Some thoughts on unions

by JeffT 343 Replies latest members politics

  • garyneal
    garyneal

    Good points, FHN. I remember dealing with angry customers, watching customers treat store greaters and cashiers harshly. I remember having to work three departments because the management did not want to staff enough people and then getting raked over coals because I could not get all three departments in tip top shape before the next shift. Bear in mind that I was working the three departments and helping customers which would sometimes include leaving my department to help move a customer's furniture purchase to their car.

    Sometimes, I was just too busy to go back and straighten shelves in three departments.

    But I enjoyed the exercise working as a stockman / cart pusher. Working outside and everything. But I had to work in rain and snow, extreme heat and cold temperatures. All for $6.00 / hour. I wasn't married then but I did have a son and was paying child support. There was hardly nothing left over in my check after taking money out for medical insurance and other benefits (which were crummy). I would've preferred that the premiums be a tax that went to fund universal healthcare.

  • garyneal
    garyneal

    Sam Whiskey,

    If I can afford to make a living off of $20,000 / year, I would. But I cannot.

    I have no cable tv, my wife's car is 10 years old, my truck is 15 years old, my rent is very modest for the area I live in. Yet I cannot afford to buy a house.

    Once we pay off our debts, we will be able to buy a house, but no more. We will be house poor. My kids require daycare at nearly $1,600 / month but my wife cannot quit her job because we cannot afford to make it off my income alone (and I'm an engineer!!!).

  • DaCheech
    DaCheech
    XJW4ever, cashiers did not start working for $14-17 an hour, they stayed loyal to the company and earned their way to that wage. Do you know that in most cities, it takes at least $14 an hour to rent a two bedroom apartment and support a family of 2-4?

    exactly why public unions are sucking you guys dry!

    when I was in school, I worked in a NJ supermarket named Foodtown, and it was union............. supermaket workers have a hard job, and hard shifts, and the managers play games to keep people off the "full time list"

    public union people are primadonnas

  • Sam Whiskey
    Sam Whiskey

    Gary, I appreciate your perspective. Believe me, I have been on both ends. But, here's my point, and I hope it's well taken; Rather than blaming the system for our misfortune, what can we do to modify our skill sets to either (a) start a business where there is demand for our product or service, or (b) modify our skill sets to get a better paying job?

    So here's how I see it if you're a Walmart cashier (the numbers used are for illustrative purposes only, I don't what WM employees actually get paid);

    • Cashier - $14.00/Hr.
    • Store Mgr. - $20.00/Hr.
    • Divsional Store Mgr. - $25.00/Hr.
    • Regional Store Mgr. - $30.00/Hr.
    • Corporate Mgr. - $35.00/Hr.
    Do you see the possibilities? Walmart is a CASH COW. To get some of that cash, YOU HAVE TO MODIFY YOUR VALUE TO THE COMPANY. Companies like Walmart ard dying for talented people, the problem is, American are too lazy. The Indians and Orientals are getting those jobs because they aren't lazy.
    Look at the career oppotunities - They're huge! The big money is in the coporate arena - get educated! Go get it!

    http://walmartstores.com/Careers/

  • Sam Whiskey
    Sam Whiskey

    Gary, what kind of engineering work do you do?

  • SacrificialLoon
    SacrificialLoon
    Look at China, perfect example...THEY can compete because of lower wages, it's just the way it works.

    At what cost? Look at Foxconn. One of the better employers in the PRC. The workers live in company dorms, it's the company town taken to extreme. Only after external pressure have they increased wages, and installed nets outside upper story windows to prevent suicides. In other places they simply dump toxic waste straight into the rivers, and as a result cancer rates are much higher in those places. This should not be the future of the American working class.

    This amoral world view of yours will only lead to the US becoming a Banana Republic.

  • villabolo
    villabolo

    Danabug: "I don't know if he's a psychopath, I think he's not really aware of what it's like down here in the lower class."

    Concerning the first statement, I based that on the assumption that he was telling the truth about his employment. A substantial number of people in any corporate hierarchy, out of proportion to the general population, are psychopaths.

    I should have known better than to take anything he says seriously. It was late at night.

    And I have a feeling that he could not care less about the lower class if he had been one himself for years.

    Villabolo

  • FlyingHighNow
    FlyingHighNow

    Wal-mart cashiers make minimum wage. The Unions when they were powerful made sure cashiers were not stepped all over by company owners. And by the way, most of those companies are profitable enough to pay employes well above minimum wage. The owners are greedy and the CEO's are greedy. They want to enjoy profits while paying their workers slave wages. The "freedom" we enjoy in the USA has been slowly sneaked out the back door, under our noses. We are well on our way back to the times of sweat shops and legalized slave labor. Look up and learn about plutocracy. Strange name for the very real thing you see unfolding around you. It's been happening gradully for 30 years now, ever since our buddy R. Reagen was in office.

    China for example
    : the slave state to which we are heading. Things are only working in China for company owners. Life for most citizens, especially young women is a living nightmarish hell.
  • villabolo
    villabolo

    XJW4EVR:

    $14-$17 per hour for dragging products across a scanner? Oh, yeah! They have to stand all day. Bullshit! The only employee, in my mind, worthy of this sort of money is a butcher. He/she is a skilled employee. Dragging products across a scanner is not a skill. Any moron can do that.

    The bullshit comes from those who have the arrogance to judge others without having a clue as to what they really do.

    They do a lot more than that and you would not last beyond one or two customers if you were thrown in without any training behind a supermarket cash register.

    First there a dozen procedures to remember and follow through on consistently.

    Then you have to memorize over a hundred codes for produce. In case you never noticed they don't have price stickers.

    And by the way, $14-$17, for an average of 30 hours a week in Los Angeles, would not be able to afford a home in the middle class neighborhood that they worked in (Full time is extremely rare and no, that had nothing to do with health insurance).

    You may now go f*ck yourself, elitist wannabe. It's creatures like you who have the sense of entitlement. The entitlement to crap on other people; the entitlement to crap the very planet you live on. I look forward to your demise. It won't take long for it to start in earnest though it may take decades for the total collapse to play itself out.

    Villabolo

  • FlyingHighNow
    FlyingHighNow

    Oh yeah, Villa, the produce codes and the nut codes and so much more. Good God they changed the way we did checks and that slowed us down and they yelled at us for slowing down to do the now much more complicated check procedure.

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