Posted on 02/21/2011 4:11:51 AM PST by Scanian
That attitude is an example of why the WASP culture was necessary to build a country like this, while other cultures (or lack of culture) simply tear it down.
My Mom used to work for HHS. She reveled in catching people like this...."So, how long, exactly, have you been working for XYZ contractor?" :-)
No repercussions, which always frosted her. Nothing beyond giving them the boot from the dole.
Communist and Socialist parties in NYC were very openly controlling unions in the early days.
My father was in the union too in the construction industry and it got him jobs when projects came to a close so he always supported it. He even paid dues when he didn’t have to anymore. During the 70s, he became more and more conservative but still held unions in high regard. It blinded him to the fact that union inflexibility caused massive layoffs and plant shutdowns in our area. Some fathers were unemployed for several years but still supported the union position. Finally the jobs went away.
I started out with a favorable view of unions as a kid but slowly saw how they destroyed jobs. Even with that, I still thought they could be good if they were reformed and became more flexible. Then I saw how, in the late 80s and 90s, they truly became part of the Dem machine. They supported anti-war demonstrations and gay marriage. That’s when I finally wrote them off.
No reason for the government to pay farmers unless they are buying food. Same with all corporate subsidies, they should be abolished.
First couple of weeks I was there the people I was working with kept asking me to join the union, I told them i wasn't interested.
About the third week I was there some little wormy clown, didn't have a butt big enough to smell, came up to me and told me I had to sign up with the union. I told him i wasn't interested.
He started poking me in the chest telling me if I didn't join the union there would be trouble.
Big mistake.
I grabbed that fagot looking finger, bent it backwards and gave it a good twist. He's now on the floor looking up at me. I told him if I had trouble out of the union I was going to look him up, tie my tool bag on his foot and throw him overboard.
Nobody else asked me to join the union.
The only other trouble I had was from a union worker that didn't want to work in the same area as a non union. He told me I had to go work somewhere else. I told him if he didn't want to work in the same area as a non union he could leave. He told me I didn't understand, he was union and I was leaving. He put his hand on my shoulder and started pushing me.
He found himself on the floor after being bounced off a bulkhead.
He told me he was going to get me fired. I told him I might as well kick his ass before I left. He took off and that was the last I heard from him.
Unions are monopolies that should be over with.
In Wisconsin they only need 17 State Senators for a quorum on non spending items. They need to make it a right-to-work state and abolish public employee unions too
I have read about that... disgusting vermin.
LLS
I'm very familiar with how the UAW works but thrown for a loop after meeting a good friend's nephew who is a union sheet metal worker.
When I met Ronnie a couple years ago, he was laid off and continued to be unemployed for about two years. Because of Ronnie's affiliation with his sheet metal workers union and having served an apprenticeship with them, Ronnie is absolutely forbidden to accept employment in his trade expertise from any employer that is a non union shop.......
Ronnie went on to tell me that when he was a member of his union's pension board, they discovered that one of their members who retired was working his trade for a non-union employer. The pension board then took action to penalize and recover from the retiree over $17,000.00 which they claimed was the cost of training this person in his trade. The retiree took them to court and lost due to the language in the union contract that expressly prohibits him from doing what he did......
But back to Ronnie, he's basically at the mercy of his union for work. If they can't provide it to him he's forbidden to find it on his own.......
I paid $5 a week in dues out of take-home pay of about $20 (this was 1972) for nothing. College students didn't get benefits and we made 10 or 15 cents above minimum wage. I stayed with that company for 20 years and the most satisfying day of my career was when I was promoted to store manager and got to quit the union.
I was more excited about that than the actual promotion. All the union ever represented to me was the fact that the kid who got hired the day before me got more hours, better days off and higher pay -- even if he was a worthless slacker.
Government support for unions should end.
But eventually the restrictive work rules and union mentality made the businesses unproductive and unable to compete with the more nimble and cheaper labor foreign competition. Over several decades almost all the businesses either closed their doors or moved their work operations overseas. They couldn't adapt their work rules, update their equipment, or change their business models fast enough to survive. Investing more money was just throwing it away. It was better to either liquidate or move overseas.
Last year, the union offices in the county closed their doors and simply moved away. Of the thousands of previously employed union workers (not to mention non-union office and managerial staffs), there were only a few dozen union workers remaining working, so the unions moved on to other fields to "represent" and collect dues.
Now (like so much else of NY) the county is a jobs wasteland. It has almost no significant manufacturing, depression levels of unemployment, and a welfare society with government enablers as the major employer. (Unionized teachers and schools, of course, are the highest paid professions now and are the premier "industry")
Of course, there were other factors involved as well such as high state taxes, burdensome regulations and the draconian environment regulations requiring the industries to pour money into environmental "improvements" - preventing them from updating their capital equipment instead. But the union mentality and restrictive work rules were among the biggest factors preventing staying competitive.
The entire system had become preventable stupidity writ large...
I could see the handwriting on the wall. It was so depressing I quit my job and left the state for other work while the getting was good. It was one of the best things I ever did.
It still infuriates and saddens me to see how once thriving communities of friends and neighbors composed of many decent and once hard working people morphed into a hopelessly rundown area peopled by a chronic welfare class with almost no hope left for the average working man or entrepreneur unless they could secure a government job someplace.
But this isn't an unusual story. You will find similar ones all over New York and other Liberal states and areas which permit the wrong influences and people to assume control.
It is ALL of America's future unless we can stop it now.
“Now (like so much else of NY) the county is a jobs wasteland”
Must be one of those upstate counties that Hillary promised to make an urgent priority.
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