Originally Posted By: greenaccord02
That's just propaganda. It's just more of the same kind of class warfare that's propagated by the people who want you to unionize. All those big companies, guess who they're run by? People. Humans. Just like you and I. This isn't 1910 anymore. You can't get away with having little kids run around inside machines fixing them and there is a minimum wage.
Sure you can! You outsource everything to places who function with conditions JUST LIKE THAT!
Have you bothered to lookup the working conditions in China, or are you content to wear the blinders and just pretend that since we "fixed things here 100 year ago" everything is fine elsewhere as well?
And then, we expect our fellow friends and countrymen to COMPETE with a country that promotes and THRIVES off of everything we fought tooth and nail to remove from our own society.... Things that we, as Americans and Canadians deemed UNACCEPTABLE in our own countries. Yet we FINANCE those conditions in China. What a backward tail of ignorance and greed this is.
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Why? Because one hundred years ago we actually NEEDED unions. They served their purpose. Now, you have some goof ball standing on an assembly line thinking he deserves $35/hr because he "works for a livin'" when he really ought to be paid less than half that. Want to know what's hurting american manufacturing? Union workers. Down here our factory workers still have jobs (and believe it or not, they're making a fair wage, too).
As Spyder mentioned, it was the fight of the Unions that resulted in the present day working conditions. Whether you want to give them credit for it or not.
Modern day unions are indeed their own worst enemy. I look at pylons like Buzz Hargrove and see everything that everyone despises about unions personified. He and the UAW are the reason so many hate unions. The demands, the threats, the ridiculous compensation....etc. It is easy to see why so many people have become embittered to the idea that unions need to exist.
However, the UAW is not the only union out there. Are all unions like the UAW? No.
I used to be very anti-union myself. Until I realized it wasn't the unions I didn't like. It was just the UAW. And the fact that I didn't know of any other unions that behaved in such a ridiculous manner got me thinking regarding my position on the matter.
Unfortunately, the existence of unions in our society is somewhat secondary in our race to the bottom. If "voting with your wallet" counts, then we are all voting to bring back the working conditions we sit here and condemn. After all, we are paying for the existence of those conditions in China... Quite willingly! by purchasing their goods.
You cannot make the argument that you don't want poor working conditions, and that people deserve to be treated fairly in the workplace, regardless of the job. And then purchase goods that were manufactured by child labour, or by some guy who makes $2.00/week in China.
One does not support the other here.
Either you want good working conditions, and are willing to pay a reasonable price for goods to support that, or you don't care about working conditions, and just want the cheapest junk possible, manufactured in the cheapest way possible, regardless of the working conditions. As long as of course, it isn't you who are affected by it.
See it is easy to be cheap and selfish and justify buying slave-labour goods when it isn't your own job that is on the line, isn't it?
GE used the be the largest employer in the city I live in. We have a large operation that spans many city blocks. They built large turbine motors, small motors, they even have Nuclear.
There has been a loud sucking sound.
The jobs are now being moved to China, and some to Mexico. Small motors left ages ago. It now operates in Mexico. The only reason we still have large motors is that they already tried to send it down there once and after multiple unit failures, costing millions of dollars, they left it operating up here, since we had a much lower failure rate. I've been told they will be trying to move it again.
And that brings us to the second part of my tangent here, LOL!
Who is supposed to police big business? It surely isn't the unions. GE is a union shop, and that hasn't stopped the arterial blood letting of jobs in my town. The consumer doesn't seem to care. They'll buy whatever it is regardless of the country of origin. They have no loyalty.
We all see the problem. Yet most care little to do anything about it. It doesn't appear to affect them directly, so maybe they'll complain a little when it says "made in China" on it. But that won't stop them from buying it.
If we are opposed to the government putting trade tariffs in place to control the movement of jobs to 3rd world countries because we despise "big brother". And we are unable to apparently control ourselves as consumers and demand that the products we purchase are manufactured in places with reasonable working conditions such as the ones here in North America, Europe, Japan, Australia...etc, then how do you expect to stop this?
If we don't have enough self control as a society (which is painfully obvious) to stop this ourselves, then the only option is for government to step in and fix the trade imbalance so that corporations move jobs back here. They aren't going to do it on their own. They are making money hand-over-fist, and as long as they can continue to do that, unchecked, then they will.
