up getting 75% of our energy from nongreenhouse gas producing domestic energy sources like nuclear. Honda is now selling a wonderful hydrogen fuel cell car and we can expect other makers (unfortunately not domestics as yet again bad management decided not to invest in future technologies) to produce more models in the near future (Nissan is currently testing a fuel cell car). Imagine if we converted over to fuel cells and all of our hydrogen was made using nuclear power. True energy independence.

[SlowwHand]

Originally posted by Lancer
Oerdin, I used to live back east and Rt 80 during the week would be bumper to bumper going to and from NY during rush hour. Why? Its not like they are manufacturing anything. Why not just stop all non manufacturing, non food producing/distributing work? That would cut our oil imports to zip, and all those folks could start doing something more real.

That's a good idea. Service industry is not the way to go. Besides China, don't leave out Mexico for outsourcing of manufacturing.

[Straybow]

Twenty years ago Kroger closed all its stores in Pennsylvania because of labor demands that would've made them all unprofitable.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by SlowwHand


That's a good idea. Service industry is not the way to go. Besides China, don't leave out Mexico for outsourcing of manufacturing.

I'm not to worried about Mexico since it's population is less then 1/10th of China (or India's) plus their income is already around $13,000 per year making them a middle income country. Besides if Mexicans don't have jobs they'll just come here which seems to upset many of your fellow Texans.

[Kataphraktoi]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


Is that the reason why the income of the average worker has been stagnate since 1980 while the net worth of America has doubled?

Worker pay stagnated partly because their work no longer was worth the people doing it-that is to say, why should a factory job be high paying? Because your an organic machine as opposed to a metallic machine?

You get what you pay for, and you get paid for what you give-"worker class" as in factory workers, give little of value, have little value, and shouldnt or cant be paid high. That money has to come from somewhere, and if their job produces not enough value where exactly would the money come from? The tooth fairy? I would say consumers greedy for cheaper everything are more to blame for the situation than the also greedy management.

Why? Its not like they are manufacturing anything. Why not just stop all non manufacturing, non food producing/distributing work? That would cut our oil imports to zip, and all those folks could start doing something more real.

Is this a troll??

[Lancer]

Erm, no.

Btw Straybow, I used to work in a Kroger owned store. Kroger could teach the Beast a few things.

[Zkribbler]

Worker pay stagnated partly because their work no longer was worth the people doing it-that is to say, why should a factory job be high paying? Because your an organic machine as opposed to a metallic machine?

Or more likely because the workers sat their like good dogies waiting in vain for some scraps from the master's feast. The Supply Siders said, give tax breaks to the rich and all society will benefit. The corporations took their tax breaks, used them to buy out their competition, then reduced services and increased fees.