Three unions are suing the city of Scranton, PA, due to the decision to pay all employees minimum wage. Including police. And firefighters.
An fine example of saving money, ladies and gentlemen- right up there with Detroit's decision to turn off all the streetlamps!
All the employees of Scranton? Does that include the mayor? (Somehow, I'm thinking it won't)
It did, actually!
Actually, the mayor isn't the problem - he's pretty much stuck. The issue is the city council, who refuses to implement a recovery plan that includes increases to property taxes. And without the plan, banks won't lend to the city.
HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
I really hate people on Facebook sometimes. I don't mean to be one of those people, but I recently had to contend with this:
I lived in Detroit in the early 90s. I watched unions shut down a few car factories by flat out refusing to negotiate, then blaming it on Japan. At least they got smarter this last time around. My mother works for a unionized company. That union, which is a business, just like Congress is a business and any other "advocacy group" as you charmingly refer to them, which has people in it who get paid when and if there is a dispute, demanded pay raises for a certain group in the company in a year in which the company had record losses. It was a ridiculous thing to ask for. The company refused, saying there was no money to go around, and everyone, CEO included, had taken pay cuts. The union didn't go for that. So they demanded everyone in the company strike. As a result, in order to keep the company working, the company had to ask for volunteers to fill their roles. People who were not trained in the jobs of those people had to be retrained and pulled off of their regular jobs and put on double shifts doing work to make up for the people that were going on strike. One of the things the company told the people going on strike was that if they went on strike, they'd lose their perks. Permanently. I'm not talking benefits, I'm talking PERKS. Nobody was going to lose health insurance or time off or anything of that nature. Just the equivalent of a discount on company products. This was after MONTHS of negotiation where the union refused to budge, wouldn't take any promises of raises when the company started putting out numbers. They went on strike, my mother worked double shifts and ran herself ragged and every day came home and cursed about that union. She didn't blame the company, because she, working in the company for 30+ years, knew it wasn't the company's fault, because she's seen this union do the same kind of bullshit three or four times. The union, after three months of this crap, acceded and agreed to "let" members go back to work. And the company took away the perks of everyone that went on strike. So what did the union do? It went on strike again, this time to get the perks back. This, mind you, is in a company with one of the HIGHEST PAID set of this particularly type of worker in the world. Are you telling me that's not picking a fight, acting like a five year old, and clearly doing something because you get paid to be angry?
I am not talking about teacher's unions. I am not talking about the ACLU. There are a NUMBER of institutions that I support having unions. But when I see people I know apply for jobs and absolutely NOT want to be in a union and get turned down for it because of that fact, or better yet, bullied by union members, boy, I can't help but think of just how SUPER those unions are. Yes, SOME unions do good things. SOME do not. But if you're going to whitewash them by saying "Unions are good, unions never do any wrong!" you're as brainwashed as the rightwing nutjobs that want them abolished. I appreciate you throwing me into that category straight off, though. I've lived in three socialized countries and never had a problem with the way they worked. Luckily, I have the ability to keep an open mind.
The stupid, it burns.
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KasynI'm not saying I don't like our chances.She called me the master.Registered Userregular
That's not that atrocious, I don't think. I'm not sure it's the case there, but some unions do overreach. Just because they're a vital and necessary thing doesn't mean they're perfect.
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HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
It's worth noting that the post he made above that was:
I've also seen UNIONS cost jobs, shut down factories, destroy employee given benefits...oh, and take a chunk of that paycheck hike. I do not think unions are necessarily bad, they have done much good, but I think unions as a BUSINESS that have full time employees that literally get paid to pick fights has resulted in some terrible situations that I've seen first hand, and that's what gives them their bad reputations.
Part misconception, part outright falsehood, part victim shaming in the vein of slut shaming.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
FWIW, I have literally seen unions force companies into bankruptcy on multiple occasions by refusing to renegotiate on work rules or pensions (union pension funds are absolute train wrecks, many of which are severely underfunded because of corruption and bad investment decisions by the unions). It doesn't always happen, of course, and the incidences may even be overreported, but it happens.
FWIW, I have literally seen unions force companies into bankruptcy on multiple occasions by refusing to renegotiate on work rules or pensions (union pension funds are absolute train wrecks, many of which are severely underfunded because of corruption and bad investment decisions by the unions). It doesn't always happen, of course, and the incidences may even be overreported, but it happens.
I've worked in jobs that disappeared because the directors were self-centred, short-sighted idiots who drove their own companies into the ground. The mere fact that a concept can be implemented badly doesn't disprove the value of the concept, only the requirement for professional, regluated implementation.
Yeah If there is a need for them to make concessions because it will bankrupt the company, they should do so. That is, if there is a legitimate bankruptcy in the distance and not "god this is so expensive we should just get rid of the union" that a lot of these places play off as bankruptcy talks.
For instance the guaranteed raise at one tech place I worked at with a union and the non-union shop differences were amazing. They built desktops/servers for businesses. I didn't know there was non-dell plants that actually did this The union shop? People were mostly happy, talked with customers and coworkers. Pretty much a guaranteed raise of $0.75-$1.00 based on performance (weird for a union though). I found out most people there made like $15-$18. The other shop? Oh god the fucking gloom, you could see it as you walked in. The guy that'd been working there for almost 10 years, $8.50 an hour, he was apparently the highest paid guy too (making servers instead of desktops).
I could see where a guaranteed raise could put places out of business if the workers had been there forever. But maybe someone who's been there for 20 years deserves that.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Yeah If there is a need for them to make concessions because it will bankrupt the company, they should do so. That is, if there is a legitimate bankruptcy in the distance and not "god this is so expensive we should just get rid of the union" that a lot of these places play off as bankruptcy talks.
For instance the guaranteed raise at one tech place I worked at with a union and the non-union shop differences were amazing. They built desktops/servers for businesses. I didn't know there was non-dell plants that actually did this The union shop? People were mostly happy, talked with customers and coworkers. Pretty much a guaranteed raise of $0.75-$1.00 based on performance (weird for a union though). I found out most people there made like $15-$18. The other shop? Oh god the fucking gloom, you could see it as you walked in. The guy that'd been working there for almost 10 years, $8.50 an hour, he was apparently the highest paid guy too (making servers instead of desktops).
I could see where a guaranteed raise could put places out of business if the workers had been there forever. But maybe someone who's been there for 20 years deserves that.
I have seen companies where the expected saving from relaxing work rules and moving from the union pension to a company run pension alone are enough to move from red to black, but the unions drive them into bankruptcy anyway.
FWIW, I have literally seen unions force companies into bankruptcy on multiple occasions by refusing to renegotiate on work rules or pensions (union pension funds are absolute train wrecks, many of which are severely underfunded because of corruption and bad investment decisions by the unions). It doesn't always happen, of course, and the incidences may even be overreported, but it happens.
That's a very broad claim. Can you support it with some citations? I'm genuinely interested as I know nothing about union-run pension plans. I thought those were mostly a thing of the past.
Yeah If there is a need for them to make concessions because it will bankrupt the company, they should do so. That is, if there is a legitimate bankruptcy in the distance and not "god this is so expensive we should just get rid of the union" that a lot of these places play off as bankruptcy talks.
For instance the guaranteed raise at one tech place I worked at with a union and the non-union shop differences were amazing. They built desktops/servers for businesses. I didn't know there was non-dell plants that actually did this The union shop? People were mostly happy, talked with customers and coworkers. Pretty much a guaranteed raise of $0.75-$1.00 based on performance (weird for a union though). I found out most people there made like $15-$18. The other shop? Oh god the fucking gloom, you could see it as you walked in. The guy that'd been working there for almost 10 years, $8.50 an hour, he was apparently the highest paid guy too (making servers instead of desktops).
I could see where a guaranteed raise could put places out of business if the workers had been there forever. But maybe someone who's been there for 20 years deserves that.
I have seen companies where the expected saving from relaxing work rules and moving from the union pension to a company run pension alone are enough to move from red to black, but the unions drive them into bankruptcy anyway.
There's a reason why unions refuse to let the company run the pension plan - it's called the 1980's.
FWIW, I have literally seen unions force companies into bankruptcy on multiple occasions by refusing to renegotiate on work rules or pensions (union pension funds are absolute train wrecks, many of which are severely underfunded because of corruption and bad investment decisions by the unions). It doesn't always happen, of course, and the incidences may even be overreported, but it happens.
This is completely wrong.
Saying a union bankrupted a company is the same as saying that the bank or the power company or the suppliers or the costumes bankrupted it.
No there are cases where this is true. The auto industry for example. The union workers for GM and all those were paid at much higher wages (like a lot) and had special protections for themselves in case of low work flow and all that. This caused them to be uncompetitive in the market with their lower paid counterparts (though still paid well) in the other factories.
Which had the added bonus of depressing the entire state of Michigan I hear. I haven't really decomposed that to further examine it though, so, it is what it is I guess.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
No there are cases where this is true. The auto industry for example. The union workers for GM and all those were paid at much higher wages (like a lot) and had special protections for themselves in case of low work flow and all that. This caused them to be uncompetitive in the market with their lower paid counterparts (though still paid well) in the other factories.
Which had the added bonus of depressing the entire state of Michigan I hear. I haven't really decomposed that to further examine it though, so, it is what it is I guess.
But how is that the unions fault and not the hundreds of other factors that played a role?
Or to put it a different way, why are the people making 60 grand greedy and the people in upper management victims?
They're not, it just simply makes the business unprofitable. No one is really a bad guy there, just they can't sell cars (reasonably) at that price point anymore. Even though cars are one of the few areas where people will splurge because of brand name rather than price.
I'm on the union's side here, but if the solution is "no job because we want $60,000 a year and guaranteed raises" and "a job but maybe take a raise freeze for 5 years as the business recovers" then they should probably choose the later. Assuming the management is being truthful.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
For the US car companies, I remember reading that many of the contracts people bitch about were entered into back when management and the unions gave high benefits in return for lower wages because they thought UHC was on the way soon.
They're not, it just simply makes the business unprofitable. No one is really a bad guy there, just they can't sell cars (reasonably) at that price point anymore. Even though cars are one of the few areas where people will splurge because of brand name rather than price.
I'm on the union's side here, but if the solution is "no job because we want $60,000 a year and guaranteed raises" and "a job but maybe take a raise freeze for 5 years as the business recovers" then they should probably choose the later. Assuming the management is being truthful.
You see this a lot with school districts around here. The union refuses to give up guaranteed raises or scale them back or something, and as a result the district has to lay off fifty teachers. I guess it's great if you're not one of those fifty teachers, but it does kind of boggle the mind that an organization that exists to protect its members' jobs would rather a portion of them be completely out of work than bend a little on everybody's compensation.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
They're not, it just simply makes the business unprofitable. No one is really a bad guy there, just they can't sell cars (reasonably) at that price point anymore. Even though cars are one of the few areas where people will splurge because of brand name rather than price.
I'm on the union's side here, but if the solution is "no job because we want $60,000 a year and guaranteed raises" and "a job but maybe take a raise freeze for 5 years as the business recovers" then they should probably choose the later. Assuming the management is being truthful.
You see this a lot with school districts around here. The union refuses to give up guaranteed raises or scale them back or something, and as a result the district has to lay off fifty teachers. I guess it's great if you're not one of those fifty teachers, but it does kind of boggle the mind that an organization that exists to protect its members' jobs would rather a portion of them be completely out of work than bend a little on everybody's compensation.
They do it because at some point you might as well not exist since you are just giving away all the wage and wage-like-benefits that you exist to secure for your family.
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Gabriel_Pitt(effective against Russian warships)Registered Userregular
No it doesn't. In most cases, there's nothing left to give away in return for those jobs that doesn't screw anyone anyways. My dad has the 'privilege' of working in a non-unionized school district and aside from wages having been frozen since 2005, last year the school board announced that due to further budget cuts, the health care plan will no longer be covering teacher's family. Or may be dropped entirely. They haven't decided yet.
They're not, it just simply makes the business unprofitable. No one is really a bad guy there, just they can't sell cars (reasonably) at that price point anymore. Even though cars are one of the few areas where people will splurge because of brand name rather than price.
I'm on the union's side here, but if the solution is "no job because we want $60,000 a year and guaranteed raises" and "a job but maybe take a raise freeze for 5 years as the business recovers" then they should probably choose the later. Assuming the management is being truthful.
That's my whole point.
We treat unions different than every other aspect of a buisiness. When the market goes down and a business hasn't saved enough money to ride it out they dont require the power company to give them a break on their bill to keep them going. We do, however, expect unions to take permanent cuts for short term situations and then never give them a piece of the profits in the good times.
Well I would expect the management to take paycuts just the same as the union. I wouldn't expect utilities or resource providers to offer them cuts though.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
They're not, it just simply makes the business unprofitable. No one is really a bad guy there, just they can't sell cars (reasonably) at that price point anymore. Even though cars are one of the few areas where people will splurge because of brand name rather than price.
I'm on the union's side here, but if the solution is "no job because we want $60,000 a year and guaranteed raises" and "a job but maybe take a raise freeze for 5 years as the business recovers" then they should probably choose the later. Assuming the management is being truthful.
You see this a lot with school districts around here. The union refuses to give up guaranteed raises or scale them back or something, and as a result the district has to lay off fifty teachers. I guess it's great if you're not one of those fifty teachers, but it does kind of boggle the mind that an organization that exists to protect its members' jobs would rather a portion of them be completely out of work than bend a little on everybody's compensation.
They do it because at some point you might as well not exist since you are just giving away all the wage and wage-like-benefits that you exist to secure for your family.
Of course, and nobody wants to be making less or have benefits taken away. But nobody wants to be out of work either. It's a shitty thing all around, but when a town sees its property tax revenue drop because of a rash of foreclosures and the options are either "Wage freeze" or "Layoffs" you would think that the union would be concerned with keeping its members employed first, and at full compensation second. Instead they seem (in this case) to be OK with a bunch of their members out on the street as long as the ones who are left aren't any worse off.
I realize that once you give something up it's that much more difficult to bargain it back. And I admit I'm looking at this from an outside perspective of trying to mitigate the most amount of harm to the most people during difficult times. Saying, "Nope, no compromise, rather than everyone taking a pay freeze, go ahead and lay off 10% of the workforce so the rest of us can keep our raises" comes off as kind of callous to me. Don't excess workers depress wages in their field?
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
They're not, it just simply makes the business unprofitable. No one is really a bad guy there, just they can't sell cars (reasonably) at that price point anymore. Even though cars are one of the few areas where people will splurge because of brand name rather than price.
I'm on the union's side here, but if the solution is "no job because we want $60,000 a year and guaranteed raises" and "a job but maybe take a raise freeze for 5 years as the business recovers" then they should probably choose the later. Assuming the management is being truthful.
You see this a lot with school districts around here. The union refuses to give up guaranteed raises or scale them back or something, and as a result the district has to lay off fifty teachers. I guess it's great if you're not one of those fifty teachers, but it does kind of boggle the mind that an organization that exists to protect its members' jobs would rather a portion of them be completely out of work than bend a little on everybody's compensation.
They do it because at some point you might as well not exist since you are just giving away all the wage and wage-like-benefits that you exist to secure for your family.
Of course, and nobody wants to be making less or have benefits taken away. But nobody wants to be out of work either. It's a shitty thing all around, but when a town sees its property tax revenue drop because of a rash of foreclosures and the options are either "Wage freeze" or "Layoffs" you would think that the union would be concerned with keeping its members employed first, and at full compensation second. Instead they seem (in this case) to be OK with a bunch of their members out on the street as long as the ones who are left aren't any worse off.
I realize that once you give something up it's that much more difficult to bargain it back. And I admit I'm looking at this from an outside perspective of trying to mitigate the most amount of harm to the most people during difficult times. Saying, "Nope, no compromise, rather than everyone taking a pay freeze, go ahead and lay off 10% of the workforce so the rest of us can keep our raises" comes off as kind of callous to me. Don't excess workers depress wages in their field?
Why should "Wage freeze" vs "Layoffs" always tip to wage freezes?
Because in my mental calculus, 100% of the workforce taking home 100% of their current wages is a better overall outcome than 90% of the workforce taking home 105% and 10% going on unemployment?
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
FWIW, I have literally seen unions force companies into bankruptcy on multiple occasions by refusing to renegotiate on work rules or pensions (union pension funds are absolute train wrecks, many of which are severely underfunded because of corruption and bad investment decisions by the unions). It doesn't always happen, of course, and the incidences may even be overreported, but it happens.
That's a very broad claim. Can you support it with some citations? I'm genuinely interested as I know nothing about union-run pension plans. I thought those were mostly a thing of the past.
Current numbers are not available, but on the whole, funding status of multiemployer pension plans (i.e., union plans) is pretty poor. Here is some information from 2010 (the last year where all of the information is available):
The average funded percentage of multiemployer plans increased slightly to 89% for plan years ending Dec. 31, 2010, compared with 86% for plan years ending Dec. 31, 2009, according to the Segal Company. However, the percentage is much lower than the 97% funded percentage for plan years ending Dec. 31, 2007.
Recovery from the economic downturn of 2008-09 has been slow, as reflected in the at-risk status of multiemployer plans, as defined by the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA). The percentage of the plans in the critical category (plans under 65% funded) has slowly declined to 24% as of Dec. 31, 2010, compared with 30% of the plans as of Dec. 31, 2009, and 32% of the plans as of Dec. 31, 2008. Only 7% of the plans were in the critical category as of Dec. 31, 2007.
The percentage of plans within the “endangered” category (plans funded from 65% to 80%) has returned to the same level as before the economic downturn: 10% of the plans were in this category as of Dec. 31, 2010, as well as Dec. 31, 2007. This is compared with 16% of plans as of Dec. 31, 2009, and 29% of the plans as of Dec. 31, 2008.
Funding for plans in the “green” zone (plans funded 80% and above) also has improved, but is still well below the 83% of the multiemployer plans surveyed that were in this category as of Dec. 31, 2007. Segal found that 66% of the plans were in the green zone as of Dec. 31, 2010, compared with 54% of the plans as of Dec. 31, 2009, and 39% of the plans as of Dec. 31, 2008.
A breakdown by industry reveals that the plans in the construction industry are in the best shape while the plans in the transportation industry are in the worst shape
The lore in the industry (which I can't cite, so take it with as big of a grain of salt as you like) is that in the beginning these types of plans made a lot of bad "investments" in the form of buying property or making loans that were connected with organized crime, and as a result, these plans were basically always behind the 8 ball. Noone really paid attention at first, because there were no retirees. The extent of the problems started to come to light when people actually started retiring and there wasn't nearly as much money as was expected, and so multiemployer plans were subjected to much more regulation. Even though the old style corruption was over with, the plans were still in the hole, and most did not start to climb out and return to funded status until pension funds started investing heavily in hedge and private equity funds. Since those investments paid off so well for a long time, plans were able to come much closer to full funding, despite retirees beginning to outnumber active employees in many cases. When the market crashed recently, they lost a lot of those gains, and are now in terrible shape, since benefit claims are outstripping new contributions in many cases.
I don't have the numbers in front of me, but certain large plans I have looked at recently, like the midwestern teamsters plan and several SEIU plans, are catastrophically underfunded at this point (in the tens of millions), and have several times more retirees than active employees. The only way that a plan can remedy this type of situation is by demanding very large increases in contributions by employers when they renegotiate their collective bargaining agreements, and employers (many of whom may not even have employed plan participants in the past when the underfunding was established) are understandably resistant to having to pay for the union's past mistakes. Some employers try to remedy the situation (and do right by their employees) by having their employees moved out of the multiemployer plan into a plan which only covers their share of the union employees, and then funding that plan appropriately. Unions hate this approach, because it doesn't do much to help make up for the total underfunding of the plan, and it reduces the number of active participants even further.
FWIW, I have literally seen unions force companies into bankruptcy on multiple occasions by refusing to renegotiate on work rules or pensions (union pension funds are absolute train wrecks, many of which are severely underfunded because of corruption and bad investment decisions by the unions). It doesn't always happen, of course, and the incidences may even be overreported, but it happens.
This is completely wrong.
Saying a union bankrupted a company is the same as saying that the bank or the power company or the suppliers or the costumes bankrupted it.
When I say a union bankrupted a company, what I mean is that the company is in danger of insolvency, and when you look at the fixed costs and income, you determine that there is no way for the company to ever be in the black without lowering or eliminating the fixed costs associated with the unions, like work rules or pension obligations. If a company has $500 million in revenue but is obligated to pay $300MM into the pension plan and $280MM in additional costs (as compared to nonunion competitors) because of work rules, then the union is driving that company into bankruptcy.
Edit: @enc0re - the thread moved on, but I want you to see this.
Yeah, I don't expect a workers' union to bear all the brunt of a budget balancing. It doesn't help that, in this case, a school district can almost never just raise taxes to the point where they're no longer in the red; either because the budget would be voted down or their state has a property tax cap or something.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
Yeah, I don't expect a workers' union to bear all the brunt of a budget balancing. It doesn't help that, in this case, a school district can almost never just raise taxes to the point where they're no longer in the red; either because the budget would be voted down or their state has a property tax cap or something.
Which are good things. Last thing you want to do is get in the situation like NYS is in where the answer to out of control spending and waste/fraud is... raise taxes to compensate so we can keep business as usual. But this quickly turns into "fuck you I don't get that so why should you?" in terms of raises, pensions, healthcare, etc.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
On net this bill is actually going to increase payments, it just provides a short term cut in payments. My understanding from talking with an actuary is that the short term cut is a revenue raiser (since it will decrease company deductions for pension contributions this year) but that the changes made to the funding equations long term will require increased minimum contributions, and will help bring plans closer to full funded.
Well I would expect the management to take paycuts just the same as the union. I wouldn't expect utilities or resource providers to offer them cuts though.
Management typically doesn't take paycuts because (1) their salary is small relative to the total being paid to employees, (2) they have employment agreements forbidding paycuts and (3) if you try to cut their pay they leave, and you won't be able to hire good management to pull you out of your problems.
Good management hiring often comes from within, I find the "we need to pay them lots of money for them to stay!" is bunk, the management team would often be fine without the superstar high wage earners internally. And their wages add up, just like single employee contracts, the union has a "contract" too. If one is making concessions so should the other. That's just good business. Well, that's ethical business, I should say.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Yeah, I don't expect a workers' union to bear all the brunt of a budget balancing. It doesn't help that, in this case, a school district can almost never just raise taxes to the point where they're no longer in the red; either because the budget would be voted down or their state has a property tax cap or something.
Which are good things. Last thing you want to do is get in the situation like NYS is in where the answer to out of control spending and waste/fraud is... raise taxes to compensate so we can keep business as usual. But this quickly turns into "fuck you I don't get that so why should you?" in terms of raises, pensions, healthcare, etc.
Sure but I don't think the answer in every case is to cut spending either, there's the revenue side of the ledger to consider and too many people despise it because it involves T-A-X-E-S. You can only cut things so far before your services fall to an unacceptable level. Obviously if you're down to either laying off teachers or only heating the buildings on odd-numbered days you are in serious trouble.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
If workers are taking pay cuts, management should damn well be taking one right alongside, to hell with the percentage of total payroll that each is pulling down. "Shared Sacrifice" and all that.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
Because in my mental calculus, 100% of the workforce taking home 100% of their current wages is a better overall outcome than 90% of the workforce taking home 105% and 10% going on unemployment?
Why?
And fyi, inflation means a wage freezes is a wage cut. So it's actually 100% of the workforce taking home 90% of the pay or the like.
Because in my mental calculus, 100% of the workforce taking home 100% of their current wages is a better overall outcome than 90% of the workforce taking home 105% and 10% going on unemployment?
Why?
And fyi, inflation means a wage freezes is a wage cut. So it's actually 100% of the workforce taking home 90% of the pay or the like.
Yeah don't I know it. My company hasn't done any raises since 2007, the month before I started.
And maybe it's because I'm risk-averse, but if I was in a position where I had to choose between "not get a 5% raise, but definitely stay employed" and "maybe get a 5% raise, but have a 1-in-10 chance of being laid off instead" I'd pick the status quo. Isn't "more workers employed" better for the union? Isn't "less workers on unemployment, driving down wages" better?
Instead it seems like the union is saying, "it's not our job to protect yours, we're only protecting what you make while you're here. If that means a few of you have to get fired so the rest of us can keep our raises, so be it."
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
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HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
FWIW, I have literally seen unions force companies into bankruptcy on multiple occasions by refusing to renegotiate on work rules or pensions (union pension funds are absolute train wrecks, many of which are severely underfunded because of corruption and bad investment decisions by the unions). It doesn't always happen, of course, and the incidences may even be overreported, but it happens.
I've never seen unions shut down factories or destroy benefits. I've seen CORPORATIONS shut down factories because they don't want worker compensation and BENEFITS getting in the way of their bloated executive pay structures. *cough*Boeing*coughcough*
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Good management hiring often comes from within, I find the "we need to pay them lots of money for them to stay!" is bunk, the management team would often be fine without the superstar high wage earners internally. And their wages add up, just like single employee contracts, the union has a "contract" too. If one is making concessions so should the other. That's just good business. Well, that's ethical business, I should say.
If they are good executives with established reputations, they will leave, and in leaving, may even receive a golden parachute (pay cuts are a standard trigger). The shared sacrifice in most cases is that they won't hit target for bonuses (this is like a paycut really, since target bonuses are normally assumed to be earned).
Because in my mental calculus, 100% of the workforce taking home 100% of their current wages is a better overall outcome than 90% of the workforce taking home 105% and 10% going on unemployment?
Why?
And fyi, inflation means a wage freezes is a wage cut. So it's actually 100% of the workforce taking home 90% of the pay or the like.
Yeah don't I know it. My company hasn't done any raises since 2007, the month before I started.
And maybe it's because I'm risk-averse, but if I was in a position where I had to choose between "not get a 5% raise, but definitely stay employed" and "maybe get a 5% raise, but have a 1-in-10 chance of being laid off instead" I'd pick the status quo. Isn't "more workers employed" better for the union? Isn't "less workers on unemployment, driving down wages" better?
Instead it seems like the union is saying, "it's not our job to protect yours, we're only protecting what you make while you're here. If that means a few of you have to get fired so the rest of us can keep our raises, so be it."
The union is saying "It's our job to protect your rights and benefits as a worker. And at some point, that may mean that not of of you can be afforded."
And in this case, more workers being employed is driving down wages. This is exactly what the union is trying to stop by letting members go.
At some point, you have to make the trade off between members and benefits else you literally have no purpose. The whole point of a union is to control the labour supply in order to get better wages/benefits for their members.
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Actually, the mayor isn't the problem - he's pretty much stuck. The issue is the city council, who refuses to implement a recovery plan that includes increases to property taxes. And without the plan, banks won't lend to the city.
More info here: http://m.thetimes-tribune.com/news/scranton-moves-ahead-with-minimum-wage-pay-for-city-workers-despite-injunction-1.1339386
The stupid, it burns.
Part misconception, part outright falsehood, part victim shaming in the vein of slut shaming.
I've worked in jobs that disappeared because the directors were self-centred, short-sighted idiots who drove their own companies into the ground. The mere fact that a concept can be implemented badly doesn't disprove the value of the concept, only the requirement for professional, regluated implementation.
For instance the guaranteed raise at one tech place I worked at with a union and the non-union shop differences were amazing. They built desktops/servers for businesses. I didn't know there was non-dell plants that actually did this The union shop? People were mostly happy, talked with customers and coworkers. Pretty much a guaranteed raise of $0.75-$1.00 based on performance (weird for a union though). I found out most people there made like $15-$18. The other shop? Oh god the fucking gloom, you could see it as you walked in. The guy that'd been working there for almost 10 years, $8.50 an hour, he was apparently the highest paid guy too (making servers instead of desktops).
I could see where a guaranteed raise could put places out of business if the workers had been there forever. But maybe someone who's been there for 20 years deserves that.
I have seen companies where the expected saving from relaxing work rules and moving from the union pension to a company run pension alone are enough to move from red to black, but the unions drive them into bankruptcy anyway.
That's a very broad claim. Can you support it with some citations? I'm genuinely interested as I know nothing about union-run pension plans. I thought those were mostly a thing of the past.
There's a reason why unions refuse to let the company run the pension plan - it's called the 1980's.
This is completely wrong.
Saying a union bankrupted a company is the same as saying that the bank or the power company or the suppliers or the costumes bankrupted it.
Which had the added bonus of depressing the entire state of Michigan I hear. I haven't really decomposed that to further examine it though, so, it is what it is I guess.
But how is that the unions fault and not the hundreds of other factors that played a role?
Or to put it a different way, why are the people making 60 grand greedy and the people in upper management victims?
I'm on the union's side here, but if the solution is "no job because we want $60,000 a year and guaranteed raises" and "a job but maybe take a raise freeze for 5 years as the business recovers" then they should probably choose the later. Assuming the management is being truthful.
You see this a lot with school districts around here. The union refuses to give up guaranteed raises or scale them back or something, and as a result the district has to lay off fifty teachers. I guess it's great if you're not one of those fifty teachers, but it does kind of boggle the mind that an organization that exists to protect its members' jobs would rather a portion of them be completely out of work than bend a little on everybody's compensation.
They do it because at some point you might as well not exist since you are just giving away all the wage and wage-like-benefits that you exist to secure for your family.
That's my whole point.
We treat unions different than every other aspect of a buisiness. When the market goes down and a business hasn't saved enough money to ride it out they dont require the power company to give them a break on their bill to keep them going. We do, however, expect unions to take permanent cuts for short term situations and then never give them a piece of the profits in the good times.
Of course, and nobody wants to be making less or have benefits taken away. But nobody wants to be out of work either. It's a shitty thing all around, but when a town sees its property tax revenue drop because of a rash of foreclosures and the options are either "Wage freeze" or "Layoffs" you would think that the union would be concerned with keeping its members employed first, and at full compensation second. Instead they seem (in this case) to be OK with a bunch of their members out on the street as long as the ones who are left aren't any worse off.
I realize that once you give something up it's that much more difficult to bargain it back. And I admit I'm looking at this from an outside perspective of trying to mitigate the most amount of harm to the most people during difficult times. Saying, "Nope, no compromise, rather than everyone taking a pay freeze, go ahead and lay off 10% of the workforce so the rest of us can keep our raises" comes off as kind of callous to me. Don't excess workers depress wages in their field?
Why should "Wage freeze" vs "Layoffs" always tip to wage freezes?
Current numbers are not available, but on the whole, funding status of multiemployer pension plans (i.e., union plans) is pretty poor. Here is some information from 2010 (the last year where all of the information is available):
The lore in the industry (which I can't cite, so take it with as big of a grain of salt as you like) is that in the beginning these types of plans made a lot of bad "investments" in the form of buying property or making loans that were connected with organized crime, and as a result, these plans were basically always behind the 8 ball. Noone really paid attention at first, because there were no retirees. The extent of the problems started to come to light when people actually started retiring and there wasn't nearly as much money as was expected, and so multiemployer plans were subjected to much more regulation. Even though the old style corruption was over with, the plans were still in the hole, and most did not start to climb out and return to funded status until pension funds started investing heavily in hedge and private equity funds. Since those investments paid off so well for a long time, plans were able to come much closer to full funding, despite retirees beginning to outnumber active employees in many cases. When the market crashed recently, they lost a lot of those gains, and are now in terrible shape, since benefit claims are outstripping new contributions in many cases.
I don't have the numbers in front of me, but certain large plans I have looked at recently, like the midwestern teamsters plan and several SEIU plans, are catastrophically underfunded at this point (in the tens of millions), and have several times more retirees than active employees. The only way that a plan can remedy this type of situation is by demanding very large increases in contributions by employers when they renegotiate their collective bargaining agreements, and employers (many of whom may not even have employed plan participants in the past when the underfunding was established) are understandably resistant to having to pay for the union's past mistakes. Some employers try to remedy the situation (and do right by their employees) by having their employees moved out of the multiemployer plan into a plan which only covers their share of the union employees, and then funding that plan appropriately. Unions hate this approach, because it doesn't do much to help make up for the total underfunding of the plan, and it reduces the number of active participants even further.
When I say a union bankrupted a company, what I mean is that the company is in danger of insolvency, and when you look at the fixed costs and income, you determine that there is no way for the company to ever be in the black without lowering or eliminating the fixed costs associated with the unions, like work rules or pension obligations. If a company has $500 million in revenue but is obligated to pay $300MM into the pension plan and $280MM in additional costs (as compared to nonunion competitors) because of work rules, then the union is driving that company into bankruptcy.
Edit: @enc0re - the thread moved on, but I want you to see this.
Which are good things. Last thing you want to do is get in the situation like NYS is in where the answer to out of control spending and waste/fraud is... raise taxes to compensate so we can keep business as usual. But this quickly turns into "fuck you I don't get that so why should you?" in terms of raises, pensions, healthcare, etc.
On net this bill is actually going to increase payments, it just provides a short term cut in payments. My understanding from talking with an actuary is that the short term cut is a revenue raiser (since it will decrease company deductions for pension contributions this year) but that the changes made to the funding equations long term will require increased minimum contributions, and will help bring plans closer to full funded.
Management typically doesn't take paycuts because (1) their salary is small relative to the total being paid to employees, (2) they have employment agreements forbidding paycuts and (3) if you try to cut their pay they leave, and you won't be able to hire good management to pull you out of your problems.
Sure but I don't think the answer in every case is to cut spending either, there's the revenue side of the ledger to consider and too many people despise it because it involves T-A-X-E-S. You can only cut things so far before your services fall to an unacceptable level. Obviously if you're down to either laying off teachers or only heating the buildings on odd-numbered days you are in serious trouble.
Why?
And fyi, inflation means a wage freezes is a wage cut. So it's actually 100% of the workforce taking home 90% of the pay or the like.
Yeah don't I know it. My company hasn't done any raises since 2007, the month before I started.
And maybe it's because I'm risk-averse, but if I was in a position where I had to choose between "not get a 5% raise, but definitely stay employed" and "maybe get a 5% raise, but have a 1-in-10 chance of being laid off instead" I'd pick the status quo. Isn't "more workers employed" better for the union? Isn't "less workers on unemployment, driving down wages" better?
Instead it seems like the union is saying, "it's not our job to protect yours, we're only protecting what you make while you're here. If that means a few of you have to get fired so the rest of us can keep our raises, so be it."
I've never seen unions shut down factories or destroy benefits. I've seen CORPORATIONS shut down factories because they don't want worker compensation and BENEFITS getting in the way of their bloated executive pay structures. *cough*Boeing*coughcough*
If they are good executives with established reputations, they will leave, and in leaving, may even receive a golden parachute (pay cuts are a standard trigger). The shared sacrifice in most cases is that they won't hit target for bonuses (this is like a paycut really, since target bonuses are normally assumed to be earned).
The union is saying "It's our job to protect your rights and benefits as a worker. And at some point, that may mean that not of of you can be afforded."
And in this case, more workers being employed is driving down wages. This is exactly what the union is trying to stop by letting members go.
At some point, you have to make the trade off between members and benefits else you literally have no purpose. The whole point of a union is to control the labour supply in order to get better wages/benefits for their members.