7 ms·

Good. Early action will prevent this from being made controversial later on by groups who might see it as a threat (eg police unions trying to maintain traffic

by cynest 14y ago

Good. Early action will prevent this from being made controversial later on by groups who might see it as a threat (eg police unions trying to maintain traffic tickets as a revenue stream for departments).

robomartin 14y ago
We are not going to evolve as a society until we abolish unionized labor. I know that this is a strong statement. And it is likely to attract serious disagreement. Take this as on man's opinion and nothing else. It is my contention that in modern times unionized labor has done absolutely nothing good for our society. I understand that they had a time and a place to exist. Today, there's far more evidence of the damage they cause than the positive effects they may have been intended to produce. Unions create a false economy. One where people are paid exorbitant amounts of money for work that could be done for less in an open market. Unions also create stagnation both in terms of innovation and of human capital. Union members exist in an isolated cocoon where there is no need to excel or evolve past your station. Unions damage competitiveness at a national and international level. Unions damage the economy and destroy industries by creating contracts with unreasonable terms, benefits and pensions. Unions in government create a nasty conflict-of-interest situation where hordes of people vote as a unified block supporting the very laws and politicians that regulate their own jobs (vote for your own pay raise, etc.). Unions also use this vote-by-mob approach to influence politics and the politicians that want their votes. It is my opinion that unionized workers, as individuals, are generally good hard-working people. However, once their thoughts and actions are controlled by the need to support their "team" (the union) the collective can, and often becomes, evil in many ways. Case in point: UAW contract clause that causes car companies to have to retain workers displaced by automation. These workers earn full salary to do absolutely nothing. The Chinese have got to be laughing their asses off when they see us self-destruct this way. Teacher unions are yet another example. The list of evils is too long to list here. The most basic one is the inability to fire bad or even down-right criminal teachers. We would be able to move at a very different pace if unions went away. I won't hold my breath.
- yardie 14y ago
  A long list not backed with facts of any kind? This is normally called a diatribe. As for the Chinese, the CCP is the largest union in China. As for the US, 12% of all workers are unionized[1]. With them representing 1:8 waged workers whats to stop other 7 from picking up the pace and showing those union workers how to really do a job? [1] http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm
  - gaius 14y ago
    Consider GM versus... Any other car manufacturer.
    - yardie 14y ago
      What's your point exactly? Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, and Honda are unionized as well. GM's problem had everything to do with management (too many cars, too many models, too many franchises, too many factories, and too many dealerships).
  - robomartin 14y ago
    If don't have to back-up anything. If you are interested you go and do the research, it's actually very easy these days. Also, I worked within a unionized environment for eight years. I have seen the beast from the inside. What it does to people and businesses is nothing less than horrible. I have seen people come to work drunk knowing full-well that they could not be fired for it. I have seen people sleeping at work. Again, can't fire them. I have seen people refuse to help out where help was needed because it was not in their union contract ("Can you help me move this (light) box? No. It's not in my contract"). I've seen people get paid $150K per year to do what most anyone would consider nothing or very little. Jobs that in the "outside" free market would not justify more than $15 per hour suddenly become $50 per hour + benefits + pension for life jobs in an unionized environment. When you look at the fact that government is loaded with unionized workers one of the most immediate reactions should be: As tax-payers we are getting shafted. These people are getting paid lots more than their free market equivalents. Lots. And, of course, when you count lifetime pensions funded by taxpayers the numbers are far worst. OK, since you are an evidence kind of guy (or gal, I don't know) I'll take the time to give you some of that data. Let's use this link: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm Oh, wait a minute, that's the link YOU provided. Yup. Thanks. I reviewed the page and came up with these interesting notes: "In 2011, among full-time wage and salary workers, union members had median usual weekly earnings of $938, while those who were not union members had median weekly earnings of $729." Translation: If you do the math, median union worker wages are about 29% higher than equivalent free market workers. I'll leave it to the reader to Google a little and find data comparing wage differentials by occupation. Here's another one: "In 2011, 7.6 million employees in the public sector belonged to a union, compared with 7.2 million union workers in the private sector." Sounds fairly benign, right? Until you read the next two sentences: "The union membership rate for public-sector workers (37.0 percent) was substantially higher than the rate for private-sector workers (6.9 percent). Within the public sector, local government workers had the highest union membership rate, 43.2 percent." So, on average 37% of government workers are unionized. And, if you look locally, over 43% belong to a union. Only 7% of free-market workers are unionized! Something stinks here. Government workers figured-out how to game the system by unionizing. We now work for them. This is where the huge conflict of interest is created. Government workers belong to unions in staggering numbers and they vote and act as a block. They also enlist the support of other unions in getting behind legislation and politicians who will keep throwing candy at them. Again, all you have to do is look at California and the disaster that politicians and unions have created to understand how badly this can degenerate. There's plenty of evidence of this on the web: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/december/california-pension-debt-121411.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/december/california-pensi... http://www.ocregister.com/articles/pension-336894-california-public.html http://www.ocregister.com/articles/pension-336894-california... http://www.pensiontsunami.com/ http://www.pensiontsunami.com/ A quote from one of these links: "a research team based at Stanford University and headed by Joe Nation, a former Democratic state assemblyman, released an updated analysis of state and local pension funds, concluding that they are underfunded by hundreds of billions of dollars and, unless reformed, will seriously erode future financing of schools, health care and other services." Anyhow, you can believe what you'd like. You can believe that corporations are evil. And that's fine. That will not change reality. Even when corporations cover everything form the corner bakery to Apple. And, BTW, nobody ever claims that Apple is evil. It's those other evil corporations. Also, nobody ever seems to state at what revenue level corporations become evil. Or after what number of employees? By any measure Apple should be one of the most evil corporations in the world. The reality that remains unchanged is that we and our children are very likely to have to pay for union pensions for the rest of our lives. And, that, among other things, is horribly wrong. While I could be more ignorant than I have a clue (as someone in this thread kindly pointed out) the sad reality is that even this does not alter the facts. If it did I'd gladly declare myself to be an utter idiot. The facts are that unions are causing and will continue to cause a lot of damage at many levels. Here in California we ought to seriously look at the idea of, at the very least, removing them from government.
MaxGabriel 14y ago
Wait till it threatens trucking unions
- jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
  And taxis unions... and pretty much every transportation union; this (eventually) is going to get ugly.
  - guscost 14y ago
    Still has to happen...
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    Unions are a stronger force in CA than most states, so it will indeed get interesting once it's a real threat. I can almost see it now, there will be a long interim period where even self-driving cars will require a union driver. You know, for public safety reasons.
    - dublinclontarf 14y ago
      You know when the motor car was first introduced, the law required a man with a red flag walk in front of it at all times. The excuse of course was for safety reasons :p
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
mortenjorck 14y ago
Expect the safety flag to be waved, hard. The thousands of accidents caused by human commercial drivers each year won't matter at all when the first high-profile driverless accident occurs. Expect the question all over the media to be "Are we really ready for driverless cars?" The unfortunate victim of the accident will have proposed laws named after them as everyone with an elected office rushes to reassure their voters that they're on top of the danger and can be relied upon to legislate it away. A safer, cleaner, easier future of transportation will hang in the balance as reason contends with panic in the public consciousness.
- Natsu 14y ago
  And people will start getting annoyed by the "too nice" driving habits that driverless cars will have to adopt. I'm sure that some passengers will be livid that their car refuses to tailgate people when they're in a hurry. Granted, that could be somewhat alleviated by allowing the car to switch in and out of driverless mode, but that causes new problems. Remember that plane that went down because the inexperienced pilot didn't realize that the plane was actually letting him stall it due to the minor equipment malfunction?
- gaius 14y ago
  Consider that the Hindenberg killed the entire airship industry, whereas the Titanic didn't make a blip in the normal ship industry.
  - ams6110 14y ago
    Airships were impractical anyway.
  - Retric 14y ago
    Airship's where relatively slow and expensive which is why airplanes killed them.

by cynest 14y ago

robomartin 14y ago

We are not going to evolve as a society until we abolish unionized labor. I know that this is a strong statement. And it is likely to attract serious disagreement. Take this as on man's opinion and nothing else. It is my contention that in modern times unionized labor has done absolutely nothing good for our society. I understand that they had a time and a place to exist. Today, there's far more evidence of the damage they cause than the positive effects they may have been intended to produce. Unions create a false economy. One where people are paid exorbitant amounts of money for work that could be done for less in an open market. Unions also create stagnation both in terms of innovation and of human capital. Union members exist in an isolated cocoon where there is no need to excel or evolve past your station. Unions damage competitiveness at a national and international level. Unions damage the economy and destroy industries by creating contracts with unreasonable terms, benefits and pensions. Unions in government create a nasty conflict-of-interest situation where hordes of people vote as a unified block supporting the very laws and politicians that regulate their own jobs (vote for your own pay raise, etc.). Unions also use this vote-by-mob approach to influence politics and the politicians that want their votes. It is my opinion that unionized workers, as individuals, are generally good hard-working people. However, once their thoughts and actions are controlled by the need to support their "team" (the union) the collective can, and often becomes, evil in many ways. Case in point: UAW contract clause that causes car companies to have to retain workers displaced by automation. These workers earn full salary to do absolutely nothing. The Chinese have got to be laughing their asses off when they see us self-destruct this way. Teacher unions are yet another example. The list of evils is too long to list here. The most basic one is the inability to fire bad or even down-right criminal teachers. We would be able to move at a very different pace if unions went away. I won't hold my breath.

yardie 14y ago
A long list not backed with facts of any kind? This is normally called a diatribe. As for the Chinese, the CCP is the largest union in China. As for the US, 12% of all workers are unionized[1]. With them representing 1:8 waged workers whats to stop other 7 from picking up the pace and showing those union workers how to really do a job? [1] http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm
- gaius 14y ago
  Consider GM versus... Any other car manufacturer.
  - yardie 14y ago
    What's your point exactly? Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, and Honda are unionized as well. GM's problem had everything to do with management (too many cars, too many models, too many franchises, too many factories, and too many dealerships).
- robomartin 14y ago
  If don't have to back-up anything. If you are interested you go and do the research, it's actually very easy these days. Also, I worked within a unionized environment for eight years. I have seen the beast from the inside. What it does to people and businesses is nothing less than horrible. I have seen people come to work drunk knowing full-well that they could not be fired for it. I have seen people sleeping at work. Again, can't fire them. I have seen people refuse to help out where help was needed because it was not in their union contract ("Can you help me move this (light) box? No. It's not in my contract"). I've seen people get paid $150K per year to do what most anyone would consider nothing or very little. Jobs that in the "outside" free market would not justify more than $15 per hour suddenly become $50 per hour + benefits + pension for life jobs in an unionized environment. When you look at the fact that government is loaded with unionized workers one of the most immediate reactions should be: As tax-payers we are getting shafted. These people are getting paid lots more than their free market equivalents. Lots. And, of course, when you count lifetime pensions funded by taxpayers the numbers are far worst. OK, since you are an evidence kind of guy (or gal, I don't know) I'll take the time to give you some of that data. Let's use this link: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm Oh, wait a minute, that's the link YOU provided. Yup. Thanks. I reviewed the page and came up with these interesting notes: "In 2011, among full-time wage and salary workers, union members had median usual weekly earnings of $938, while those who were not union members had median weekly earnings of $729." Translation: If you do the math, median union worker wages are about 29% higher than equivalent free market workers. I'll leave it to the reader to Google a little and find data comparing wage differentials by occupation. Here's another one: "In 2011, 7.6 million employees in the public sector belonged to a union, compared with 7.2 million union workers in the private sector." Sounds fairly benign, right? Until you read the next two sentences: "The union membership rate for public-sector workers (37.0 percent) was substantially higher than the rate for private-sector workers (6.9 percent). Within the public sector, local government workers had the highest union membership rate, 43.2 percent." So, on average 37% of government workers are unionized. And, if you look locally, over 43% belong to a union. Only 7% of free-market workers are unionized! Something stinks here. Government workers figured-out how to game the system by unionizing. We now work for them. This is where the huge conflict of interest is created. Government workers belong to unions in staggering numbers and they vote and act as a block. They also enlist the support of other unions in getting behind legislation and politicians who will keep throwing candy at them. Again, all you have to do is look at California and the disaster that politicians and unions have created to understand how badly this can degenerate. There's plenty of evidence of this on the web: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/december/california-pension-debt-121411.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/december/california-pensi... http://www.ocregister.com/articles/pension-336894-california-public.html http://www.ocregister.com/articles/pension-336894-california... http://www.pensiontsunami.com/ http://www.pensiontsunami.com/ A quote from one of these links: "a research team based at Stanford University and headed by Joe Nation, a former Democratic state assemblyman, released an updated analysis of state and local pension funds, concluding that they are underfunded by hundreds of billions of dollars and, unless reformed, will seriously erode future financing of schools, health care and other services." Anyhow, you can believe what you'd like. You can believe that corporations are evil. And that's fine. That will not change reality. Even when corporations cover everything form the corner bakery to Apple. And, BTW, nobody ever claims that Apple is evil. It's those other evil corporations. Also, nobody ever seems to state at what revenue level corporations become evil. Or after what number of employees? By any measure Apple should be one of the most evil corporations in the world. The reality that remains unchanged is that we and our children are very likely to have to pay for union pensions for the rest of our lives. And, that, among other things, is horribly wrong. While I could be more ignorant than I have a clue (as someone in this thread kindly pointed out) the sad reality is that even this does not alter the facts. If it did I'd gladly declare myself to be an utter idiot. The facts are that unions are causing and will continue to cause a lot of damage at many levels. Here in California we ought to seriously look at the idea of, at the very least, removing them from government.

MaxGabriel 14y ago

Wait till it threatens trucking unions

jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
And taxis unions... and pretty much every transportation union; this (eventually) is going to get ugly.
- guscost 14y ago
  Still has to happen...
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  Unions are a stronger force in CA than most states, so it will indeed get interesting once it's a real threat. I can almost see it now, there will be a long interim period where even self-driving cars will require a union driver. You know, for public safety reasons.
  - dublinclontarf 14y ago
    You know when the motor car was first introduced, the law required a man with a red flag walk in front of it at all times. The excuse of course was for safety reasons :p
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

mortenjorck 14y ago

Expect the safety flag to be waved, hard. The thousands of accidents caused by human commercial drivers each year won't matter at all when the first high-profile driverless accident occurs. Expect the question all over the media to be "Are we really ready for driverless cars?" The unfortunate victim of the accident will have proposed laws named after them as everyone with an elected office rushes to reassure their voters that they're on top of the danger and can be relied upon to legislate it away. A safer, cleaner, easier future of transportation will hang in the balance as reason contends with panic in the public consciousness.

Natsu 14y ago
And people will start getting annoyed by the "too nice" driving habits that driverless cars will have to adopt. I'm sure that some passengers will be livid that their car refuses to tailgate people when they're in a hurry. Granted, that could be somewhat alleviated by allowing the car to switch in and out of driverless mode, but that causes new problems. Remember that plane that went down because the inexperienced pilot didn't realize that the plane was actually letting him stall it due to the minor equipment malfunction?
gaius 14y ago
Consider that the Hindenberg killed the entire airship industry, whereas the Titanic didn't make a blip in the normal ship industry.
- ams6110 14y ago
  Airships were impractical anyway.
- Retric 14y ago
  Airship's where relatively slow and expensive which is why airplanes killed them.