Whoa, bad news for Delphi workers!

[laurence]

First bribes to leave the company, now this:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12036026/

an $11/hour pay cut? Obviously a proposal meant to break the union, but if I was a competent worker at the plant and I knew I had a choice between having my pay cut ~40% or letting some of the freeloaders (every job has them) go, that union membership might not look so good.

 

[Spanky]

It seems that the payout of $140K is very attractive. Why stick around for $16 per hour job?

 

[Calgary_Girl]

It seems that the payout of $140K is very attractive. Why stick around for $16 per hour job?

Probably for the health insurance? I was reading over the weekend that Analysts were predicting younger workers would take the package but that older workers wouldn't since healthcare is so expensive in the States. They interviewed one 68 year old GM worker and he didn't want to take the package because he had kids in college from his second marriage and all the related expenses. Plus, what other kind of job would he get at 68?

 

[justin]

It seems that the payout of $140K is very attractive. Why stick around for $16 per hour job?

It's $10 per hour more than they will get at McDonalds or Walmart.

 

[Texas Proud]

If you read the article, it seems that the Delphi workers only get $35,000 or so... not as good of deal.

Also, $27 per hour is $56,000 per year... that is a great salary without a college education. I know of a number of people who do not make that much and have a college degree.. $16 per hour is still $33,000 per year.. and I would assume a number will be able to work overtime to get up to $40 to $50K... (I have read were there are a couple of GM line workers making almost $150K per year with their overtime).. They are not raking it in by any means, but it is a 'decent' salary considering that (at least as of now) their cost of health insurance is almost completely covered by the company... which is worth another $2 to $3 per hour.

I do feel for the people who are getting hosed... but it is not highly skilled work.

 

[foxhuntr]

I might be banned for this, but I spent a year doing consulting work for Delphi when it was still owned by GM, and it had the worst examples of why we couldn't compete in world markets that I had ever seen.

An example: the skilled welders had a daily quota to get out. They would knock that out in the morning, and spend the afternoon napping in recliners that they brought in from home. I never saw any recliners in the Japanese, Korean, or Malaysian factories that I worked at!

 

[OldAgePensioner]

Just perspective, here in Chicago, my building is converting from apartments to condos, for 19 months the unions have provided 4 pickets per shift. They are picketing against a builder called Crescent Heights. They hand out flyers.

$ 29/hr x 4 = approx $120/hour
7 days a week x 2 shifts = approx $14000/week
52 weeks/yr = approx $750,000

One tall dude standing out there says he has been a picket all his life, he looks 40-45.

 

[laurence]

Anyone remember the meat packers strikes of the 80's?  I was just a kid, but I remember my mom being so sad about it, these guys out in the freezing snow still picketing, they'd all been fired, replacements had been hired, the cause was lost, but they kept trying.  

This will be a painful transition, but neccessary.  These jobs are leaving.  Simple fixes like tariffs actually cost more jobs than they save.  We should be working to preserve and expand one area that we still have the competitive edge, namely our University systems.

 

[laurence]

Just perspective,  here in Chicago, my building is converting from apartments to condos, for 19 months the unions have provided 4 pickets per shift.  They are picketing against a builder called Crescent Heights.  They hand out flyers.

$ 29/hr x 4  = approx $120/hour
7 days a week x 2 shifts  = approx $14000/week
52 weeks/yr = approx $750,000

One tall dude standing out there says he has been a picket all his life, he looks 40-45.

$29/hour!!!! That's almost as much as I make! Well six bucks shy, but dang, he didn't have tuition or student loans to pay for!

 

[OldAgePensioner]

Nor did he have any work to do.

Drive by anyone. Up Wabash, between Huron St and Superior. No need to open fire on me.

Always 3,4 5 pickets, never do anything but listen to MP3's and make some OK change.

Step inside and talk to Mr. Aphonso, Herb, Lavelle, and see what they say.

Nobody like a loafer. Especially one making some good change with maybe a gold tooth displayed.

 

[2B]

The unpleasant reality of most unions is that during the 50's and 60's they created unsustainable wage premiums based on the actual value of their work.  Now that competition can cross not only state borders but international borders, the unions in manufacturing industries will have to adapt or see their hold in their industries disappear.

First textiles moved from New England to the South.  Now it's almost completely gone from the US.  Steel was next.  Airlines have gotten religion and are throwing the contracts out in bankruptcy.  Automotive companiess with legacy union contracts are dying.  The US can be competitive (I have doubts about Canada) but not with highschool educated laborers making a fully costed $100,000 per year (salary plus benefits).  The only unions that seem to prosper are the government unions.  There the pols buy votes by being more generous than their opponents.  We taxpayers foot the bill.

I feel sorry for them but not real sorry.  When I hear about the terrible injustices being done to them by their pensions being reduced and mass layoffs, I realize that I don't have crap for a pension and have been runoff from four different jobs when various industries were "right-sizing."

 

[OldAgePensioner]

In the 80's, I felt bad also.  I was doing a huge amount of crack and some drugs also.  But I could never get a clear shot at Jimbo "Peanut" Carter.

2B,
here in Chicago which is a huge union town, it's starting to look bleak. You have a United Steel But Only My Portion Worker, willing to put two screws into a door hinge and wait 2 hours while the United Steel But Only Red Painted Steel Worker and then the United Steel But Very Thin Only Worker and it's clear why jobs are being lost.

And if you don't recognize what I just posted you should not even comment on unions because you have no clue where it has gone.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Hmm...my wife who went to many years of school to work in the medical industry makes roughly the same salary as her uncle who is a union cashier at a supermarket.

Heres the Shyamalan twist...she works in a hospital; he gets better healthcare benefits.

My dad has fun stories about the union maintenance crew at Tufts when he taught there. They'd sit around all day doing nearly nothing, then do a few things after 5 and put in for overtime. Once he waited a month for something to get fixed and he gave up and fixed it himself. By the next morning, he had been written up for violating the union rules.

I think theres a time and a place in history and in some cases, in current times, where unions are useful and very important to maintain workers rights.

But wow, do some of them really screw the whole thing up for the rest.

There definitely were a few times when I wanted to see a union in the high tech business where they tell you they're paying you for 40 hours on salary, then demand you work 60 to keep your job...

 

[Outtahere]

Same thing holds true for the construction unions. Heaven forbid a carpenter carry that board, you have to have the offical union board carrier.

Three years ago we moved our offices. There was a telephone closet but I couldn't get in until after the lease was signed (no one thought it was important enough to insist except me), the whole office was wired of telephone and data. When the closet was finally opened I found ALL the wiring cut 6 inches from the wall. It cost $8k to have a union company come in and rewire, our non union electrican told me that happens all the time, called job security. Oh and if he could have done it with non union workers it would have only been $4k.

 

[OldAgePensioner]

OK Fuzz Buns, now you've done it.  Unions really do have a purpose.  I respect that they look after workers rights.

But they really do have issues that they need to address.

When I was considering going back to work.  It was union.  I would get 1.5 x after 8 each day, 2 x on weekends and 3 x on holidays.  My hiring person explained how to maximize my wages.  Union greed has a role in why we need immigrants and off-shore.

 

[OldAgePensioner]

Outtahere,
the best I ever heard (from a project manager) was that it took 6 unions to install and certify that a door was useable in a steel hi-rise.

1. Steel frame/red-lead welding was Union - 1
2. Door steel frame weld-in was Union - 2
3. Door delivery itself was Union - 3
4. Door pre-preparation (hinge drill/knob drilling) was Union - 4
5. Door installation/ securing was Union - 5
6. Door hardware install (knob/lock) was Union - 6

He said any deviation from this would result in fines.

 

[Outtahere]

Yep, that's just how it goes with the unions here. SIL is a union electrician and says it's just horrible, that jobs could be done for half the price, he can't take the political bull crap so he went out on his own.

 

[2B]

The construction and maintenance unions are an interesting wrinkle in the union gouging. In Texas the unions have been totally driven out of the construction and maintenance operation except in a very few instances. In non-Right to Work states where every trades person had to join the union to be employed, the unions have a monopoly on local skilled individuals and have linked with politicians to restrict access to the market. They drive the cost of housing up significantly for everyone. As in any true monopoly, a few benefit at the expense of the many.

You are seeing the migration of people out of those areas to where housing is cheaper. That's why the mid-west and northeast continue to loose congretional seat every ten years.

 

[astromeria]

It's a good thing that no executives are gold-brickers, or we'd really be hosed  :.

I paticularly recall a software company I worked for that had 30 VPs for a couple thousand employees. Their fab decisions (n9ot to mention the decisions to hire them-) drove us out of business, but our CEO made news becasue of his extraordinarily huge compensation even as we were tanking,  and they put a poster of Bill Gates in the cafeteria with the caption: This man wants to eat your lunch. Man, that p1ssed me off--most of them dripping with supersized ego, incompetence, and contempt for their workers--and they wanted us to focus on Gates as our enemy (after we started bleeding engineers to MSFT). Well, I never fell for their blatant manipulations, but I did my best for the company due to personal pride. Oh, did I mention the VP who complained about the cost of housing in Our Fair City and said he couldn't find "anywhere" to live for less than a couple million (this was ~ 1990), bragged about his society wife who didn't work--to a table full of hard-working engineers who mostly had hard-working wives. He didn't last long--just long enough to wreck the project he was hired to manage and put another nail in our coffin. Wonder what they did with his Jag.

 

[sgeeeee]

It's a good thing that no executives are gold-brickers, or we'd really be hosed  :. . . .

That's what I was thinking while I was reading several of these posts. I worked with plenty of engineers who spent more time drinking coffee and wandering the halls bothering other people than doing anything constructive. And I think I knew more executives that were counterproductive than who actually helped.

I always thought the VP power battles that established rules about who could authorize what and which organizations were allowed to do specific types of work were far more restrictive than union rules.

My only real experience with unions in the workplace was in the coal mines. The coal company knew exactly how much roof bolts cost and exactly what a funeral would cost them. If skimping on roof bolts produced enough extra tonage to pay for the funerals that might result, they would have made that trade every day. The union is the only thing that kept them even close to honest. There was plenty of inefficiency and undesirable aspects about the union-company workplace, but the union saved lives.

Back when I worked in the mines, West Virginia was always the state with the least unionized mining operations and also always had the most unsafe mines. Based on recent news, I would guess that this still holds true.

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

Today, I am an engineer. It never bothered me to do something that would bring a grievance, if I thought it should be done. But...

Once, I was a union member. They never did much for me, per se, then, but in a manner of speaking, they did once upon a time. Things were once really bad for the working man and woman (and child! don't forget!), for no good reason. Bad management created unions, and they deserved them. Unions changed the world, and God bless 'em.

Today, unions don't have the power they used to have. That's OK. Management doesn't have the power they once had, either. Niether side has a free ride today. If a company is too nasty, their employees will leave. If a union or unions become too difficult to work with, that company will fail and their jobs will go away. I call that good. I see nothing wrong with a world where working people are treated decently but are required to work hard.

 

[2B]

All problems are caused by "Management." In the case of GM, management created the union power buy being easily blackmailed by threats of labor unrest. Forty years ago they could easily pass the extra cost along because "what else are they going to drive."

Some managements didn't understand the importance of safety. Some where just opportunistic a***s wanting their corporate perks and really didn't care about anything else.

I never ran in the upper levels but I got to see them reguarly. There were a few "work horses," a lot of "show horses," buy way too many horses a***s. I will say that being political and kissing up seemed to be a more effective gambit for that "big promotion" than doing a good job and "getting your numbers."

 

[Outtahere]

I believe unions still have a place when it comes to safety and the way employees are treated, it's just that some of the unions have gone over board and now hurt some workers more than they help. As for mining unions, I can't even imagine the deaths and injuries there would be without the unions.

 

[Maximillion]

Unions served a very productive role, but many of the things they fought for are now enshrined in law.

Work Place safety is a major factor, there are laws to protect the workers, but some one must monitor the situation, in most cases it is a Government Body.

Unions are big business, dues are huge revenues, the only time most workers are aware of their Union is if it is Confrontational and organises a strike.

Canadian Teachers have a very aggressive Union, frequently striking, it is impossible to fire a Teacher, and they now have Incomes approaching $100,000 at the top levels.

Nurses have a Union, it is illegal for them to strike, sometimes they are settling 2 to 3 years after a contract expires and make no where near what Teachers make, inspite of being equally qualified and working much harder and longer(Teachers in Canada work 198 days a year, 5 1/2 hours a day).

 

[unclemick]

Hmmm

The Cocks of the Walk where I grew up were the Longshoremen. The PacNW was relatively strong union territory.

But the Pulp and Sulphite Hall had the best rock and roll on Saturday night.

heh heh