Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[PTTG??]

I think that to clarify this well, we need to have a kind of parable.

Imagine that a customer is trying to buy some gas from a gas station. Now this is the only gas station in town, so he's been going here for years; the price is pretty high, and even though all the other stations have lowered their prices lately, giving more gas for the money, the station owner has kept the same high costs this whole time.

Now the customer goes in and asks the owner to lower his prices. The owner is taken aback, and says that he couldn't possibly lower them a cent. The owner demands that the customer get out there and buy the gas weather he likes it or not, and how dare he come in here and act like he's entitled to fair prices at all. He says that he has no choice but to fiddle with the pumps as it is, to make sure that only half a gallon comes out when a full gallon is charged. The owner then goes back to dusting stacks of $20s in cocaine and burning them as a kind of aromatherapy.

The customer says he'd rather sit here in his empty car and block the pump than pay rediculous prices.

The owner, in a rage, sweeps out of the shop, gets in his fully-fueled humvee, then drives off into the distance, running over the pumps, the customer's car, and all the other cars there in the process.

The next day, the newspaper bears the headline: CUSTOMER FORCES DESTRUCTION OF GAS STATION

Incidentally, the customer is the union here. There were no rasises in the past decade, they were paying "crisis management teams" upwards of $800 an hour, and the corporations were refusing to pay pensions as well as cutting salaries.

The union refused, and the CEO threw a temper tantrum and declared bancruptcy. Again.

[kaijyuu]

Yeah, my father was gossiping about this this morning.

Any sources on all this? Not that I don't trust you, but if I'm going to talk to others about it I need a better source than "some guy on the internet"

[Neonivek]

What scares me a lot more is on another site with this article...

People were extremely angry at the Unions.

Honestly I am starting to really be concerned about Unions... It seems like no matter HOW in the right they are people are now more then willing to burn them at the stake. ESPECIALLY if the union inconveniences them in any slight way.

In Canada Ontario they are already starting to seriously crack down on strikers to the point where for some jobs you cannot strike because they will instantly force you back to work.

I have to sort of say this... We are doomed as a society. We are getting closer and closer to going back to work slavery.

[PTTG??]

My main source is a few people who worked at hostess who commented over here.

Even if this guy's exaggerating, it's still the CEO who took his ball home when the Unions were just doing SOP.

[Jerick]

But it was union stupidity that sank the company!
They should just have sit around waiting for trickle down economics to kick in and then they could have their pay rises!
I mean it's not like collective bargining is pretty much the only effective tool those evil unions have!
[/sarcasm]
Seriously though I've poked around and it's scary just how many people are almost blindly blaming the union for this.

[Tellemurius]

my issue is with when you are unionized and go on strike, how the fuck are you making money? My family has gotten out unions due to they weren't even doing their job. for my father they took out $6/hr which for him is alot of money since he works around 50-70 hours per week and the dues mainly only went to the guys that sat around all day doing nothing, for my uncle being union he was only allowed to work at union shops which are usually full staffed, he lost his job and no one was opened so in the end he moved his family in with us for a half a year. A union is great no denying about but a badly managed one sucks.

[10ebbor10]

my issue is with when you are unionized and go on strike, how the fuck are you making money? My family has gotten out unions due to they weren't even doing their job. for my father they took out $6/hr which for him is alot of money since he works around 50-70 hours per week and the dues mainly only went to the guys that sat around all day doing nothing, for my uncle being union he was only allowed to work at union shops which are usually full staffed, he lost his job and no one was opened so in the end he moved his family in with us for a half a year. A union is great no denying about but a badly managed one sucks.

I 'm not sure how it works  where you're from, but I believe that in Belgium during Union organised strikes you're still given a monetary compensation, which I believe is payed for by the Unions. I believe it's around €30-€35 a day. Also, for all social rights and stuff strike days still count as days that you've been working.

[Tellemurius]

America but like i said their unions weren't structured well and was just a bunch of drunks and lazyasses.

[Zangi]

I wonder how much the CEO and whatever upper management is getting paid... including benefits and parachutes.  Are they taking a pay cut?

[Seriyu]

Now stop me for a minute if I'm missing a big point or some reason that this flat out couldn't be true, is there a possibility that hostess actually could not support workers anymore?

I've been looking around for information on layoffs from before this whole thing, for potential that hostess may have been on the way out, and this was just the part that pushed it over, but naturally the internet is full of buzz on this thing, so any search with hostess and lay off in the same sentence is about six pages of the union thing.

[Zrk2]

Unions are great in theory, just like properly run companies are great in theory. In practice they make a few people rich (albeit not as rich as companies make people) at the expense of others. But unions claim it's for your own good while they do it. Now this is purely anecdotal but in my family I've found that people get screwed by unions at least as often as they get screwed by companies. More so in some cases.

[Pnx]

There are so many laws out there about this kind of stuff that need to be changed or added in... It's depressing to think about how unlikely it is that anything substantial in this country will get done.

[Flying Dice]

Unions are great in theory, just like properly run companies are great in theory. In practice they make a few people rich (albeit not as rich as companies make people) at the expense of others. But unions claim it's for your own good while they do it. Now this is purely anecdotal but in my family I've found that people get screwed by unions at least as often as they get screwed by companies. More so in some cases.

This. Unions used to be good, back when they actually were about social progress and workers' rights, but at this point they're essentially no better than the corporations themselves.

[Leafsnail]

I don't see how you can blame the union in this case.  The board of directors issued a massive pay and benefits cut to all workers while greatly increasing their own salary.  They were probably hoping to cut and run and just wanted to trigger industrial action so they could blame it on THOSE GREEDY WORKERS NOT WANTING TO TAKE AN 8% SALARY CUT AND 30% BENEFIT CUT WHILE WE MAKE DO WITH AN 80% PAY RISE

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/twinkies-maker-hostess-liquidate-company-strike/story?id=17736898#.UKb7Xodrj54
http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/11/16/fox-ignores-hostess-array-of-troubles-to-scapeg/191440 (sources 80% stat to WSJ)

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Unions, while not completely clean entities, are the way workers can exercise political force much like the companies they exist within do. They are an interest outlet and need to exist, though mandatory membership is certainly not acceptable, nor is firing people for trying to join or start unions.

I remember reading once about Target's anti-union practices. They gave managers a mandate to fire anyone suspected, rumored, or talking about having union interest. Not even confirmation, just speculation.