Top 10 Reasons Why We Don't Need Unions Anymore

[Teamster Jeff]

[Sherman A1]

1. K&R

[MADem]

2. One reason why we do need them...

Corporations who fire CEOs who care about the workers to increase the profits for themselves....

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/07/market_basket_protests_why_grocery_workers_are_rallying_around_their_ceo.html


...The affection for Arthur T. goes beyond the personal touch he brings to the CEO role (for example, he remembers the names of low-level employees, and the names of their sick relatives). Under Arthur T.’s stewardship, employees have been relatively well-compensated. Manager pay often climbs above six figures after years of service. Cashiers with experience can make over $40,000, and full-time clerks start at $12 an hour, the Boston Globe reports. According to U.S. Department of Labor numbers, the annual mean wage for grocery store cashiers throughout the country is $21,370. In Massachusetts, the minimum wage is currently $8 an hour (though a bill was recently approved to raise it gradually to $11 by 2017).

In addition, the company matches about 15 percent of annual pay to a retirement fund, and regular, substantial bonuses are awarded throughout the course of the year—which is a significant boon to their quality of life, workers tell me. Outside the Somerville store, one employee said she’s worried about what she'll do if those bonuses disappear under new Market Basket leadership, particularly around Christmastime. Another Somerville employee named Jessica, who works behind the customer service window, said she’s anxious that the board of directors might take away her $1,000-per-semester stipend to University Massachusetts Boston, which three of her co-workers also receive.

...What has helped endear Arthur T. to workers proved to be a sticking point for shareholders, as he apparently hasn’t been running the company at the expected level of ruthless corporate efficiency. As the Globe’s Walker wrote, the generosity of Market Basket’s profit-sharing program particularly irked some board members. In one instance back in 2008, Arthur T. made sure the company made up for a loss of $46 million that the profit-sharing fund suffered during the economic crisis.

It’s no wonder that employees such as Tom Trainor, a district manager of 37 stores who was fired on Sunday, have taken to thinking of Arthur T. as a storybook character. “He’s George Bailey,” Trainor told the Washington Post, invoking the hero of It’s a Wonderful Life. “He cares more about people than he does about money.”

....

[Springslips]

14. Funny

I have been watching that situation, and sadly, those people hate unions. On the worker's Facebook page there is so much anti-union sentiment to make me sick. With collective bargaining they'd need worry who was in charge, and have laws watching their back. When will people learn?

[Squinch]

3. ALL of the data shows that conditions for ALL workers is better when unions are supported and

widely joined. The fact that people vote against their own interests by not supporting unions is an amazingly ignorant and irrational thing for anyone outside of the 1% to do.

[newfie11]

4. Exactly right

We need them even more today. With the oligarchs and militarized police force in this country the unions are our last hope.
Loose them at your peril.

[elzenmahn]

5. Here are more reasons why we DO need unions...

1. Scott Walker
2. Mitch Daniels
3. Michelle Rhee
4. Bob Corker
5. Chris Christie
6. Arne Duncan
7. Chainsaw Dunlap and all others of his ilk
8. Campbell Brown (read about that smile on her face as she's suing over teacher tenure)
9. The Entire F-ing Republican Party
10. Any alleged "Democrat" who stabs labor in the back
11. And anybody pushing for any so-called "Free Trade" agreement.

[sulphurdunn]

7. And of course,

there's always the anti-union working man and his brother the scab.

[Hubert Flottz]

8. You should add the...

12.National Chamber-pot of Commerce
13.Wall Street slave masters
14.Globalist banks
15.Nazified neocon fascists like Mitt RobMe

Next year I will get my 40 year (gold) pin from my AFL-CIO trade union. I have seen things go from great to this bullshit in those 40 years. The Reich wing attack on worker's rights has been relentless. When was the last time YOU got a raise that inflation,(which is never being realistically looked at in Washington)didn't immediately nullify? The less strength the unions have...the more working Americans will suffer. The GOP wants to turn back America's clock to pre 1933. BTW, 1933 was about the time that Hitler destroyed and disbanded the unions in pre war Germany. Same old shit, different assholes.

[merrily]

6. No human institution is perfect, and unions are no exception. HOWEVER,

the fact that the monetary cost of replacing a dead employee is less than making a dangerous workplace a little safer used to guide workplace "safety" decisions before unions took hold.

If that fact doesn't make you want to throw up, very literally, then maybe you just don't get it.

At all times when I was eligible to be a union member, I was; and I have joined picket lines in solidarity with other workers, but I have never crossed one.

That said, no one who exploits workers in any way gets a pass from me, not bosses, not politicians and not union leadership. However, if I have to side with just one of those groups, it would be with union leaders over both employers and politicians. Workers above all of those groups, though.

[Hubert Flottz]

9. Like!

I couldn't agree more. Been there, done that!

[merrily]

11. Thanks. Long before OSHA, there were union organizers.

[Hubert Flottz]

13. OSHA...

O ur (our meaning ALL working Americans)
S avior
H as
A rrived

Savior... a "person" who saves someone or something (especially a country or cause) from danger.
Something my old union Dad told me, back when OSHA first became a reality.

The people who fear safety regulation and collective bargaining are the shoddy, unscrupulous, employers, who care more for cash and power, than they've ever cared about, or even considered, the human condition.

[merrily]

15. I have no doubt that OSHA would not have happened without unions.

Nixon gets credit for this, even from Democratic posters, but I don't know if the bill came from him or from a Democratic Congress and he just did not veto.

Either way, it would not have happened, IMO, without three facts: (1) strong unions; and (2) the fact that workers then made up more of the electorate than bosses and Wall Street investors combined; and (3) American voters have a right to a secret political ballot.

All three of those facts have changed some since then.

[TNNurse]

10. I was raised to believe in unions

And I still do.
As a nurse, I was uncertain about nurses unionizing. I had mixed feelings about abandoning patients. I would not have crossed a picket line to work. In today's work environment, I would support one.
In most hospitals, RNs LPNs and CNAs are required to work 12hr shifts. My husband and I work at the same hospital, he carries the insurance because after 35 years I lost my insurance because I am no longer able to work enough hours to qualify. That whole mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation sort of took a lot out of me, so I cannot tolerate 30 hours a week. He works in a unit that has closed staffing, the majority chose that so they would not be pulled to other units in times of low census. Because of that, he might get cancelled or be on-call when the census is down. In order to keep OUR insurance, he has to use PTO (personal time off) hours to keep his hours enough to qualify. He is scheduled enough but he has to take time off with pay that is not his choice so is required to use this saved time off. I wonder if this is legal. I believe it is not fair.

He is a professional. He has an amazing reputation and new nurses campaign to orient with him because of his skill and knowledge. He is angry and bitter and just trying to tough it out. I will retire later this year soon after I turn 65. He is going to tough it out until he turns 65 next year. He will be angry and bitter for all of that time. The institution for which he has worked for 40 years has changed too much and does not respect it's employees.

[merrily]

12. OT, but in addition to loving unions, I love nurses. So, I thank you from the bottom

of my heart for all you have done for patients and all you have had to endure in order to serve patients.

Once, while I was in Spaulding Rehab, I spiked a fever around dinner time, with one nurse and one aide on the entire floor. Aspirin worked after I finally got some--but the lone nurse on duty had to get a doctor's permission to give me aspirin and, for whatever reason, permission was not forthcoming.

Somehow, the nurse found time between distributing meal trays and distributing bed time meds and taking care of everyone else on the floor, to soak my forehead with washcloths dipped in ice water until permission for aspirin came though. My fever was high enough that I believe she saved my life. (Apparently, my central line, had become infected, so you know how grave that is.)

And that was only one of the things for which I am grateful to nurses. I say that doctors prescribe and cut--and I do not diminish that at all--but nurses nurture and heal.

[mdbl]

16. The southern working man

I love it here in the south where Mush Lumpballs, Neil Buttz, Hermann Lame and the Repugs have convinced the working man that no union is a good thing. What's really ironic is that same idiot keeps trying to get into a union job since the pay and benefits are better, then when they get there, they vote against their own interests by placing politicians in office that are completely anti-labor. Go figure.