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Originally Posted by BeanCounter
Wes,
I've read your little class dividing diatribes before but this one really takes the cake. Let me put it in perspective. I grew up in a two room apartment above a bar in one of the worst sections of Kansas City. My Dad, a uneducated Okie farm boy who chopped cotton for a dollar a day, my Mom, my brother and sister and I lived and slept in those two rooms. My Dad was one of the original founders of the Grain Millers Union here in KC. My Mom was a steward for the machinists. My father in law was the International President of a construction union. My son is currently a union electrician. So it's safe to say I have a pretty solid union background. My mom and dad and we kids worked hard to get all three of us through college. In fact all of us have MBA's. I got mine on the GI bill when I got home by working a full time job and going to school at night. While the union guys were *****ing about working 8 hours I was working 12 to 14 hours, traveling away from home and continuing to better my skills. So the three of us now have a pretty good chunk of money. And I don't apologize one bit for what I've worked so hard for. The unions were very necessary in the first half of the last century but soon they began to abuse their power. High wages for doing substandard work that eventually put the auto, steel, and other industries into such a non-competetive position that now they're hurting for a job let alone a good paying one. I see the electricians union heads doing nothing but feathering their own nests while they let the guys doing the work suffer. They fight to keep guys who have failed drug test after drug test on the job endangering everyone who works with them. Meanwhile the good workers sit on the books or have to go to other cities to get work. 60% of the work in KC is now done by non-union companies and it's the union's fault for having the standards of trailer park trash.
Maybe you need to work a little harder instead of blaming everyone else because I see none of the problems that you cry wolf about. Nowhere in the world can a person better himself as he can in the good ole USA. Try it. You'll be surprised.
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Bernie,
I just got back from work and now I have three days off, the week-end no less.
I'm leaving to visit my son in Minneapolis whom I have time to see a couple times a year.
This was a short week with only 65 hours and 10 minutes. The norm is about 72 hours if we get our days off and about 108 hours if we don't. Before you think that I got a lot of overtime $, I should mention, no, the pay structure is such that there is rarely overtime, 99.9% of it being straight-time. A lot of things have changed since the hayday of union power. I didn't jump on the union bandwagon until 1990.
A half sunk boat by then.
I'm sure your folks worked hard even though they were union... and most (but not all) of us do today. The wolf is back at our middleclass door. Seems like whoever has power abuses it. I'd like to ask you to look very carefully at what corporate America is currently doing to increase the profit margin, including NAFTA type policies. And ask yourself if it's all good for America; good for your grandchildren. You can blame whoever you like for forcing America into this position, I don't know if fault matters anymore. Don't forget your roots and
how your folks could eventually afford to help. Hard work often means very little without a little organizational clout. It's always been that way.
Then I'd like to ask you to reconsider your position on what we need to do about it. I'm all for a little political moderation. Somewhere out there is a middle ground where everyone in the USA stays healthy. America, land of the free... and fair.
Thanks for your support, whatever it may be.
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