Who's more responsible for the decline in of the big 3: Union or Management?

[JHZR2]

ALS,

Its pretty clear that you have a deep rooted issue with public servants who are unionized. I know that my parents are both public servants, and devote their work time and then some to get stuff done. My mother is a teacher, and I know the efforts that she has always made.

Are my two parents the exceptions? No! From my experiences in school, etc., the teachers have always made a HUGE effort, and really made things nice for the students, so we'd keep interested and learn a LOT. It certainly is true that kids in different school districts and backgrounds will take school different ways. It IS parents to some extent, for sure. Its unfortunate, but it is what it is. Everyone may be ABLE to learn, but far from everyone is WILLING. Only so much of this can be blamed on the teachers.

Unfortunately, youll get low end workers in every job, just like youll get high end workers in every job. And, a lot of times theyll flock together. Its natural capitalizm I suppose... the best will propagate in the best places, as thats where the money is and thats where folks can be picky. There are diamonds in the rough at the lousy places, but they soon move on anyway. Fortunately, in the better places, the poor performers can be canned and replaced easily before theyre tenured, and then there is no problem NOT keeping them on.

I think that this extends to any industry, including the auto industry. Problem is, a person certified to do HS teaching will go to another high school.. not much else. Its not liek most of them can become University professors. However, smart, able, hard workers in an industry like the auto industry will more than likely move on elsewhere to any other higher calling. It naturally concentrates the lesser performers all over, rather than simply polarizing them to certain districts, like it does in pubic service like teaching. That doesnt mean that in an industry like the auto industry, there arent EXCELLENT folks, but IMO most of the best move onto other things if they can, or become supervisors.

The key to anyone doing anything anywhere is that they need to be good at what they do, and need to take pride and concern in what they do. This is the key to the labor component in any profession, whether making cars or teaching kids...

And, at that point, it is entirely a function of the situation that said workers are put in. Put teachers, good or bad, into a lousy school district with kids that dont care, and guess what you get? Put workers, good or bad, into an industry with products that are poor or not well accepted, and guess what? Problem is, in that situation, when things suck, you move on, not keep fighting for more benefits and pay... Its the simple concept of balance. Even if you make all management have $0 salary, it only pays so many folks to make mediocre products that dont sell well, before a loss is had.

That's why it IS both the union and management's fault.

JMH

[ January 27, 2006, 08:19 PM: Message edited by: JHZR2 ]

 

[medic]

quote:

---

Theres also the idea that somehow public employee unions are lesser entities than others. Public employees, most all needing a college degree, but most of all working desk jobs are somehow inferior. An electricial or plumber or UAW worker actually mnakes stuff... a public employee is lazy. They have no right to a Union. Has it ever occurred that especially here, there ARE a lot of lazy workers (union or not) in general who simply dont care much? I wish there was some productivity crossed with quality metric that could be universal to see how the 'laziness' of public union workers crosses with other union tradesmen. Id bet there is an imbalance, and just because a public worker can sit behind a desk doesnt mean that they'd be on the bad end of the scale....

---

While I don't have an actual figure, I would dare to say that most unionized public employees don't sit behind desks. Many of the employees sitting behind desks are non-union. Your unionized employees are the street workers, sewage treatment plant workers, police officers, firefighters, nursing home and hospital employees, etc... These people are the lifeblood of their communitees and most work their butts off because of understaffing. Police and fire stations close everyday. Does this mean there are less crimes, fires and emergencies? Nope, it just means the rest have to work that much harder. People flush just as much as always. The potholes in the roads don't get any smaller. The snow comes regardless of how many guys are working and it needs to be removed so you can get to work. What about when a new job comes up? Imagine 4 kids recently died in an area waterway. Now we have a new job - swift water rescue - who does this? Oh, lets give it to the fire department. Hazardous materials - the fire department can have that too. Every time a new public saftey job comes up the police and fire departments get it - with no addtion to manpower. Buffalo, NY just built a new fire station to replace multiple closed stations. They filled this station with new top of the line equipment because they have less than half of the guys to do the same job. These guys need only the best equipment to do a job that used to take more than double the amount of people.

These are your unionized public employees - the people behind the scenes, who you never see, but make sure you life runs effortlessly everyday. Like I said before, these services can be contrated out, but it usually doesn't work.

 

[sprintman]

Win you are 100% correct. Yes a Maloo should sell well in the States. A 400HP ute, nice. There was talk of importing them and selling them as rebadged El Camino's but it has probably been kyboshed by UAW who were not happy about importing GTO's (Monaro's) from Australia.

 

[Steve S]

The unions don't design weak transmissions or use the cheapest switches etc. etc.

 

[brianl703]

quote:

---

what percentage of American car quality defects are design related

---

From what I've seen, about 95% of them.

All "recalls", all "TSBs", all "pattern failures" are virtually guranteed to be the result of design problems. If a problem is consistent enough that multiple widgets off the assembly line are exhibiting the problem, then that tells me that the problem is either a design issue or incorrect assembly instructions were supplied to the lineworkers.

The stereotypical union worker who is "screwing off" at work doesn't produce a consistent work product.

Let me give an example:

I had instructed the server build team to set the SCSI IDs of hard drives to 0 before installing them in the server. I showed them what jumpers to remove and I thought I was pretty clear about how it's done.

I find out that 50 servers went online with the SCSI ID set to 1. This is obviously an error with my instructions or I was not clear about how to set the ID; either way, I know what the problem is and I will need to be more clear to prevent it.

Let's say that instead I found out that 50 servers went online and some are set to 0 as I want but the rest are set to all various numbers between 1 and 7. Obviously, someone is not paying attention to their work--there is no consistency. The problem is not with my instructions, as if they had followed my instructions, even if they had misunderstood them, there still would have been a consistent result.

[ January 27, 2006, 12:46 PM: Message edited by: brianl703 ]

 

[1sttruck]

Management at a company holds no less responsibility than officers in the miltary, where a ship's captain is probbaly the best example; responsible for the staff including officers and NCOs, conduct of subordinates, training, competence, supplies, communications, etc., and is also reponsible for his unit's conduct in action.

Does union management sit on the board of directors ?

 

[Gary Allan]

quote:

---

I guess I am a little resentful so to speak because I managed to succeed on my own merit through a lot of hard work and a lot of failure on the way.

---

I'm trying to figure on how someone else being in a union ..or the existance of unions made your efforts for yourself more or less meaningful to you. Now if you were a union member, and were worth more than they afforded you, you always had the oportunity to exit the rank and file and strike out on your own. If you weren't worth more ..or as much, would you have left out of principle?? If you never were involved in union labor ..and managed your own success ..what's your beef? If you had said that some how, some way, union labor had "kept you down" ..then I can see your resentment. Or is it that someone that you felt didn't deserve to live in the same neighborhood ..vacation at the same beach ...eat in the same resturant as you did

 

[GROUCHO MARX]

Medic, I'm soryy I should have explained. "Gung Ho" was an example of management promising its bosses things that it could/should not promise. Union leadership promising its membership things it could/should not deliver.

No need to post the movie's treatment.

 

[GROUCHO MARX]

"Most guys I know that are union members are hard working and worth every cent they are paid. But I would say 25% TO 30% of the people working in these unions should be tossed out on the street. These are the ones that give everyone else in the union a bad rap."
---------------------------------------------------------

I think ALS made his position on unions pretty clear here.

The few give the majority a bad name. It's seemed that the unions have done more to protect under/poor performing members more than anything else. JMO

 

[Not the Autorx Frank]

Has nothing to do with class warfare Gary. Just erks me to see people get paid well for slacking while I pay higher prices because of it. Also POed when the unions cut a deal w/ some official to get the contract on a bridge or highway when a private firm could have done the work cheaper and faster. But who cares we can just fork out more taxes cause its not fair that I make this much money anyways(I'm not bitter am I?). Basically I would never ask someone to fight MY fight or provide for me. If I had to work 9 jobs to feed my family, thats what I would do. Why is the concept of an individual taking care of himself gone now?

Gary, I knew better than too start this LOL!!

 

[Gary Allan]

Well, we're both still smiling, Frank ..so it can't be all that bad

Well, I've seen this from both sides. I've been a union member. It was no big deal. I really didn't see much difference in non-union shops ..except the guy that hired you didn't promise to give you great raises when he interviewed you ..and then renegged on them later ..stating that conditions had changed. It just had more spelled out rules. For most union employees ..the union is just a buffer. It dampens the knee jerk reaction. If the company wants you gone ...you're gone. We really had very little trouble or conflict between labor and management. Oddly enough ..it was like the union was running ramrod on the herd for the company ..and human resouces was the referee in any disputes between supervision and a particular employee.

I will say that it probably held most of our dept back in wages. We were always going to be $1.85 ahead of the janitor. When we got our $0.35 increase ..he beat cost of living ..I lost (% wise)...but..in the big picture did I really think that reducing his wage $4 was going to alter things and put it in my pocket?? Nope. I was making what industrial labor typically paid in the region for my sector. That is, "what the market would bear".

Another thing that is typically ignored is that most of your (now ancient and mostly defunct) unions were in unhealthy sectors. Steel, mining, chemical production. Where I worked the average life expectancy into the defined benefit plan was 18 months...and only afforded spousal benefits at a reduced rate if chosen. Except for the last twenty five years ..we had a bunch of human scrubbers cleaning the air in the plant. Most manufacturing runs 24/7. You can take 5 years average off your life if you've drawn the midnight shift. If you're realizing work place environmental improvements ..you can attribute it to the cost of workers comp for those who have paid the price for making a living in those hazardous environments.

So ..in most ways measured ..many of your union workers have merely managed to make up in wages and benefits that they will never receive in the future.

For most of the guys that I worked with (not in my dept - but the production guys) ..that place was like a prison. That fence kept them in there ..as much as it kept others out.

As far as public works projects ..they're pork ..through and through. Just about everything I see ..public or larger scale private ..is paying prevailing wage. That is, whether you're union or not ..the job pays the same. This eliminates any protest of the local IBEEW ..or whatever. They are surely being made non-entities. All your public projects are jobs programs. Whether you pay a dime or a dollar ..it typically goes into the local economy. It's a redistribution of $$$ from one area to another. People filter it along the way ..locals snag their share.

 

[sprintman]

Again this is nothing about unions. The vehicles GM and Fod make in the U.S are well you know what they are. Every GM and Ford upper, middle, and lower level manager should be forced to visit their sibling factories in Australia to see how it should be done. Bob Lutz knows and that's why he says Holden is the jewel in the worldwide GM crown. Build the right vehicles and they would be booming like here but no they won't. Why is that?.

 

[JHZR2]

quote:

---

Just erks me to see people get paid well for slacking while I pay higher prices because of it.

---

IMO, this is the prevailing gripe that cause people to be against unions. For example, the UPS union deliveryman (and union rep) who gets paid $80k and gets 8 weeks vacation... at whose cost?

Another good example is when theyre talking about construction in Philadelphia. There are always talks about how its hard to get new stuff built, and how expensive it is to build it, because everything is unionized... WHether thats right, or if its just more expensive because the cost of living is 18% higher than middle of nowhere, USA, I couldnt say for sure.

But anytime that we hear about strikes, we hear about Unions. Most of the time when we hear about strike resolutions, we hear that its going to make prices higher, whether on the NYC transit, for our GM car, etc. TO the average non-union person, trying to work to make their way through life, this makes them feel that their costs go up, while they dont get a sewwtened deal for their own compensation. How should they feel????

People may look at it totally wrong, and in theory, they can choose to not use products that have raised costs because of union demands, but thats only so realistic.

The problem is that people do need to eat, and people do need healthcare, even lazy ones or anyone else. Denying their needs only goes so far before we pay it anyway through mandatory gov't programs or whatnot.

Its tough to feel comfortable and side with striking union meembers, and not relate it to my own pocketbook... Ill say that to be honest. Right or wrong, grounded or 'knee jerk' reaction, I wish they would do better and get the $ and care they need, but I dont want to have to pay for it... I know this is a dumb way to look at it, but Ill bet a lot of folks have a similar outlook.

JMH

 

[GROUCHO MARX]

All workers deserve to be treated honestly and fairly, a union can ensure that this happens. I have no problem with this, nor should anyone else.

In GM's case, you cannot lay the failures at the foot of the UAW. I believe we can all agree on this as well.

 

[javacontour]

I'm not impressed with Unions based on my experiences working on the Lock and Dam 26 coffer dam project in the 1980's when I was a college student and more recently when MasterCard built their new data center here in the St. Louis area in 2000-2001.

Lots of fighting between unions over who got what job. Was that a teamster's job, a carpenters job, an operating engineers job, etc. Of course, the contractors were paying for all of this fighting.

The funniest thing I saw, and both MasterCard, my employer and the union all share responsiblity fort this little story.

We sold them all sorts of equipment to fill the data center. MasterCard wanted it installed while the construction was on-going, so somewhere before arriving at the jobsite, we had to locate a Teamster driven truck, because they would turn away a truck driven by a non-union driver.

Of course, teamsters had to provide the laborers to offload these machines. Then, you had to coordiante with the operating engineers to use the elevators onsite, yes they had an operator for the elevators. Of course, if the painters or carpenters or electricians were using them, you had to coordinate with their foreman to use the elevator.

Console furniture was being assembled, which brought up another work stoppage, the electricians claimed it was there work because there was wiring in the furniture, and the carpenters claimed it was their work because it was "wood" assembly.

Then of course, we, the engineers for the vendor could not work on the computers, because the electricians claimed that work.

We made a lot of money selling the contractor new cables and cards when their untrained electricians bent very small SCSI cables and broke other things.

Of course, these costs were passed on to MasterCard and of course, their member banks.

 

[ALS]

quote:

---

Console furniture was being assembled, which brought up another work stoppage, the electricians claimed it was there work because there was wiring in the furniture, and the carpenters claimed it was their work because it was "wood" assembly.

---

That brings back memories of stories my friend told me. His first job when he graduated from Carnegie Mellon with an EE degree was working for Duquesne Light. He was part of the team that was taking apart the Decommissioned Shippingport Nuclear Plant control room. His job was to remove a gauge from one of the panels, label it and bag it. Oh the games he had to play with the union guys. First he had to call a Union Member from Maintenance to remove the four screws. Then call someone from the Electrical union to disconnect the wires from the gauge. He then would log the gauge, label it with a tag and bag it. After two weeks of watching the whole job fall behind more and more each day he finally had enough of this garbage. The maintenance guy would come remove the screws then leave. The electrician would show up 10 or 15 minutes later to remove the wires and take off. The problem was these guys would take out one gauge then leave and go hide.
So one morning he just started taking the gauges out of the consoles and panels, disconnecting the wires, labeling them and bagging them. Well it hit the fan with the Union. One of the Stewart's came down and started yelling at him that it wasn't his job to do that. He told the Union Boss either they stay here with me all day doing this job or they get out now. Words were exchanged between them and he had enough of the conversation. Needless to say his threatening to shove the screw driver in his hand through the side of one of the union guys face if he didn't shut up and leave the room didn't go over real well. They figured he was totally nuts so the union guys left him alone after that.
On the upside, he was extremely impressed with the quality of the work he saw by the builders of this plant. It was the very little details that went into every system that most people would over look and never ever notice.
He would sit there in the bar with us on the weekends and brag and praise the quality of the work and pride these men must have had when they built it. Union built of Course.
BTW His father is or should I say was (Retired) a Union Painter.

 

[medic]

quote:

---

Of course, these costs were passed on to MasterCard and of course, their member banks.

---

You don't know much about construction, do you? These costs should have stopped at the contractor. If they went beyond that point, then, once again, MasterCard negotiated a poor contract for these services. The work could've been done by non-union contractors and screwed up just as bad. Fighting for a bigger piece of the pie isn't union, it's human nature. The only difference is that unions usually watch out for each other - kind of a one for all and all for one deal. When a union needs membership cards printed, they use a union printer. Whenever they need work done, they do their best to use union labor. It's a brotherhood that goes far beyond anything you can imagine. If everybody would learn to stick together and watch out or each other like these people do, this country would be a much better place.

 

[JHZR2]

ALS, that kind of story is the type of thing that makes people angry, and gives Unions bad names.

An example. I was at Congress for an expo, and if I wanted to take anything in larger than what you could lug in a bag HAD to be brought in by teamsters. You HAD to pay them at $80/hr rate to lug your stuff in. No way could two people co-carry in a box, you had to shell out the dough to bring it in.

Talk about job security... It did nothing but annoy me.

JMH

 

[GROUCHO MARX]

If unions are looking out for each other all the time, who is looking out for the customer?

 

[medic]

In a way, the union is also watching out for the customer. They make sure the workers are skill workers, vs. low skilled low paid workers. They also try very hard to keep jobs in this country, protecting the customers' jobs. Many studies have proven that a union workforce is more productive that a non-union workforce. So, the higher pay can be offset by the higher production and higher skill levels.

There will always be exceptions to the rule, and it does go both ways. Instead of telling a story about one bad experience you had, how about the good experiences? How about when you were sick and in the hospital - where the nurses unionized? They probably were and therefore the hospital was required minimum staffing based on the number of patients currently in the hospital. In non-union hospitals, one registered nurse can be responsible for 20 or more patients with only one aid to help. These nurses run their butts off and you don't get the care you deserve because of poor staffing. If one patient start to declie, all the rest suffer. If you stop and look around, you'll see how much better your life is because of a union that you didn't even know existed.

Not all union workers clear $100k per year. Yes, as a rule union workers do make a bit more money and have better benefits, but not always.