Disconnect

[veronica_rich]

I have calmed down somewhat from a couple of nights ago - but not by a lot. And definitely not toward those trying to sinkhole the Big 3 automakers. Besides the obvious need to preserve the fully 1 percent of the American population that would be directly affected by such job losses, I still contend the Republican senators who voted against this bailout are chewing their own feet off to spite their posture - the UAW might support the Democratic Party, but I guarantee you the majority of individual laborers who vote have voted Republican their entire lives, by and large. Management is not the hoi polloi.

However, if those people have any sense, they are reconsidering their support for the GOP in future elections and will instead check out individual candidates before casting a ballot.

This isn't so much about the UAW being asked to make concessions. The UAW would make some concessions; the UAW has made some concessions (just ask GM, at least) in the past. More than once. But why are we not hearing about upper management being asked to make concessions, too? No hired hand needs to make $25 million a year, especially if the company they're running is sucking hard into the ground. I agree with the UAW president, who said it sounds like these GOP senators are not simply trying to get a deal this time - they're trying for a union busting. While there is plenty in history to support the idea that unions can be corrupted, there's even more evidence that government can be corrupted - or, more accurately, that individual officials are corrupt. Do we abolish Congress? Burn down the White House? Bulldoze the Illinois Capitol?

Unions are necessary. Even if you've never been in a union, you probably enjoy benefits obtained by unions at some point in history: minimum wage, the 40-hour work week, health insurance subsidized by your employer, vacation and sick pay, retirement, bonuses. (And if you enjoy none of these in America, well ... I don't think it's a coincidence that unions have been on the decline, by and large, for several years, and working conditions keep getting shittier - do you?) Perhaps unions need to be revamped or restructured for a new century - but not abolished.

In short: Quit being asshats. Especially those of you from states that depend on the Big 3. Yeah, YOU. I think something happens to a person's logic once they get inside the Beltway, I swear to Dog. I would hope our incoming team for 2009 would be immune from that, but I know not all of them will be.

Comments

[finding-neo.livejournal.com]

Do you think there's any coincidence in the fact that some Republican Senators voting against this were from southern states where foreign car manufacturers have non-union plants? Jay Leno had the new host of Meet the Press on last night and they talked about that being a factor, as well as on NPR this morning.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

Well, that's been mentioned on a few talking-head programs I've seen as well. But it isn't just the non-domestic states' legislators voting against the bailout (and yes, I do think that's part of it - if Detroit goes under, doesn't that mean the foreign car companies in their states might expand and pay their states more tax dollars?). Hulshof in Missouri, for example (House, not Senate), voted against it as well - and he serves the St. Charles area, in or near which there are actually all 3 companies' plants! (Of course, this isn't the first dumbass thing Hulshof has done. I almost wonder if he has a job with a foreign car company lined up for when he loses in 2010, and just doesn't give a shit.)

[immortal-jedi.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to comment on the rest- I'm not really qualified to be a political analyst- but I do disagree with you, at least in part, on the unions.

Yes, they were needed in history. Yes, in some industries they are still needed. And yes, I know that my experiences aren't everyone's. However... I was treated a lot better at my non-union job then my union one.

At my non-union job, the pay was slightly lower, but the benefits were a lot better. Despite the fact that I was part time, I had access to health insurance, which I didn't have at my union job. I didn't need to worry about it, but for some of my coworkers, it was almost literally a lifesaver. The non-union job was more respectful of my stated availability- there was only one time that they didn't schedule me in my availability, and that was one day that everyone knew they had to work, Black Friday. The union job I worked at did it all the time, and the union did nothing to stop it.

In fact, the union I was in seemed to do nothing but take $30 a month out of my paycheck, and negotiate for a really, really horrible contract. Maybe they did more, but as a rank and file worker, I never saw any benefits to it.

The union job was also set up so that if we didn't join the union, we still had to pay dues. Which made it doubly useless and a waste, because they weren't as helpful to people who opted out of the union. About the only good thing that came out of the union there was slightly higher pay. (maybe 50 cents an hour, translating for length of time working there, and a couple of years inflation). However, they treated us like cogs in a machine, and the union didn't seem to care.

It was the same at the university, where I was not required to join the union (and I didn't, for reasons outlined above), and I still had to pay dues. Which I think is wrong. I should have had the opportunity to opt out of the union completely, not just not get the "benefits", and still have to pay for them.

Then there are the teacher's unions, which have done their best, and succeeded, in keeping parents from being able to send their children to the schools they want them to go to. I'm talking about the idea of school vouchers. I'm not even going to comment on religious verses public- a lot of public schools around here are a lot worse then the private ones, and they have more funding. Vouchers would mean that a family could afford to send their child to a better school. But it would also mean less money for the public schools, and the teachers unions can't have that, never mind that the students would learn better with smaller class sizes, which are more often seen in private schools around here. And teachers are supposed to want children to learn.

Then there was the writers strike last year, which took a lot of money out of the economy here, and the potential SAG strike early next year, which if it happens, promises to do the same (in a time when the economy doesn't need anymore slowdowns). A lot of the workers don't think they can afford to strike, even if one is called.

So... I admit, some unions are necessary, but I do think that a lot of them are too powerful.

Sorry for the long response, I've been trying to write this for a couple of days in response to your earlier statements on unions.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

You and I have jobs that depend on some mental talent, some personality, some thinking and learning in order to do them well. For all the crap we put up with most of the time, comes also a measure of respect from the public at large. Teachers are generally well-regarded as engaged in a noble profession that not everybody wants to do; ditto with journalists, by and large. In other words, people generally believe you have to have a brain and an education to do what we do.

To work on the line at an auto factory, you don't need to be very smart or very leaderly, or particularly "with it" except enough not to get yourself sucked into or smashed by some machine. I grew up in an auto worker family, so I know this firsthand; my father is not a stupid man, but the mental agility he has for numbers and figuring things out was never needed for that job (and he has complained often, in fact, that the job made him dumber over 30 years). He took it in the early 1970s as a young man because it was high-paying, he didn't need a special education for it, and he wanted a lifestyle where he didn't have to bring his work home with him. (In later years he would regret this "career" choice greatly, going so far as to try to forbid me to work at a factory one summer while I was in college, even though I would have made more money there than at the crappy fast-food job I eventually found. He explained that factories in the area were too great a lure with high wages and he was afraid I might have given up school to stay there instead. Of course, that was almost 20 years ago, and things are not what they were then. In short, I'm glad I don't have a factory job, for many reasons.)

The most basic reason people unionize is not for pay, but to gain respect from their employer - and for a job, respect takes the form of pay, benefits, being taken seriously and being seen as necessary to a company's operation. Unions do not happen where workers are treated with respect and paid a decent (not high - decent, as in able to do more than survive) wage and given basic benefits to take care of their families when they get sick.

On a tangental note: As long as we have policies and attitudes in place that encourage constant breeding and/or discourage birth control in any way, we're going to have an ever-increasing population. Our world may be getting more technological, but that just means computers can replace people. In short - if you're going to have all these people, they need jobs. And some of those jobs involve mindlessly putting Cog A into Slot B: factory workers, sanitation workers, janitors, you name it. We need these people even if we personally (you and I) don't want to do these jobs - but these people also have dignity and want to be recognized for doing their jobs well. About the only kind of "respect" they will get, frankly, is in the form of good pay and benefits. And there will always be a need for unions to lobby for this, since human nature - being what it is - means that a lot of employers will always be greedy and not want to pay what these people what they deserve.

Finally particular to the car industry, it's worth noting that the percentage of a new car's cost that goes for actual unionized labor (remember, this doesn't include the engineers and other white-collar employees who contribute to the company) is very, very small - single digits. So to me, the only possible reason for picking on organized labor to make concessions for this bailout is to bust the unions - not as an actual cost-saving measure designed to genuinely save an industry.

[yoiebear.livejournal.com]

I know for a fact that unions have helped make working conditions better for several generations. I mean, thanks to them we have a minimum wage and child labor laws on top of what you cited.

I'm not going to reply to other comments on this post, as it is not my place, but I do feel the same as you when it comes to the Big 3 issue.

In fact, my dad is already begin setting aside money to give to opponents of Rep. Senators speaking out against it (namely Tenn.). That says something when my father and I are going to send money for out of state senate races.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

I have no extra money to give anywhere; I only have my big mouth, which is about all I can do at any given time (though sometimes it could be more tactful than it is).

[yoiebear.livejournal.com]

My dad doesn't really have the money, either, but what he does have, he's willing to give to the cause.

[roguedemon.livejournal.com]

I already commented on your earlier post, but I feel moved to reiterate -- you're right. I'm sure the unions aren't perfect, no organization is, but without them around, the whole idea of workers rights will disappear. There may be some jobs where workers are treated well without unions, and not as well with unions. However, without somebody watching out for workers, conditions are left up to the individual employers. Some are scrupulous, many are not. With the economy the way it is, the ones that are less scrupulous will win out in many industries. They already are. Therefore, the answer is to reform unions where they need reforming, and do whatever we can to keep them. They helps many people get a foothold in the middle class with the insistence on things like decent wages and benefits. Those people are being crowded out now.

And this is from someone whose husband has a good job that is nonunion. He is lucky that he works for a good company, but if something was ever to happen to his company, who knows what conditions he might encounter somewhere else? What kind of health insurance might we end up with? That's the stuff you just never know about in America. I'm always reading about people who transfer around and end up with wildly varying conditions. That's why we need things like unions and universal health care.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

However, without somebody watching out for workers, conditions are left up to the individual employers. Some are scrupulous, many are not. With the economy the way it is, the ones that are less scrupulous will win out in many industries.

That's it precisely. It's like saying the public welfare system (which includes Social Security and Medicare - remember, everybody gets to benefit when they get old, not just those who paid in) has a lot of fat, so it needs to be eliminated. No, it doesn't - it perhaps needs to be overhauled, I would go along with that to an extent, but the amount of good it does outweighs the muck also inherent in it.