Quote:
Originally Posted by VRM
Wes,
I'm actually interested in reading the contract. The UAW seems to post highlights, and not the actual contract. There is one part that I found that says:
"The proposed agreement maintains the Independence Day week shutdown at GM. During the week of the Independence Day holiday, seniority UAW workers will receive four days (32 hours) off at their regular rate of pay, including shift and seven-day operation premiums. Eligibility is unchanged from the 2003-2007 agreement.
Over the term of the proposed agreement, the 32 hours of shutdown pay are worth an average of $950 each year for a typical GM assembler."
This breaks down to a little under $30 per hour 'for a typical GM assembler'. Perhaps they have other job categories that I am not aware of, perhaps they have a handful of members that make $300 per hour - I don't trust the UAW to freely provide any information that is going to make them look bad to the public.
Jamo,
You have my attention. I enjoy history (I think you know that); I'm familiar with Hitler and the attitudes of American businessmen of the day.
I saw the line in that first contract forbidding union recruiting on company grounds - when/how did it become all union - they don't have a choice if they want to work in a union plant, right? A friend of mine at NET was a union worker, but refused to go on strike during the big one in '89 or so. She still had to pay union dues afterwards, but she said she no longer had union protection.
Steve
|
--------
Steve,
As you know, there are many ways to make over and above hourly wages in unions. Benefits are one. Normally many are penalty claims, originally designed to encourage agreed-upon reasonable working conditions by the only method corporate understands ...the bottom line. So penalties are both abused by employees with phony claims and abused by corporate that just flat out refuses to pay legitimate claims. Philosophically, I don't see a good guy-bad guy scenario. A little human greed perhaps.
It's a contract cluster for me, especially after 100+ years of railroad re-writes. Normally the union spins average earnings minimal (only 10%) and corporate spins them exaggerate(say $76/hr). I will say corporate have had much better press releases at contract time ...management isn't as dumb as we know it is. First press opinions are lasting ones.
Don't the public deserve the truth?? As Clint Eastwood said to Gene Hackman in UNFORGIVEN, "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it".
In the past, I've pointed out that just about every organization is a union of sorts, with it's own aspect of corruption. Labor union, corporate union, Bar Association union etc and even government itself is a union, the
Citizens Union. Everybody's a socialist when it behooves them. And I will submit that
any form of democratic government at all ...is socialism itself.
And then there are the unions within unions, sometimes just a political party. As any special interest, such as any "union" gains power, power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. Balance is an elusive quality and corruption on a siver platter.
So I feel the greatest threat to America now is
corporate union. Years of Big Business lobbying congress to pass favorable "union contract" conditions.
If Barry Goldwater, aka Mr. Conservative, were alive today, he would now be fighting the military industrial complex and all corporate power abuse. He would be fighting the extreme power of Big Business, that which he once loved when the britches still fit. Labor has been relatively beaten.
Fear the growing military industrial complex threat, that Ike warned us about after he saw the vast power of corporate America win wars.
Not that I'm not grateful to corporate America for allowing me to read this forum in English.
I just want them to tone it down a bit before somebody rolls up my sidewalks and ships them to China.
Wes
...
Threaded Mode
