An investor's role in society is much greater than any janitor's. Deciding whether or not a start up a company like google deserves to be launched is a much greater effect than changing out a waste basket.

I have not been talking about "investors", I've been talking about wall st bankers. Not the same.

What's a wall street banker?

Wall Street Banker: People that find ways to take money out of the system without providing any goods or services in return.
Synonyms: theif, scallywag, bastard

The people that precipitated the global financial crisis through their reckless manipulation of the banking system in the US and elsewhere post 9-11, mainly propelled by the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the record-low interest rates instituted by Allen Greenspan.

OH MAN

THIS IS MY FAVORITE CONVERSATION EVER.

Labor unions are created with the best intentions but are often misused and easily corrupted. If you are unionized you must strike when the union tells you - which means you do not get paid until the strike has broke. And those fees you pay to your representative? Its hard to say whether he has your interests in mind, or the nice paycheck he gets every month retaining peace.

It does not exempt you from getting fired or from facing retaliation, it just makes the excuses and ways more creative. There are still ways to get anyone fired if you try hard enough, if you find that one loop hole, and if you get other people in the company (or otherwise) to be on the right side. I could quote anecdotal evidence here, but I doubt it would be worthwhile. Retaliation still exists. Those channels are still used against you.

Labor unions artificially drive up the standard of union and cost of goods sold. Union fees and union terms are strangling many industries that then in turn take subsidies from the government...to retain contractual terms, such as pensions...which is like giving someone a blood transfusion when they are bleeding freely from having no foot.

Labor unions working correctly implies everyone cares equally for beneficial treatment on a whole. In technicality, the union representative is supposed to meet the company half way as much as the company is expected to meet the union. Everyone is supposed to win. The company receives more dedicated, content workers (better pay, better conditions) that generate more profit, while the worker has security and safety.

But it is not necessary anymore. In the 20s when the general response for getting your hand sliced off by an unguarded machine was "deal with it and you're fired"...yea...unions were necessary. In an environment where the company must provide a safe work environment, must pay for damages to you, and may not fire you as a direct result? Not so much. You can get fired whether unionized or not. It just changes the reason you are fired.

Thanks Kame, really good outline of the issues involved.

I agree that unions aren't as important as they used to be, but they still do have a place. I also think that the US labour laws in general don't provide the level of protection that is really needed (the US is the only developed country that doesn't have minimum holiday entitlements, for example), but on the flip-side one of the US economy's big competitive strength is the mobility of the work force - this is actually a contributing factor to the bad recovery from the last recession because people can't afford to sell their houses (because they have negative equity in them and no one wants to buy) and move to another city/state for a job.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 7 2012, 7:11 am by Lanthanide.

I think that the labor union is great. They recently got me a .25 cent raise. I have recently seen them help a guy out at the place where i work. Apparently he was suspended after he allegedly let a product pass through without charging the customer for it. We are cashiers and I guess they thought he did it purposefully. He called the union and he was working again. Manager was pissed though.

I cant tell which deduction is how much im paying per week but its either between .06 cents to $22.28

Eh. Unions cool.

Depends entirely on the circumstances, but I think that's a pretty lousy thing to do anyway. If the guy had no relationship with the customer whatsoever, then you'd have to lean towards a simple "mistake" rather than purposefully trying to 'steal' something from the employer - I'm sure as a cashier you know how the shop works well enough to get away with stealing much more easily. Also depends how they detected this - did the customer come back and point out they weren't charged?

This happened to me when I was on a checkout in retail at our equivalent to Walmart (not nearly as scummy, though). Some woman was apparently buying two windchimes and I only charged her for one. It was like $6.99 or something. She came back and tried to pay for it, which wasn't accepted. The store manager called me in to his office for "a chat" where he made out it was a serious issue, but I said it was simply a mistake and that was the end of it. No notes on an 'employment file' or anything (as far as I can tell). At that point I'd only been there for a few months though, so they had no idea whether I was a good worker, an average worker or just a bad one. For the record I was a good worker

I make mistakes all of the time. You go through customers so fast that you're pretty much bound to. It doesn't help that I live in my head, either. Management will get on your ass about it every time they catch it, too. But really, what are you going to do? I'm not a machine and to be honest humans aren't very good at doing simple tasks over and over; nor is our attention very good.

There is a huge disparity between what management thinks people are capable of and what they actually are. Just looking through job ads you'll find that they value "multi-tasking" like it is some sort of basic skill. Research shows us that only the most exceptional humans can perform two tasks at once without either suffering.

Then again you'll find CEOs who think they're the hardest and smartest working people on the planet and that they're overachievers who need three hours of sleep a night and can multi-task well. These are people running companies. Talk about delusions of grandeur. Under scrutiny it almost always turns out these people are just like the rest of us. They require eight hours of sleep a night, can't multi-task well, and are only slightly above average intelligence working little or no harder than the grunts they employ.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Feb 7 2012, 8:48 pm by Sacrieur.

This represents two things. First, that you do not know - and offer a wide range in cost - in your fee shows that unions add another layer of rules and code of conduct, whether explicit or implicit, that employees are required to understand and typically unable to get solid advice on it, especially as far as a loophole is concerned, because the store doesn't want you using it against the company.

This also shows that the company does not trust you, which is a much larger problem. Whole Foods trusts its employees. It is not unionized. I can sample something out to a customer - or employee, for that matter, I regularly sample bread to specialty if I think they can upsell it with their cheese, if we have markouts the shift supervisor has not tried I ask if they want one, if we mark out items the team hasn't tried we're allowed to open and discuss it, and even some new items we're allowed to pop open. We're empowered to do so, and we are not unionized. If I sampled out too much, I think I'd get a slap on the wrist first, then a write up if it kept happening on a suspicious level (like I was giving my mom samples, etc), and there are some strict rules on how I use my discount. But the company trusts that I will not abuse this rule, and so they give me more leniency.

Its a tough call for a company. You could treat an employee ethically and they may still steal hundreds of dollars worth of products because your back is turned. It doesn't matter what initiates the ethical treatment...union or otherwise...its in some peoples' nature to steal things.

If I could give unions one thing, the fact that 90% of the grocer industry is unionized has applied pressure to my company to treat me well. I cannot deny that. But I also cannot deny that the cost of food - especially at my store - is much higher than other stores as a result.

labor unions are good for better work conditions/better wages but some make it so hard to fire people like teachers so crappy teachers stay i mean these people are that are teaching the next generation and if a teacher sucks it makes a HUGE DIFFERENCE trust me i know.

Labour unions taken to the extreme ultimately hurt more people than they help. Likewise employment policies at a business taken to the extreme ultimately hurt more people than they help (and can hurt the business in the medium-long term, too). As I posted earlier, labour unions are simply a way to shift the balance of power back towards the employees and away from the employers.

You will always find examples of great employers, terrible employers, great unions and terrible unions. Saying "all unions suck" as Vrael did earlier (suspect he was trolling so ignored it) is a naive approach.

Teachers unions are tricky, because they are made up of people who actually do the work directly themselves; they have personal hands-on experience knowing what sorts of strategies work, what strategies don't work and where money should be spent to improve the system. Education is a great hot-button issue for many parents who (naturally) want the best for their children, so it is a prime target for political interference. The fact that educational outcomes are 'woolly' and difficult to measure and have so many different factors makes it easy for politicians to justify any sort of pet project they want, regardless of how useful it will actually be for most schools/children. Teachers unions are a way to try and dampen out good-intentioned but badly-implemented political meddling.

Ideally teachers unions should be kicking out bad teachers and running training and up-skilling courses to help their members do their jobs better.

Yes, we are in agreement that higher minimum wages decrease employment. You said the same thing that I did, but much clearer.

I'm against labor unions. If someone is willing to do the same job as well and for less, I see no reason not to hire them. This is the free market. The only 'argument' I see for this revolves around an 'us versus them' mentality, with people empathizing with those that want higher wages, as opposed to those that simply want a job. There may also be arguments revolving around poor treatment of workers, but even then - if someone else is willing to do the job in more dangerous conditions then you are, then they deserve the job. Everything else should be handled at the level of the law. Basically, I think Lathanide is wrong.

Vrael, Wall Street Bankers are investors, believe it or not.

This is ultimately where lack of a minimum wage / labour unionism ends up: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/16/work-free-tesco-job-advert

People working for free, competing with each other for the chance to be paid something for their work (read: get 'hired' and get an official 'job' that pays money). This is also happening in America.

It is because of labour unions that a standard working week is 40 hours, although as I understand it this is generally no longer the 'standard' for many people in America anyway.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 16 2012, 11:46 pm by Lanthanide.