Auto workers protest outside show over Delphi demands

[97 3.5 Intrepid]

ORIGINAL: highrevr/tflea Its funny how unions and corperations crash heads...I work for the heartland Frito lay and had two plants close down recently to give us the bulk of our northern and southern territory ...the coincidence is relevant to my theory. Being that both were union. And for some reason our plants show huge concern to individuals talking about unionizing the corperation. Unions can be a good thing and a very bad thing...while union officials take your dues to basically talk to your employer to give you more royalties and fair wages, they make money off of it too. But when they decide they have had enough they simply pull this stunt b/c heaven forbid that the CEOs and chairman take paycuts...they start from the bottom. (The Workers) Do I want to work for a UNION...Hell NO!!! B/C in financial Bliss you cant count on anybody but yourself. I understand them protesting but what they should be doing is going and educating the auto enthusiast masses who go to the show and give them an idea of how you think they should solve the problem. Not complain about it at an auto show b/c it is meant to be enjoyed as a glimpse into an automakers future. What would I think about GMs quality when I go to a show to see how they cut wages to be comparable to a White Castle's employee even if temporarily? Doesnt sound to good when you originally go to buy a GM and you think that the value will drop 20000 as soon as you leave the car lot. The asian market does hold a big majority of the US car sales but there are manufacturing facilities here in the US like toyota, SIA, and others that give US workers their jobs. So it isnt all bad. If they dont do something to fix the problem w/ overall reliability and sales ...I dont see very many jobs in their future. And I apologize as well to the recent decline in automotive sales as the economy was so bumpy for the past few years. 4 years ago the best I could do for a job was Hollywood video at 6 dollars an hour after the 2 layoffs i had in a row. Its sad. Another problem is when the union dues go to support causes that the members don't believe in. It is unfair for the employees wages to be taken away and support people and causes that they do not agree with. Comparing GM wages to White Castle wages sounds like a strech of the stituation. However, most of the duties an employee does at GM or Delphi is not that difficult either or requiring a special education which working at White Castle doesn't require either. I think the issue is some people have an entitlement mentality issue because things are changing. Another thing to think about. If the union employees were so interest in keeping their jobs and the money they are making, they should have tried to convience people to stay with domestic manufacturers. I have an uncle who works for Ford and I saw his daughter driving a Kia. No simpathy if they are not going to help their employers stay in business so then they can gouge them later with the union wages and benefits. Another thing that I commonly see is union employees with bumper stickers supporting unions but hiring non-union people do build their new house when there are plenty of union people to hire. Completely hypocritical. Union people in my hometown area have been known to damage your property if you hire non-union people to do work for you. Also, my mother's cousin got hurt on his job and the union is just fine with cutting him off. How about unions in our school systems. In my hometown's school district, the teachers were doing illegal things like abusing students with disabilities but they got away with it because they had ten year. Shall I go on with more union corruption examples?

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[nickoman01]

yeah 1/2 of my union wages go to them making anti walmart ****.

[Daddywags]

You mean 1/2 your union wages go to supporting americans instead of a communist country.

[97 3.5 Intrepid]

ORIGINAL: Daddywags

You mean 1/2 your union wages go to supporting americans instead of a communist country.

No. Buying things from China helps the people under a communist country and could possibly cause the people in China to demand for Capitalism system instead. Plus, some of this money that is paid from the union dues is donated to politicans that have allowed the Communist Country to get weapon technology and nuclear materials, so which is more dangerous. Giving the oppressed people in China jobs who could eventually demand for freedom, or allowing the government to get technology and supplies that is directly a threat to us. Whether or not China has money will not stop the government from forcing slavery on their people if they want something bad enough.

[nickoman01]

ORIGINAL: Daddywags

You mean 1/2 your union wages go to supporting americans instead of a communist country.

no 1/2 the money is going to them trying to ruin the American jobs of walmart workers.

[SHAPman]

ORIGINAL: 97 3.5 Intrepid

$27 an hour is too much for a simple task like that. Now I can understand that they are upset but they were riping off the company, so they sort of brought this on themselves. If they would have asked for a more reasonable wage in the first place, they probably wouldn't have had such a dramatic drop in pay. It is silly that people that have no college education get paid better than some with college educations.

Where in the hell do I sign up for the "simple task"? Where I work we bust our cans every night. I can barely keep up on my job if we run more than 3 rams in a row. Which is about 75 percent of the time. If you have never done the job, or at least seen the working conditions don't you dare tell me I'm over paid.

Why is it silly that I get paid as much as a collage educated individual? You decided to goto school for 4 years so you can get an easy desk job. I instead worked for those same four years and have chosen to do manual labor instead. So does that make me less valuable because I do manual labor and you push a pencil? All of our engineers and supervisors are collage educated. Most of them can't find their butt with their two hands. They have no idea how the real line actually runs. Those on the line usually have to make final corrections to an engineering change because the numb nut engineer doesn't want to admit that his calculations are wrong. I'm not saying every engineer is stupid. Far from it. We have a few that are great. But most of them are morons.

I pay the price daily for the work path I've chosen. I work hard every day, and my body pays for it. I will most likely will die 5-8 years sooner than an average pencil pusher due to the crap that I breath in daily. More likely than not I will not retire in the same shape that I started. I will have some sort of work related ailment.

But you get mad at me because I make the same money. I think it should be the other way around. You did your 4 hard years of college then get to sit behind a desk for 30 years or so. I get to beat my body up for 30 or so hard years. Yeah I'm overpaid.


Joe

[deranged]

ORIGINAL: 97 3.5 Intrepid

The way people are living these days does not seem to support this mind set. The demand for Superior goods is continuing to increase. People continue to purchase newer and nicer homes, people continue to purchase more and more luxury items more and more often, the unemployment rate continues to lower, the stocks are still increasing dispite the high price of fuel and raising interest rates. The thing that is changing is that the jobs here in the U.S. are now requiring people to receive a higher education and these higher education jobs pay better many times, people are being more enterpruners and being self-employed (which normally means being better paid). There are benefits to us sending jobs overseas. These poorer countries get money and spend it on goods that the U.S. exports to them. If you look at the whole picture in economics and not listen to the constant fear tastics that the media and politicans sing and dance to, you would realize things are going great right now. The lower employee wages makes products less expensive to build which causes the prices to be less expensive. This helps increase the supply and demand, which helps the companies profits which leads to more employees being hired in the long run.

So I guess what you're saying is if all our jobs were shipped overseas or everyone made minimum wage or lower we would be living in a veritable UTOPIA! Why argue with this kind of logic? There is absolutely no point whatsoever!

[97 3.5 Intrepid]

So all jobs are going overseas are they? I guess this doesn't exist in your mind. http://www.aiada.org/article.asp?id=20509 or how about the Chrysler plant in St. Louis which is going to expand their building capacity of vehicles for VW. It is not all bad news. You need to look at this. History has shown us that just because a few companies have problems and have to downsize, lower wages, or ship jobs over sea does not mean that a superpower will suddenly turn into a third world country. Look at the where the U.S. has benefited from trading, GM is very popular in China and is making a profit. These things work out for the best in the long run. We have been sending higher paying jobs over seas for years. We have purchased electronics first from Japan then China and other Asian countries for decades and the country still came out on top. When these other countries get jobs from us and get money they spend it on goods that come from the U.S.

You think our country is in bad shape despite the fact that we have an unemployment rate ranging around 4.9 percent which is much lower than other countries, despite the fact that the Dow Jones hit the 11,000 mark, despite the fact that people keep purchasing more expensive, superior goods, and living in nicer house.

jgralka, an office job is not as easy as you might believe. For example, my father has an "office job" but he has to travel around for his job. He has to deal with morons who keep cancelling their appointments, don't show up for their appointments, don't keep their records together, keep changing their information for him to process, and that is just the clients. He had to deal with two employees who had the same job as him (except for the managing role that he has) who were leaching off the company, had to correct their mistakes and catch them on stealing the company's money, using up the superplus income he and one other employee were making and then some for fiften years, had to go through the very difficult procedure to get them fired (he was their superior), and as a result has to pick up the clients that they didn't steal from the company, which means more work for him. He get up at 6:00 or earlier and doesn't get to bed until 12:00 on good nights. He gets no weekends off and was lucky to get a mere four days off for Christmas. He has to deal with lawyers, the IRS, and other people that make life miserable, phone calls at home, even during meal times. He has to look through his client's recorded information to make sure they are not lying or else his client, the company he works for, and he himself could get into legal trouble if their is a slight error. He has to rush everywhere to get things done in time. He has trouble sleeping because of the mental stress it causes him. He has been cheated already once with his retirement plan. He has two brothers that work in factories and he has just as many medical problems as them. He grew up working on a farm so he has an idea of what manual labor is like.

Having to deal with people who do not cooperate as clients, fellow workers, and people above him is difficult and stressful, and even more so when their is a screw up on the other person's part that you have little control over but it can cost you your job for someone elses mistake. He has to try and bring a company that has been heading downhill for years back up or else everyone loses their job. Does that actually sound easy or non-stressful to you? You didn't pay for an education for those 4 years, which is considerably high considering how much these universities gouge the students, even with multiple scholarships. You need to understand that the reason why people with degrees get paid higher is because they are wanted more than people with just a high school education. The companies want people with degrees is because they believe that they are more qualified (whether or not the person really is a better worker). People with degrees have special skills that you might not have that are needed for the job. This is the way the employers look at it. My father gets the income that he gets because he works long hours at a job that requires a college education, not because he is involved with a group of people that will strike if they are not happy with the way things are going for them. You don't have to like the fact that people with degrees traditionally get a higher paying job and it appears to be easier, but that is the way things work out in a free enterprise system. If you hate your job and want a office job, then go to college, I'm going to warn you though that it isn't as easy as you think. I have been to automotive factories while they were building vehicles to keep the record straight. Something to think about. Why should I go to college if there wasn't better pay, benefits, and a better working environment, when I have to pay high prices for tuition, books, room and board, scarifice 4 years of pay, listen to these arrogant professors get off the topic and yap about their opinions about the world with me paying their salary, and other different sacrifices?

[deranged]

For lack of better judgement, let me try to explain this to you. What will we be exporting from the U.S.A.? Do you actually think that these foreign automakers are building cars over here to export back overseas? Correct me if I'm wrong but don't all the foreign automakers still have plants running back home? The biggest reason they build cars here is the high cost of shipping vehicles here on container vessels. How much export do you think the domestics do? Not much. What other goods are we going to export? Hell even Levis aren't made here anymore! Can you name 5 things that are exported from the United States? If you can, of those 5 how many do you think have a significant effect on the trade deficit? Unemployment figures can be very misleading. Things to think about . How many people have given up looking for a decent paying job? How many people have settled for a lesser paying job? How many people are working 2 or more jobs to make ends meet? The level of the Dow Jones is a measure of how well businesses are doing and a big part of how well they are doing is the result of how many jobs they have sent abroad for cheaper labor. Oh and those of you banking on that office job to carry you through to retirement. Those jobs are some of the fastest being sent to India because of their well educated AND cheap workforce! Get the picture yet! Companies don't care about you're college education they are more worried about their bottom line. If that means cutting your wages or shipping your job overseas so be it, White collar as well as Blue. They're paying people sitting in front of computer screens just like you to figure out the most cost effective way to do business. Before long it won't just be those GREEDY union members outside the autoshow screaming it's going to be everyone. To see the big picture you've got to step back a little and take it ALL in.

[Dodgeramman]

I have to throw my 2 cents in, but first just to let you know I am the VP of our local chapter of the NYSUT (New York State United Teachers). As far as companies moving overseas goes. Western NY once one of the biggest industrial areas in the country, has been killed by it . Bethlehem Steel once one of the biggest steel producers in the US in South Buffalo GONE, Brown Shoe Company in Gowanda GONE, Peter Copper Glue in Gowanda GONE, Delphi Lockport soon to be GONE, GM powertrain in North Tonawanda might be Gone, just to name a few. All these jobs GONE, why so those chair sitting golf playing SOB's can make it look like they are saving money so they can line their own pockets. Lets see them lose their job and have to take a $9.50/hr job and support a family.
Know as far as Unions go I bet you don't have any problems when it comes to not working on Labor day do you!! If it where not for the Unions then everyone in this country would still be making .50 a day. If you don't want to live in a Country that you can work for $20+ dollars an hour (because of the unions)the go else where!! If your are in a union that you are not happy with Put Up or Shut Up get involved and get into an office!!!

VOTE UNION