NYC Sanitation Union, Deliberately Held Up Plowing The Streets

[tombogan03884]

If the "working man" in NYC had done what was needed in defiance of his non-union supervisor (as I read the article) he would have been suspended or worse. Union or not you do what the boss says unless what he says brings up a safety problem. To automatically blame the unions is the same as blaming the fish if your 10 year old line breaks, competely unthinking.

Pecos

PecosBill, I have been trying for a couple days to come up with a reply to your posts, This is the best I have come up with :
While you and some other individual Union members may be men of integrity, Unions as organizations do not and never have had that virtue, They are little more than political whores.

[CJS3]

If the "working man" in NYC had done what was needed in defiance of his non-union supervisor (as I read the article) he would have been suspended or worse. Union or not you do what the boss says unless what he says brings up a safety problem. To automatically blame the unions is the same as blaming the fish if your 10 year old line breaks, competely unthinking.

Pecos

YES, it's the Union's fault. And yours for supporting them.

[Pecos Bill]

I give up! All unions suck! Let's leave everything to the managers they are the only people i the corporate and governmental worlds who are doing their jobs! The stupid, lazy union pukes just want to show up and collect an overblown paycheck for sitting on their collective butts. If we disband all the unions our economy will flourish, there will be a chicken in every pot, and we'll all live on the big rock candy mountain.

Now that I've said that let me say this: I DO NOT, CAN NOT AND WILL NOT condone what was done in NYC. No matter who started it or who participated that was ignorant and selfish at best criminal at worst. My point was and is don't automatically blame union people when something goes wrong. By the way, the Nazi guards at the concentration camps faced death not just fireing.

Brian, when I spoke of safety I was speaking of on job safety. The safety of all participants in a work force must be of prime importance. If the work force is disabled then everyone's safety is compromised.  If you were paying attention I think you would have heard that those 45,000 911 calls were in the first few hours of the blizzard and the 911 system overloaded. This was well before the streets could have been cleared.

In closing I again concede that unions should be disbanded and outlawed. Let the managers do whatever they want the country will be better off.

Pecos

[twyacht]

No one here bashes the unions in a blanket condemnation Pecos. If we review some of the union history, from the Teamsters, to the Longshoreman, to the IBEW, to the SEIU, GAWU, NEA, etc,... .....the facts are not flattering.

The fact is they support Liberal agendas, they fund Liberal ideology. The DOT in your state, whether union or not follows the same mindset:

5 Men watch, as 1 man digs. All get paid a crapload more than non union employees.

Unions don't suck, but their politics do. Ask the car manufacturers that went to the Southern states, or the gun manufacturers that moved to more cost effective states.

Until they get off their high horse, and power trip, in the end management, will never be able to sustain them......

If a union worker gets $38.50 an hour, to do the same thing a non-union worker in South Carolina will do for $15.00, the bottom line is exactly that.

Unions are worthless without an employer, and BHO and his policies, aren't making it easier for them....

[MikeBjerum]

While I have a tendency to "bash unions" under blanket statements, I really do not believe they are all bad.  However, unions for the most part have become must like government - Top heavy, inefficient, and "one size fits all" administrators.  Unions did fix problems in the past, and they do from time to time fix issues now.  However, I see more harm than good to the general public in today's world.

Answer this question and justify the union stance to me:  Our local city and county workers are union employees.  They get above average (median, mean and mode - every way that average is described) salary for our area, and that is without figuring in their good benefits.  It is not uncommon during winter snow removal  times for them to put in a normal work week Monday - Wednesday, working eight hour days.  Wednesday night it snows, and they start plowing.  After a ten hour day they go home only to get called back in early on Friday due to blowing or more snow.  Saturday they work another twelve hour day due to blowing.  Sunday is six hours because of blowing, but Monday through Friday of the next week there is nothing to do after their first six hours of repair and maintenance to the trucks, graders and blades.

Current union negotiations require that time and a half for every hour over 40 in the Sunday - Saturday week; They can not bank "comp time" at regular or time and a half for over time hours worked; They can not be sent home on a slow day to balance hours (they get to sit around and collect pay when there is nothing to do, and then get over time after they've had an easy week); and if you even go half an hour into a holiday it is automatic double time.

This same type of system goes on in factories, schools, and transportation around here.  I am not against treating a worker fairly, but guaranteeing set hours in a flexible situation is unrealistic, and paying them to be on hand when their is no work while paying overtime the next day is something that nobody can afford.

Our county highway and parks departments have tried to work four ten hour days for eight months of the year.  It took special permission from union officials out of state to allow them to do it without collecting two hours of overtime per day (eight hours is the standard day and anything extra is time and a half).  They could only get permission to do it Memorial day through Labor day, and because of the union rules Memorial, Labor and July 4th are weeks when they can only work eight hour days or the union requires double time.  I don't know about your business, but when you work roads or park maintenance you will get far more productivity out of four ten hour days than you will out of six eight hour days.  Project mobilization is a killer!

[Sponsor]

[fightingquaker13]

Look, I'm with Pecos here (I know, you're shocked ). Bottom line is this. Employers and employees are locked in a complex relationship. On the one hand, its adversarial, they both want a larger piece of the pie. On the other, its symbiotic. If the company fails, they both lose. As a society, we also are stuck in the middle. We want businesses to suceed. On the other, to keep both social peace and stimulate the economy, we need workers to make a decent wage and prefer private health isurance and pensions to government programs. Unions and labor bargaining are no different than other types of competition in the free market. Nothing is free and everyone wants to profit. If its done right, and both sides are reasonable, a company with unions can prosper, look at UPS. If on the other hand it goes to far, you have the BS described in the OP. Still, if you didn't have unions, you'd be working for $5 an hour with no benies, low saftey and a lot more people would be advocating for REAL socialism, not the watered down welfare state version.
FQ13

[TAB]

I would give just about anything for the trade unions from the 60 and 70s to come back( atleast the ones on the west coast)

Back them if you didn't cut the mustard, you were out of the union.  Now days they would never think about that.  Nor would they think about violating some one from using illegal tools.

[tombogan03884]

No one here bashes the unions in a blanket condemnation Pecos. If we review some of the union history, from the Teamsters, to the Longshoreman, to the IBEW, to the SEIU, GAWU, NEA, etc,... .....the facts are not flattering.

The fact is they support Liberal agendas, they fund Liberal ideology. The DOT in your state, whether union or not follows the same mindset:

5 Men watch, as 1 man digs. All get paid a crapload more than non union employees.

Unions don't suck, but their politics do. Ask the car manufacturers that went to the Southern states, or the gun manufacturers that moved to more cost effective states.

Until they get off their high horse, and power trip, in the end management, will never be able to sustain them......

If a union worker gets $38.50 an hour, to do the same thing a non-union worker in South Carolina will do for $15.00, the bottom line is exactly that.

Unions are worthless without an employer, and BHO and his policies, aren't making it easier for them....

This is only to be expected by groups that were founded by socialists and anarchists. We in America actual benifit from the influence that organized crime has exerted on unions since it has prevented some of the abuses seen in Europe, and South America, where "Trade unions" are nothing but fronts for socialist/communist political organizations.
That was part of Hoovers reason for refusing to admit the existence of the "Mafia" for so long.
"Unions", no matter what political flavor, and even if they are pure as the driven snow, approach the problems of the Labor/Management relationship in the wrong manner. They set up an adversarial relationship between 2 groups who can not survive without each other.
Some one else mentioned something about safety. Is any one reading this stupid enough to think the best way to address safety concerns is to issue "Demands" and threats ?  Isn't it more effective to point out that "If fewer workers are getting injured insurance expenses go down and production goes up do to fewer days lost to injury, which means profits go up, allowing the employer to give the workers more money while still increasing profits for investors."
Ever notice that the Companies that are best to work for are the ones where there is no dividing line between "Management" and "Labor"and instead everyone sees themselves as fulfilling a particular function with in one coherent team ?
The truth is that a union is nothing but another bunch of bureaucrats with their hand in the working mans wallet, whether it is shaking down business owners for ridiculous wage and benny packages, or taking the laborers dues to fund politicians who's policies kill jobs.